I’ll be frank, I’m not a sophisticated user. Most of what I do is shift old tapes and Vinyl records to CD’s. So my biggest requirements are fidelity and the ability to handle large files. For a very long time I got along with Cubase SX2, a MOTU 828MKII and the MOTU MIDI Xpress. The latter two items impressed me with Motu’s engineering skills and I recently expanded to using an 896MK3, which is also a remarkable piece of hardware. The end result of the expansion was that I needed a more modern audio recording and sequencing tool. It made sense to me that, since I liked MOTU’s hardware that I should go with their software. That was a mistake.
Right off the bat I’d like to say that no matter how good a software package is, it is useless if the buyer can’t figure out how to use it. I’ve been reading manuals for years and the MOTU manuals, which are over 1,000 pages are very close to useless. They tend to go on and on about a feature but spend very little effort on how to information. So I’ve figured out how to record, and I think I know how to insert a signal processor, but understanding how the enless supply of tracks and busses has nearly defeated me. I’ve got everything working but II’m pretty sure I could have done it better if someone had spent the time to explain things better. I have fiddled with the MIDI side a bit, hooking in my two Kurzweils and I can’t say that it is all that much better.
Here’s another example – I record as one long track and then cut and paste the audio as needed. You would think there would be a ‘join command, but there are a number of cut manipulation commands, none of which with actually join up two audio segments (unless they were connected that way originally. Thre are a number of cases where you are provided with plenty of baroque, complex options, but the simple approach is completely missing.
One last criticism. I bought DP6 assuming that it supported the current standards for recording files. One key standard is that these files are defined for more than the old 2gig size limit. If you are doing a long recording at a high sampling rate (the 896 will do 192KHz for heaven’s sake) or running a lot of tracks, it’s really easy to break 2gig and, believe it or not, DP6 stops dead at 2gig. That, to me, is a betrayal of everything that a high end musical software developer should stand for. So my final recommendation is that you look elsewhere for your workstation software. This is simple not up to snuff.
Rating: 1 / 5
I’ll be frank, I’m not a sophisticated user. Most of what I do is shift old tapes and Vinyl records to CD’s. So my biggest requirements are fidelity and the ability to handle large files. For a very long time I got along with Cubase SX2, a MOTU 828MKII and the MOTU MIDI Xpress. The latter two items impressed me with Motu’s engineering skills and I recently expanded to using an 896MK3, which is also a remarkable piece of hardware. The end result of the expansion was that I needed a more modern audio recording and sequencing tool. It made sense to me that, since I liked MOTU’s hardware that I should go with their software. That was a mistake.
Right off the bat I’d like to say that no matter how good a software package is, it is useless if the buyer can’t figure out how to use it. I’ve been reading manuals for years and the MOTU manuals, which are over 1,000 pages are very close to useless. They tend to go on and on about a feature but spend very little effort on how to information. So I’ve figured out how to record, and I think I know how to insert a signal processor, but understanding how the enless supply of tracks and busses has nearly defeated me. I’ve got everything working but II’m pretty sure I could have done it better if someone had spent the time to explain things better. I have fiddled with the MIDI side a bit, hooking in my two Kurzweils and I can’t say that it is all that much better.
Here’s another example – I record as one long track and then cut and paste the audio as needed. You would think there would be a ‘join command, but there are a number of cut manipulation commands, none of which with actually join up two audio segments (unless they were connected that way originally. Thre are a number of cases where you are provided with plenty of baroque, complex options, but the simple approach is completely missing.
One last criticism. I bought DP6 assuming that it supported the current standards for recording files. One key standard is that these files are defined for more than the old 2gig size limit. If you are doing a long recording at a high sampling rate (the 896 will do 192KHz for heaven’s sake) or running a lot of tracks, it’s really easy to break 2gig and, believe it or not, DP6 stops dead at 2gig. That, to me, is a betrayal of everything that a high end musical software developer should stand for. So my final recommendation is that you look elsewhere for your workstation software. This is simple not up to snuff.
Rating: 1 / 5