Get inspired, then refine your mix - all in a singular workflow. Digital Adapters & Miscellaneous Cables.Now, although it’s normal to have surges on the Performance meter, you shouldn’t experience audio or visual glitches. The surges could even bring operations to a screeching halt. First, the 4.1 update clears up a problem from earlier versions: even under moderate track loads, the CPU Performance monitors would occasionally register massive power surges, causing a processor-overload warning to pop up. Using Digital Performer, we didn’t find any deal breakers, but there are two issues to note. Some software synths are still in the process of migrating to OS X, but we tested both Green Oak’s free Crystal 2.4 and Arturia’s $329 Moog Modular V they both worked well with Digital Performer. If you need to use VST plug-ins, you can try FXpansion’s VST to AudioUnit Adapter. Unfortunately, Digital Performer doesn’t support VST, the most widely distributed plug-in format. If you need to use it on multiple tracks, the Freeze feature will really come in handy. (Note that although Waves installs both AU and MAS controllers, it employs MAS.) Audio Ease’s Audio Units version of the $495 Altiverb plug-in sounded superb and worked fine, but even using it on a single track resulted in a big performance hit. All of Waves’ high-end plug-ins were stable, worked and sounded great, and didn’t use much more CPU power than the stock Digital Performer plug-ins. We were able to test a number of plug-ins, in both Audio Units and (MOTU’s proprietary) MAS formats. And, in a nice example of Core Audio support, Digital Performer lets you shift-click to specify using more than one audio interface in the Hardware configuration.ĭigital Performer’s adherence to the new Apple technologies also provides behind-the-scenes benefits. For optimal performance, you should follow the steps in version 4.1’s PDF file when setting your disk input/output buffers. First, you’ll need to visit the Setup menu. There are five new menus - Audio, Project, Studio, Setup, and Windows - and they’re actually more logical in function and location than those they replace. MOTU Aquafied Digital Performer while it was still an OS 9 app, and its interface hasn’t changed much. This preserves your original mix and can save you a lot of money you’d otherwise spend on studio time. (The 24 Mix systems may not be supported on Power Mac G5s, however.) While we weren’t able to test this, MOTU claims that you can use the OMF Interchange format to export your Digital Performer song files, including audio, volume, and most of your automation data, to Pro Tools systems. Robert Martin’s CherryPicker (designed to help convert MOTU’s OS 9 FreeMIDI-format patch lists to OS X–ready documents, may get you up and running otherwise, you’ll need to spend a lot of time editing XML documents.Īnd Digital Performer, like Logic, can now utilize Digidesign Audio Engine (DAE) to act as a software interface for Digidesign’s high-end Pro Tools|HD and Pro Tools|24 Mix hardware systems and associated TDM plug-ins. Setup is simple: after you install version 4, you just go to Apple’s Audio MIDI Setup and respecify any synth names and models you’ve entered.īut Digital Performer’s lists work only with an instrument’s stock sounds, so those old custom patches you’ve lovingly crafted aren’t immediately usable. With the lists, hardware-synth and sound-module users can quickly build a setup that lets them choose the Reverb Piano sound on their ancient Roland D-10, for example, rather than testing the 128 “Patch XX’s” to find the right voice. Hot Namesįurther on the useful side, Digital Performer ships with more device- and patch-name lists (more than 330) than other major sequencers. The documentation is otherwise stellar, with more than a thousand clearly written, well-indexed pages. (If Freeze sounds familiar to digital musicians, that’s because Logic 6 introduced a similar feature with the same name in February 2003.)įreeze works great, but note that you need to enable the Multi Record option in the Studio menu in order to freeze multiple tracks - a bit of information MOTU really should have shared. And your original tracks are just a click away - if you want to go back and tweak them, just unfreeze the tracks and make your edits then freeze them again at will. We froze six tracks and were able to add four more before we again encountered redraw problems. The original tracks are automatically deactivated, reducing the load on system resources, so you’re able to add or record new tracks.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |