MOTU Digital Performer 7

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02.10.2010 02:51:41p://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar10/articles/dp7.htm

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MOTU Digital Performer 7£449

pros

Some great new features gohand in hand with furtherimproved stability and polish.DP’s core strengths remainunchanged: a highlyadaptable interface, multipleworkflow options, and deepaudio and MIDI editingpotential.Useful, fine-sounding guitar-oriented plug-ins.Enhanced mixing features,including channel strips,Insert Settings plug-in recall,in-line EQ and dynamics.

cons

Still no bundled sampler orsample player.No straightforward equivalentto Logic’s Flex Tool or ProTools’ Elastic Time.Audio CD burning remains alittle buggy and not Red

Book-compatible.Some aspects of the userinterface are somewhatcryptic.

summary

It’s an incremental updaterather than a revolution, buteven if you’re not a guitarist,Digital Performer 7 is still avery worthwhile upgrade.

information

£449; upgrade from DP6,£139.83. Prices include VAT.

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Test Spec

Digital Performer v7.02 and7.1.Apple MacBook with 2.2GHzIntel Core 2 Duo processorand 4GB RAM, running MacOS 10.5.8.

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Published in SOS March 2010

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The headline feature in DP7 is a suite ofnew guitar-processing plug-ins thatincludes various modelled ‘stomp box’

effects, plus amp (below) and cabinetsimulators.

D

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MOTU Digital Performer 7 : March 2010

MOTU Digital Performer 7Digital Audio Workstation Software For Mac OS

Reviews : Software: Sequencers+DAWs

The latest version of MOTU’s Mac sequencerhas guitarists firmly in its sights, but there areplenty of general improvements too.

Robin Bigwood

igital Performer has long occupied a niche in the world of music-

for-picture and film scoring, especially in the US. But it’s 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.

It’s 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 And though very outdated in many ways now,

there’s additional coverage of the guts of the editing

environment in September 2006’s DP5 review, at

www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep06/articles/

performer5.htm. Both should give you a taster of what’s generally

on offer if DP is otherwise new to you.

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. There’s a printed manual — a 1090-page whopper —

and a smaller Getting Started guide, but no PDF or browser-based equivalents for whenyou’re on the road.

There’s 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 makingedits 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 X’s 64-bit future.

Worthy as theyare, though, efficiency improvements to an application don’t set users’ hearts aflame. So

let’s boo the support band off stage and get straight on to DP7’s headline acts.

Axe Attack

Without doubt DP7’s sexiest and most colourful new additions are those aimed at guitarists. Some would

argue that theyhave 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 overdrivepedals. D Plus

is based on the MXR Distortion+,Delta Fuzz mimics the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, Diamond Drive is

MOTU’s take on the Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive, RXT is their Pro Co Rat, and TubeWailer and Uber Tube

model the IbanezTube Screamer and Super Tube respectively.

Then there’s Analog Chorus, basedon a Boss CE-series pedal,a Wah Pedal plug-in that emulates both a

’70s Vox 846 and a modern-day Dunlop CryBaby, and an Intelligent Noise Gate, which can be used to treat

DC-relatedelectrical noise,as well as AC hum at various frequencies. MOTU have thrown in a decent Tuner

for goodmeasure 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 Audioease’s Cabinet, but it goes further than that. Virtual mikingduties 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 micarrays can only be used at a distance,and on the front side of the cabinet. There’sstill plenty to work with, though, especially as each micchannel has its own EQ, level and pan.

Finally, there’s 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 low-

impedance and high-impedance inputs on two separate channels.

Secret Seven

Axe Attack

Hired HandsGet In Line

Channel Strips

Enough Already?

Plug-in Chaining

And There’sMore...

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‘In line’ displays and controls fordynamics and EQ make plug-in settingsmore accessible in the Mixing Board andChannel Strips.

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Hired Hands

I’m 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

player’s perspective while I listened with my producer’s head on. What emerged was that the distortion pedal

plug-ins have bags of character and between themcover a vast range of sounds. The Delta Fuzz makes a

phenomenal noise — seriously meaty and organic — and the Ibanezemulations 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 througha record-enabled MIDI track or a DP Console, to

be used properly. There’s no auto-wah mode.

Live Room G also proves to be a fabulouslyuseful tool.The ‘cabinet in a live room’ sound is totally

believable, and the mic placement optionsare not gimmicky— they, together with each channel’s EQ,

genuinely allow you to zone in on just the ‘flavour’ you’re after. Complex, three-dimensional tones are easy to

achieve by layeringmics,especially when they’re panned across the stereo image.And there’s nothing to say

you can’t treat synths, pianos and vocals too, for a lived-in, re-amped tone. It’s 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 it’s not meant to be used in

isolation, and comes into its own (not surprisingly) when feeding into Live Room G’s 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 viaDI. Unusual, but useful.

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 theywork is by offering a compact view of a plug-in

instantiated in a track’s insert slot. All the EQs and dynamics

bundled with DP are compatible, but third-party plug-ins aren’t. It

isn’t clear if theycould everbe.

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 isn’t the same as

having a goodanalogue desk’s collection of EQ pots in front of

you. EQ graphs are useful as indicators and aides memoire, but it

seems a shame theycan’t be directly edited with the mouse as is

possible in Presonus’s 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 isn’t open.

The first is a dedicated Channel Strip display, which opens

either as a separate window, or, probablymore usefully, as a

sidebar cell in DP’s all-in-one Consolidated Window. By default, it

updates to display channel settings for whatever t rack you’ve

selected, but you can also ‘lock’ it to stick to one individual track,

no matter which track you’ve selected. It’s configurable in the

same way as the Mixing Board, so you can hide or show wholesections, 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 it’s great to have that flexibility, and it

workswell on smaller laptopscreens, for example.

Then there’s 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, it’s 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 single-

letter abbreviations used. To see what I mean, check the

screenshot above, of a fully loaded info bar in use, displaying thelabels T,M, A, A, M,P, G,C, E and S, as well as a bunchof

unlabelled pop-ups, tick boxes and displays. While familiarity with

DP makes these more comprehensible in use, I don’t think it’s

terribly clear for beginners. Some smarter labellinghere and





Digital Performer 7’s channel stripfeature, shown here in a ConsolidatedWindow sidebar with the ‘3 column’

setting.

DP’s editing window Info Bars now

include a horizontal-format channel strip,

but this doesn’t make them any easier to

comprehend

837185

Insert Settings provide a way of storingpreset ‘chains’ of plug-ins and theirsettings.

elsewhere, perhaps using (gasp!) whole words, would go a long,

long way towards making the editing environment more friendly.

Enough Already?

The initial release of DP 7.0 prompted some users to wonder if it

shouldn’t more appropriately have been called version 6.5, and

hencebeen offered as a free update. However, further incremental

releases,and especially version 7.1, have ensured that it’s

another significant step forward in the application’s development.

There are still a few things that some users willwish had been

included. The ongoing lack of a bundled workhorse sampler

instrument is unfortunate, although it only reallyaffects those whodon’t already have access to a third-partyalternative. There’s

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 DP’s great potential as a

mastering platform.

Maybethe most seriousomission is the lack of any sort of

‘elastic audio’ feature. It’s partially made up for by a bunchof pre-

existing features that can detect beats in audio, and quantise it to

sequence tempo, but they’re fundamentally different to the

intuitive, mouse-driven, Melodyne-inspired tools increasingly being

introduced in rival DAWs. DP’s integrated monophonic pitch

correctionhas always been excellent, so supplementing this withtime-based manipulation of audio would make a killer problem-

solving and creative feature.

I don’t want to sound too down on DP7, though: it’s a super-

capable application, and there are so many things to enjoy. DP

has always been an notably flexible DAW, and version 7 builds on

that. It feels remarkably well-rounded, more powerful than ever,

and appears to have gained an enviabledegree of stability.

Internet user forums are surprisingly united in praiseof DP7’s reliability and responsiveness, and that’s been

my impression too, during testing. It’s 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 handto almost

any kind of music- or audio-related production, and it does so with more assurance and ease of use than ever

before. I’m curious to see if MOTU can do anything to broaden its appeal still further, perhaps by bundling aworkstation instrument, or byimplementing 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.

Plug-in Chaining

MOTU’s approach to guitar plug-ins — offering themasindependent, individual plug-ins rather than within some sort ofvirtual pedalboard — would have the potential to make recall offrequently used setups rather tricky, were it not for anotherimportant new feature called Insert Settings. Released with theDP 7.1 update, this is, at heart, a ‘preset’ system for groups ofplug-ins and their settings,and of course isn’t restricted to use byguitarists. Plug-ins and virtual instruments in any supportedformat can be included in a Setting, so you can use them to saveand recall favourite combos for processing vocals or drums, for

mastering, or anything else you like. The facility, which is actuallyan alternative manifestation of Clippings — a long-standingfeature that seasoned DP users will know about already — iselegantlyand very naturally incorporated into the Mixing Board,as an additional pop-up menu just above the plug-in insert slots.

While we’re on the subject of inserts, DP 7.1 takes a cue fromLogic in automatically increasing the number of available slotswhen you fill up the bottom-most slot. Also, plug-in windows’menus now provide much more information: the Inserts menushows whichplug-ins are loaded in each slot, and the Trackmenu shows track types next to track names. Many individualplug-ins have beenprovided with more presets, too.

And There’s More...




02 10 2010 02:51:41p://www soundonsound com/sos/mar10/articles/dp7 htm

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There are a whole host of new and improved features in DP7 that there’s just not space to go into fully inthis review.These include:

An extended role for the Trim tool: now it can do fantastically useful scaling of automation and MIDIcontinuous data.

New ‘Range’ automation modes that restrict automation writingand modification to a specific time-range — which is great for working precisely on small sections.

Better integration of V-Racks, DP’s dedicated (though optional) VI and audio processing channels, in theMixing 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 oflarge-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.

Published in SOS March 2010

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