MOTU Digital Performer 7

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Secret Seven Axe Attack Hired Hands Get In Line Channel Strips Enough Already? Plug-in Chaining And Theres More...
MOTU Digital Performer 7 449 pros
Some great new features go hand in hand with further improved stability and polish. DPs core strengths remain unchanged: a highly adaptable interface, multiple workflow options, and deep audio and MIDI editing potential. Useful, fine-sounding guitaroriented plug-ins. Enhanced mixing features, including channel strips, Insert Settings plug-in recall, in-line EQ and dynamics.

MOTU Digital Performer 7

Digital Audio Workstation Software For Mac OS
Reviews : Software: Sequencers+DAWs Buy PDF
Published in SOS March 2010 Printer-friendly version

Saturday 2nd October 2010

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The latest version of MOTUs Mac sequencer has guitarists firmly in its sights, but there are plenty of general improvements too.
Robin Bigwood igital Performer has long occupied a niche in the world of musicfor-picture and film scoring, especially in the US. But its also got a reputation as an all-rounder, offering sophisticated audio editing and deep MIDI programming features, making it a serious alternative to the other giants of the Mac DAW world. Its customary at this point to refer the reader back to some previous reviews, and who am I to buck tradition? My review of DP6 was published in the November 2008 edition of SOS, available on the web at www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov08/ articles/dp6.htm. And though very outdated in many ways now, theres additional coverage of the guts of the editing environment in September 2006s DP5 review, at www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep06/articles/ performer5.htm. Both should give you a taster of whats generally on offer if DP is otherwise new to you.
The headline feature in DP7 is a suite of new guitar-processing plug-ins that includes various modelled stomp box effects, plus amp (below) and cabinet simulators.

Secret Seven
DP7 looks and feels remarkably similar to DP6, and there are other similarities too. It installs from a single CD, and still has light-touch copy protection that just requires the installer disc to be in the drive, and a key code entered, the very first time you run the application. Theres a printed manual a 1090-page whopper and a smaller Getting Started guide, but no PDF or browser-based equivalents for when youre on the road. Theres also an Extras DVD with some giveaway sample and loop content. These things are hard to quantify, but I fancy DP7 runs more sweetly and efficiently than DP6 ever did. I notice fewer interruptions to audio when plug-ins are instantiated, opened or closed, or when making edits on audio tracks during playback, and the user interface is nicely responsive at all times. CPU efficiency seems better than before, too. MOTU never give much away about DP development stuff like this, but you have to assume these things must be related to ongoing, fundamental revision of application code, perhaps in readiness for OS Xs 64-bit future. Worthy as they are, though, efficiency improvements to an application dont set users hearts aflame. So lets boo the support band off stage and get straight on to DP7s headline acts.

cons
Still no bundled sampler or sample player. No straightforward equivalent to Logics Flex Tool or Pro Tools Elastic Time. Audio CD burning remains a little buggy and not Red Book-compatible. Some aspects of the user interface are somewhat cryptic.

summary
Its an incremental update rather than a revolution, but even if youre not a guitarist, Digital Performer 7 is still a very worthwhile upgrade. information 449; upgrade from DP6, 139.83. Prices include VAT. Musictrack +44 (0)1767 313447. Click here to email www.musictrack.co.uk www.motu.com

Axe Attack
Without doubt DP7s sexiest and most colourful new additions are those aimed at guitarists. Some would argue that they have been a long time coming: previous DP versions offered only the less-than-impressive PreAmp-1 plug-in for distortion and overdrive treatments. Now there are no fewer than 12 new plug-ins aimed at guitarists and bassists, which could conceivably be pressed into service for general tracking and mixing tasks too. Of these new plug-ins, six are software models of well-known fuzz, distortion and overdrive pedals. D Plus is based on the MXR Distortion+, Delta Fuzz mimics the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, Diamond Drive is MOTUs take on the Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive, RXT is their Pro Co Rat, and Tube Wailer and Uber Tube model the Ibanez Tube Screamer and Super Tube respectively. Then theres Analog Chorus, based on a Boss CE-series pedal, a Wah Pedal plug-in that emulates both a 70s Vox 846 and a modern-day Dunlop Cry Baby, and an Intelligent Noise Gate, which can be used to treat DC-related electrical noise, as well as AC hum at various frequencies. MOTU have thrown in a decent Tuner for good measure too. The remaining two plug-ins are a little more complex. Live Room G is a virtual amp miking tool, recreating the sound of one of five different speaker cabinets placed in a typical live-room acoustic. Its closest rival that I can think of is Audioeases Cabinet, but it goes further than that. Virtual miking duties are undertaken by two mono spots and one stereo array, and each of the channels they feed has configurable options such as mic type and placement (on or off-axis, front or rear, near or far). MOTU limits you to useful combinations, so, for example, the stereo mic arrays can only be used at a distance, and on the front side of the cabinet. Theres still plenty to work with, though, especially as each mic channel has its own EQ, level and pan. Finally, theres Custom 59, an amp modeller designed to be paired with Live Room G. The preamp circuit, tone controls and power amp stage can be selected separately from models of a Fender Bassman, Marshall JTM45 and JCM800. You also get to choose the type of valve used in the preamp, and there are virtual lowimpedance and high-impedance inputs on two separate channels.

Test Spec
Digital Performer v7.02 and 7.1. Apple MacBook with 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB RAM, running Mac OS 10.5.8.

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MOTU Digital Performer 7

Hired Hands
Im not a guitarist, so I set to work testing and assessing all these with a friend of mine who is an experienced performer and teacher, with serious chops in the classical, jazz and rock fields. He was able to provide a players perspective while I listened with my producers head on. What emerged was that the distortion pedal plug-ins have bags of character and between them cover a vast range of sounds. The Delta Fuzz makes a phenomenal noise seriously meaty and organic and the Ibanez emulations churn out fantastically playable tones that aree often more subtle than expected (but in a good way). The Wah Pedal also sounds great, but relies on a MIDI pedal input, routed either through a record-enabled MIDI track or a DP Console, to be used properly. Theres no auto-wah mode. Live Room G also proves to be a fabulously useful tool. The cabinet in a live room sound is totally believable, and the mic placement options are not gimmicky they, together with each channels EQ, genuinely allow you to zone in on just the flavour youre after. Complex, three-dimensional tones are easy to achieve by layering mics, especially when theyre panned across the stereo image. And theres nothing to say you cant treat synths, pianos and vocals too, for a lived-in, re-amped tone. Its easy and addictive to use, and a fine addition to Digital Performer. Custom 59 repays some careful experimentation. Compared to the high-octane, snarling amp simulations in software packages like Waves GTR3 or Native Instruments Guitar Rig, it feels terribly polite, and just about overdrives when you crank everything up. What emerges, though, is that its not meant to be used in isolation, and comes into its own (not surprisingly) when feeding into Live Room Gs virtual speaker cabinet. If one of the distortion pedals is feeding into it, so much the better. In this role, Custom 59 adds unexpected coherence and punch to the sound. It also adds an authenticity to predominantly clean tones, especially when recorded via DI. Unusual, but useful.

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Get In Line
An important new Mixing Board feature is the facility to display EQ curves and dynamics meters, together with their associated controls, directly in channel strips. The idea is that it makes the DP mixing experience a little closer to that of a big console, with EQ and dynamics accessible at a glance. The new Mixing Board sections are optional you can have all, some, or none and the way they work is by offering a compact view of a plug-in instantiated in a tracks insert slot. All the EQs and dynamics bundled with DP are compatible, but third-party plug-ins arent. It isnt clear if they could ever be. Single-band dynamics plug-ins fare the best in the new system: with something like MW Leveler, all the controls are up front, easy enough to understand, and the meter is informative. For EQ, only one band can be adjusted at a time, so this really isnt the same as having a good analogue desks collection of EQ pots in front of you. EQ graphs are useful as indicators and aides memoire, but it seems a shame they cant be directly edited with the mouse as is possible in Presonuss new Studio One DAW, for example.

Channel Strips
Perhaps taking a cue (again) from recent versions of Logic, there are two new features that make track mix settings available even when the Mixing Board isnt open. The first is a dedicated Channel Strip display, which opens either as a separate window, or, probably more usefully, as a sidebar cell in DPs all-in-one Consolidated Window. By default, it updates to display channel settings for whatever track youve selected, but you can also lock it to stick to one individual track, no matter which track youve selected. Its configurable in the same way as the Mixing Board, so you can hide or show whole sections, such as sends, insert slots, and so on. You can also break it up into as many as four columns, to better fit into windows or sidebar cells that are not tall and thin. It can look pretty ugly split into multiple columns, but its great to have that flexibility, and it works well on smaller laptop screens, for example. Then theres the Info Bar channel strip. This joins the other, configurable information panels that appear at the top of various editing windows, and presents a miniaturised channel strip in horizontal format. Despite the diddy dimensions, its fully featured, and extremely handy. I have a gripe, though: the Info Bar has become a pretty cryptic-looking corner of DP for all but quite experienced users, and I must say I struggle with all the singleletter abbreviations used. To see what I mean, check the screenshot above, of a fully loaded info bar in use, displaying the labels T, M, A, A, M, P, G, C, E and S, as well as a bunch of unlabelled pop-ups, tick boxes and displays. While familiarity with DP makes these more comprehensible in use, I dont think its terribly clear for beginners. Some smarter labelling here and
In line displays and controls for dynamics and EQ make plug-in settings more accessible in the Mixing Board and Channel Strips.

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elsewhere, perhaps using (gasp!) whole words, would go a long, long way towards making the editing environment more friendly.

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Enough Already?
The initial release of DP 7.0 prompted some users to wonder if it shouldnt more appropriately have been called version 6.5, and hence been offered as a free update. However, further incremental releases, and especially version 7.1, have ensured that its another significant step forward in the applications development. There are still a few things that some users will wish had been included. The ongoing lack of a bundled workhorse sampler instrument is unfortunate, although it only really affects those who dont already have access to a third-party alternative. Theres room for improvement with the integrated CD burning, which produces too many coasters for comfort, and even successful burns are not Red Book-compatible. I dream of MOTU fixing that, and supplementing it with an option to generate a DDP file set. This would really make the most of DPs great potential as a mastering platform. Maybe the most serious omission is the lack of any sort of elastic audio feature. Its partially made up for by a bunch of preexisting features that can detect beats in audio, and quantise it to sequence tempo, but theyre fundamentally different to the intuitive, mouse-driven, Melodyne-inspired tools increasingly being introduced in rival DAWs. DPs integrated monophonic pitch correction has always been excellent, so supplementing this with time-based manipulation of audio would make a killer problemsolving and creative feature.

Digital Performer 7s channel strip feature, shown here in a Consolidated Window sidebar with the 3 column setting.

I dont want to sound too down on DP7, though: its a superinclude a horizontal-format channel strip, capable application, and there are so many things to enjoy. DP but this doesnt make them any easier to has always been an notably flexible DAW, and version 7 builds on comprehend that. It feels remarkably well-rounded, more powerful than ever, and appears to have gained an enviable degree of stability. Internet user forums are surprisingly united in praise of DP7s reliability and responsiveness, and thats been my impression too, during testing. Its reassuring to see that MOTU have continued to develop major new features alongside the thousand-and-one unsexy little things that make such a difference to using a DAW day-in, day-out, especially when doing so pays the rent. The bottom line is that DP7 remains a heavyweight studio and location tool that can turn its hand to almost any kind of music- or audio-related production, and it does so with more assurance and ease of use than ever before. Im curious to see if MOTU can do anything to broaden its appeal still further, perhaps by bundling a workstation instrument, or by implementing a flexible audio scheme. Even without them, though, DP7 is an application you feel you can really rely on, and it deserves to be taken as seriously as any other DAW on the market.
837185

DPs editing window Info Bars now

Plug-in Chaining MOTUs approach to guitar plug-ins offering them as independent, individual plug-ins rather than within some sort of virtual pedalboard would have the potential to make recall of frequently used setups rather tricky, were it not for another important new feature called Insert Settings. Released with the DP 7.1 update, this is, at heart, a preset system for groups of plug-ins and their settings, and of course isnt restricted to use by guitarists. Plug-ins and virtual instruments in any supported format can be included in a Setting, so you can use them to save and recall favourite combos for processing vocals or drums, for mastering, or anything else you like. The facility, which is actually an alternative manifestation of Clippings a long-standing feature that seasoned DP users will know about already is elegantly and very naturally incorporated into the Mixing Board, as an additional pop-up menu just above the plug-in insert slots. While were on the subject of inserts, DP 7.1 takes a cue from Logic in automatically increasing the number of available slots when you fill up the bottom-most slot. Also, plug-in windows menus now provide much more information: the Inserts menu shows which plug-ins are loaded in each slot, and the Track menu shows track types next to track names. Many individual plug-ins have been provided with more presets, too.

Insert Settings provide a way of storing preset chains of plug-ins and their settings.

And Theres More...

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MOTU Digital Performer 7

There are a whole host of new and improved features in DP7 that theres just not space to go into fully in this review. These include: An extended role for the Trim tool: now it can do fantastically useful scaling of automation and MIDI continuous data. New Range automation modes that restrict automation writing and modification to a specific time-range which is great for working precisely on small sections. Better integration of V-Racks, DPs dedicated (though optional) VI and audio processing channels, in the Mixing Board. Audio fades that are now calculated in real time. Support for the Wave64 extension to the BWF file format, allowing for very large audio file handling. Improved sample-rate conversion algorithms. Dedicated Lyrics and Chord Symbols facilities provided in the Quickscribe notation window. Overview displays of data in track folders in the Tracks Overview, which take the guesswork out of large-scale sequence editing when there are closed folders around. An auto-save feature, and automatic checking for application updates. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of smaller user-interface improvements.

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Published in SOS March 2010

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