MOTU's Digital Performer 5 software

[Brad Sarno]

I just wanted to give my endorsement for MOTU's (Mark of the Unicorn) Digital Performer audio recording and midi software. This is a Mac only program. But for anyone on the Mac OSX platform who's interested in a complete and very affordable DAW (digital audio workstation) I must say that DP5 (Digital Performer 5) is just a fantastic program. Very stable, very complete, and very compatible with just about any hardware and 3rd party plug-ins. To me it's a Pro-Tools killer for a number of reasons. The company's support is excellent, the software stability is excellent, the power and number of features and tools is excellent. So there. That's my plug. I've been in the DP environment for years now, and I still find the product to be my favorite.

Brad

[Jerry Gleason]

Another longtime DP user here. Lately, however, I find myself bouncing back and forth between DP and Logic, partly because my computer is aging, and Logic is a little less demanding on the CPU, and can play those nice sampled instrunments from GarageBand. The pro version of Logic also includes Waveburner, a CD mastering program that used to be available as a stand-alone, but now is now incorporated into Logic. I still have the stand-alone version, but it requires a computer that can boot into OS9.

It's interesting how these programs can sound so different from each other. I can mix the same tracks in Digital Performer and Logic, dry and without any EQ's or plug-ins, and still end up with a different sound in the mix. I don't know if it's the summing algorithms or what, but they sound different. When I incorporate an AU plug-in like PSP Vintage Warmer, The settings I use in DP will be too much for Logic. I'm still getting used to that.

In an audio-only environment, I still prefer Digital Performer. The interface and workflow is much more intuitive for those with roots in the analog audio world.

[Earnest Bovine]

This is a Mac only program.

... very compatible with just about any hardware ...

Hmmm, very compatible with just about any hardware except 90% of the computers in the world.

Still, I think I understand what you mean, and it is a good thing if you can run audio software without having to buy proprietary interfaces from Digidesign.

[Bill Terry]

It's interesting how these programs can sound so different from each other.

Indeed... I'm using an 'antique' DAW, the Ensoniq Paris System (PC or MAC) and to me it still 'sounds' better (warmer, more analogish, yet still very open and clear) than a lot of the newer packages. Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks so, John Macy and Tommy Detamore both still use Paris in commercial studios and I'm sure there are a lot of other users.

Clearly it lacks the latest bells and whistles, MIDI support is sketchy at best, and it's showing it's age a bit, but it still SOUNDS good.

Sorry, topic drift...

[Brad Sarno]

Yea, Bill. I've got a friend who runs Paris, and it really does sound nice. It is aging and lacks some of the modern features, but still for a DAW and digital summing, it's pretty warm and nice sounding.

Jerry, that's funny. I recently got Logic Pro, so I'm bouncing between DP and Logic. I actually got Logic Pro so I could also have the new OSX version of Waveburner. I live by Waveburner in OS9. That forces me to still run my older dual 1GHz Mac because it boots up in OS9. That OS9 machine is still my main mastering machine that feeds the analog mastering gear. I'm working my way into OSX, but for now my OSX machines are for recording and learning the new stuff. I haven't done enough with Logic yet to have compared the sonics with DP, but I think you're right about the summing. Everyone does the multi to stereo summing with different math. They all sound a bit different. I'm a big fan of coming out of the box and summing in the analog domain. That's where analog really still seems to have digital beat, hands down. But I do suspect that the digital summing engines will come around someday. I've heard that Logic's summing does sound nice. I've also heard that Nuendo sounds excellent.

I do have the new SoundBlade by Sonic, but I'm still getting comfortable with it. Waveburner in OS9 is still my main place to assemble and create redbook CD-R's for mastering. Soundblade is great because it's a DDP image generator and with 4-tracks it will feed a mastering chain and record back in. That's how I use DP (minus the DDP disk image thang), but I try not to do any math with DP, just play and record an analog mastering chain. Then I'll digital peak limit and dither in Waveburner.

Earnest, yeah when I said compatible I guess I meant that UNLIKE ProTools, DP will talk to just about all the hardware very easily. That ProTools proprietary thing bugs me. But yea, Apple is still about 1/10 of the market.

Brad

[Joe Butcher]

This is a Mac only program.

... very compatible with just about any hardware ...

Hmmm, very compatible with just about any hardware except 90% of the computers in the world.

Still, I think I understand what you mean, and it is a good thing if you can run audio software without having to buy proprietary interfaces from Digidesign.

By hardware I think he meant audio interface and controller hardware...just like by "90% of the computers in the world" you really mean "crashy virus boxes."

[David L. Donald]

Sadly my older Protools hardware is NOT compatible with DP5
I am Performer user since P 1.7 and ALL versions of DP to 5.
I HAVE 5 but can't run it. DRAT big time.

I am not at all surprised that it is a great release.
The issue is Digidesign's not MOTU's.

Since I am putting money into my building now.
It is a debate to move to MOTU hardware for a spell.

Cogitate, cogitate.

[Jerry Gleason]

Brad, have you used the OSX version of Waveburner enough to get a sense of whether it's as good as / better than the old version? Right now, I only have Logic Express, so I haven't had a chance to use the new WB.

I'm sort of at a crossroads now. I want to upgrade to a newer computer, but I need to decide if I want to stay with Digital Performer, upgrading from version 4.6 to version 5, which would mean that I have to hold on to my old G4 system just to run Waveburner on OS9. OR, upgrade to Logic Pro, and use that for everything. It's a tough call, because there are things I like better in Digital Performer, but there are also things I like in Logic. I like the sound in Logic, and I am a little more productive with it in a mixed audio / MIDI environment. For audio only, I can work better in DP.

Decisions, decisions....

If I had to characterize the difference in sound between the two, I'd say that Logic is more "compressed", more up-front and aggressive sounding than DP, but DP has more dynamic range, more "air". These are only my highly subjective impressions of what are fairly subtle differences, YMMV.

[Jerry Gleason]

David, I thought Digital Performer was compatible with Digidesigns DAE audio engine, and thus would work with ProTools hardware. I haven't ever tried it, so I could be wrong, but there is a long section in the DP manual about it.

[David L. Donald]

I have exactly the crossover point that doesn't work.

Lesser older systems still work and newer systems work,
I am in a Catch 22 zone.

I need to get a PCIe Mac and PCI hardware to USE 5,
or other hardware versions.
or migrate to MOTU for a time or indefinitely.
But OT is an industry standard for good or ill
and ultimately I need to offer it I believe.

I find this a rather rare fall through the cracks for MOTU,
but I think in this case Digi is the cause not MOTU
it's just normally MOTU has had work arounds.

Lost count; but I have done upwards of 6-7 hardware changes
with MOTU products always coming back on line for me.

[Tommy Detamore]

As my pal Bill Terry stated, I still use Paris as my main DAW. But I also use DP locked to Paris for midi stuff. I also frequently route Paris tracks through plugins in DP, and I occasionally blow audio from Paris into DP via lightpipe, using the MOTU 2408 interface and the Paris ADAT interface.

I used Logic for years for midi, but I made the switch to DP about three years ago and haven't really looked back. I still use the old Waveburner on OS9...

[John McClung]

Great thread, keep the data and advice coming, guys!

For all: I think most people receive small MP3 files of songs from clients for overdubbing, to keep the files email-able, right? If so, I assume that a ProTools system wouldn't have any innate benefit since I'm not importing ProTools files, right? From DP, Logic or PT, do you save out what you overdub as an AIFF file, burn that to disk, then mail that off? Is ProTools harder to learn or use than Digital Performer or Logic?

Tommy, I've been super impressed by the detail of your procedure as described on your site, really appreciate whatever info or tips you can share, seems you've been there and done that.

[James Quackenbush]

Being a user of DP from back when it was just "Performer" I have to say that all along the journey, the one gripe I had with MOTU was the fact that if you did not go to the forum "Unicornation" for information, and support, you were basically out of luck ...In other words , MOTU support is amongst the worst in the business !!.. I have a lot of $$ tied up in older MOTU gear .. I will probably be switching over to Logic since Apple does a much better job of supporting the product, and the virtual instruments are a boon for the work I do ...The MOTU hardware is so so...It does a lot , but the quality of the sound is not up to par with other companies gear ... Then again, I guess it goes back to " you get what you pay for " ...Jim

[David L. Donald]

I do agree with MOTU support being inadequate.
One help line and not nearly enough responders.
And when I have called from Europe it becomes
more aggravating. More numbers and longer redial sequence.

The upside.
When you DO get through they are thorough and clear.
No BS undertrained twist, t
hey know what they are doing and are clear about it.

I have literally spent weeks on telephone redial with
the company over the years. But I like most of their
products and DP in particular enpogh to put up with it.

[Brad Sarno]

Hey Jim.

I never had to deal very much with MOTU's support, but I did once find this out. If you call their normal 800 support line, things were not great. But I had an old manual for an early version of DP, and it had their local, non 800 number on it, so I called that # and nearly every single time I instantly got a person on the phone who helped me out. This has worked as recently as in the past year or so. So personally, I found their support to be among the very best I'd ever experienced with regards to computer related stuff.

And on their hardware, I'd have to disagree. Their pro interfaces have seemed to out-perform much of Digi's hardware across the board whether it's jitter and clocking issues, analog path quality, A/D or D/A converter quality, etc. It's really good stuff for it's price range. Granted it's not Weiss, Mytek or even Apogee quality, but it's not in that price category either. I always clock my audio interfaces with an external super-low-jitter clock anyway. Most serious Pro-Tools users will do the same since PT's jitter is kind of bad. I recently sent my MOTU 896HD interface to Black Lion Audio for modding. They upgraded all the opamps and mic preamps in there. They explained about the converter chips and how they are identical to what's in much of the ultra high end exotic stuff. So by cleaning up the audio path and then clocking the unit with a good clock, it now performs as well as gear 3 or more times its price. Randy Beavers had his Digi 002 interface modded by them, and he was astounded.

So anyway, I wanted to offer my differing take on MOTU, and say that for the past 8 years or so I've depended heavily on them and been more satisfied than many of my Digidesign Pro Tools using friends.

Brad

[David L. Donald]

Brad what is your clock source?

Good info on actual, not anecdotal,
MOTU interface quality.
Making part of my over-all picture easier
to decide on too.

[John McClung]

So Brad: what's the local phone for MOTU help?!

How much does the Black Lion MOTU mod cost?

What does clocking mean? And jitter?

[David L. Donald]

Clocking means that
all the interfaces
and the cards
and signal sources in the digital domain,
are synced together from one master source.

ie. Your pre-amp that has a built-in Analog to Digital converter,
sees a chain of time references through a cable,
to make sure it's sampling rate is in sync
with the recording units rate.

For instance back in World War One
machine guns were original mounted
over the wings, or out on the wings
because they would have torn
the propelors apart otherwise.


BUT some bright engineer managed to gear
the firing mechanism of machineguns,
so that the time lag

between firing pin,
and explosion,
and the time to travel to the propelor,
was synced so that the bullits passed
BETWEEN the blades and thus no blade destruction.
The many elements and distance are synced up

OK think about the unsynced machine gun
and between the blade spaces.
If there is no sync, then some bullits pass through
others don't and this is similar to a
sequence of audio samples trying to be
inserted into an equal timing space of
an audio recorders 'existing input cycles'.

How does the rate of one match up with
the rate of the other,
without any accurate reference?

The better the sync the better the
insertion without errors.

If you have a loose chain between
'motor with blade attached',
and the machinegun firing mechanism,
then sometimes it gets a bit off,
and the edges of the blades get nipped off a bit.

But if you have a completely adjusted gear to gear
system with no slippage then no a problem.

So think of Jitter as a sloppy chain,
and a good master clock as a geared mechanism.

[Brad Sarno]

The MOTU number I've had success with is 617-576-2760. But it's been a while.

Out there on the internet it sure does look like a lot of folks have complaints about MOTU support. Personally I've never experienced trouble with them, and have been generally really happy with them.

Jitter is clock stability. Even though a clock may be telling your gear to play or record a sample of the audio waveform exactly 44,100 per second, it doesn't mean that the timing of each sample isn't slightly drifting or wobbling around in time just a tiny bit. Low jitter means that the timing of every sample is very exact every time. A stock (non HD) ProTools interface is pretty jittery. The cheap interfaces and soundcards people buy are HORRIBLY jittery. High end gear like Benchmark, Lucid, Apogee, Mytek, Weiss, Lavry, and others are very stable with low jitter. You can purchase external clocks for a reasonable amount of money. I've recently been using a Lucid clock, and sometimes the clocking from my Apogee converter.

When you take a MOTU or ProTools interface and sync it to an external clock, the sound gets a lot better. What you hear when the jitter is reduced is a more clear and focused definition of all sounds. Imaging is probably the most dramatic improvement. With jittery gear, which is what most people have, you can notice that when mixing and panning in the stereo field that things will pan pretty much either hard left, half left, center, half right, and hard right. Not a lot of discernable in between-ness. With low jitter, the stereo positioning becomes nearly infinite. Also the sense of depth, near and far, up and down also becomes much more focused and audible. High frequency info like cymbals and vocal breath become more realistic and UN-smeared. The midrange becomes less dense and crowded sounding. Jitter reduction is really critical for serious digital audio, but you've got to pay for it.

Here is the link to Black Lion Audio Mods. They do mods on their listed gear, and they now also sell a digital master clock that should prove to be one of the most affordable good clock options out there at under $400. The Lucid I use is closer to $600.

http://www.blacklionaudio.com/home.html

If you have a converter like an Apogee Rosetta, then that can serve as both a converter and a good master clock. But if you use some type of interface, most likely it could stand to be clocked better. The good clocking thing is just as impressive as going from bad to great mic preamps. It really shows its stuff when mixing.

Another thing on jitter. One of the reasons I try to avoid using all-digital guitar pedals or rack mounted digital efx units is that they are among the most jittery pieces of gear there are, especially the 9V pedals. I often prefer the kind of pedals or efx loops that keep your dry signal purely analog, and merely mix the digital effect along side it. So maybe the effect itself is a bit jittery, but no biggie as long as the dry signal remains analog. Jittery digital robs sonic purity.


Brad

[James Quackenbush]

Brad,
As I said earlier ...You get what you pay for ...UN modded Motu gear is not on the top of my list ....I agree with you on the Black Lion mods ...Great stuff and well worth it ...but I stand on stock Motu gear being so so sound wise ... The cheaper Pro Tools gear is also just so so IMHO ....Again, you get what you pay for ....The recent higher end Pro Tools gear is not bad at all, but you will pay for it ...There are many other gear manufactures that I would go to before I would go to Motu ....Metric Halo for one ....RME for another in the same price point .... Please send me the number that you have for Motu ....I still have more questions than time to wait ...I will sell whatever Motu gear I have left ... I probably have at least 4 or 5 MTP's along with other gear ... Thanks for your post ...Jim

[John McClung]

You guys are amazing, thanks for such a great and understandable education!

[Brad Sarno]

Yes Jim,

the Metric Halo Mobile I/O is fantastic. I've actually owned one of them TWICE. The only reason I struggled with it was that my older G3 iBook couldn't handle the interfacing with enough reliability. But truly it is perhaps the very greatest bang for the buck. It has good sounding mic preamps, excellent analog line quality, fantastic conversion, low-jitter, and most of all, the routing matrix software that controls it makes it absolutely the most flexible and versatile interface one could imagine. It's really astounding. I wouldn't surprise me if it sold for $3500, but it's only about $1400 or so. Thanks for mentioning that unit. I'll likely own one again someday now that I have a faster laptop. I can't say enough good things about Metric Halo. I've lived by their Spectra Foo metering software for years, and also their Channelstrip plug-in. They're now making the hardware interfaces for Sonic Studio which is quite the endorsement. The Mobile I/O now has brand new drivers so it can directly be controlled from a large number of DAW programs, including Logic, DP, Nuendo and more.

The RME stuff is also nice, especially for their price point.

Brad

[David L. Donald]

I have SpectraFoo I got it to test the room responces with different placement,
but it is also good for checking individual channel signals

and love Channelstrip A very good mixer channel equivalent.

I spent a long afternoon with the MetricHalo engineering
staff at a Paris AES convention,
not only are the VERY sharp,
they are also lots of fun.

I have thought if I had a laptop
their interface is my 1st choice.