So MOTU has announced a revolutionary next generation engine which enhances CPU performance. Jim Cooper, Director of Marketing at MOTU said at NAMM 2016 “DP users will enjoy state-of-the art CPU efficiency and low-latency performance, regardless of the Mac or PC system they use, making the flexibility of a host-based workflow increasingly more powerful and compelling.”
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At NAMM 2016, MOTU demonstrated numerous enhancements to Digital Performer, their flagship audio workstation software, including significantly increased CPU efficiency for native plug-ins and virtual instruments,"industry-leading" latency performance for audio I/O and VIs, and new plug-ins for generating SMPTE time code and creating hardware inserts for outboard gear. MOTU announced that these features will be supplied to DP users in two free software updates over the next few months.
"The next few updates of Digital Performer are all about squeezing every last CPU-cycle and sample buffer out of today's incredibly fast computers," said Jim Cooper, Director of Marketing at MOTU. "DP users will enjoy state-of-the- art CPU efficiency and low-latency performance, regardless of the Mac or PC system they use, making the flexibility of a host-based workflow increasingly more powerful and compelling."

Next-gen Pre-gen engine
Digital Performer's Next-generation Pre-gen engine transparently pre-renders audio output from virtual instruments and plug-ins to dramatically reduce their CPU load. Disk tracks and instrument tracks automatically transition to real-time operation on an individual basis when necessary, when recording for example, to make the entire user experience seamless and transparent.
While individual results will certainly vary depending on the computer system and VI's being used, DP users will experience a significant performance boost from the Next-gen Pre-gen engine. In one bench test, Digital Performer was able to run ten times the number of virtual instruments with the enhanced Pre-Gen mode engaged, compared to real-time operation. Bench tests also show that Digital Performer can run up to four times as many virtual instruments as another popular DAW. During the NAMM show presentation, Digital Performer ran over 150 instrument instantiations from the CPU-intensive, Kontakt -based Cinesamples orchestral library on a Mac Pro cylinder. With DP's audio engine buffer set to an ultra-low 64 samples (which produces virtually imperceptible latency for virtual instruments), DP's CPU meter hovered at an efficient 20-30%.

Industry-leading latency performance
DP's host buffer latency has been cut in half, resulting in "industry-leading" overall latency performance. In a round-trip latency (RTL) test using a MOTU 1248 Thunderbolt audio interface, DP achieved roundtrip latency of 1.39 ms with a 32 sample buffer at 96 kHz. This result matched or bested other major DAWs currently available.

SMPTE-Z and Hardware Insert plug-ins
The new SMPTE-Z plug-in generates Longitudinal Time Code (LTC) while locked to DP's timeline or while running independently in Freewheel mode. The Stillframe option causes time code to continue to be generated even when DP's transport is stopped (parked on one frame). Timecode can be routed anywhere via the audio track's output assignment, allowing users to achieve accurate time code sync in a wide variety of situations. DP's new Hardware Insert plug-in functions just like other DP effects plugins, but loops the channel's audio signal to a piece of outboard hardware for external processing by the hardware. It can be instantiated in line with other software plug-ins and even saved as part of an effect chain clipping. The plug-in includes a button that pings the external hardware, measures the resulting latency and automatically compensates for it. Finally, DP users can easily incorporate outboard gear into their DP effects chains.

Workflow enhancements
Dozens of additional workflow enhancements include the ability to save and recall sets of visible tracks in DP's track selector, which lets users show and hide tracks in the Tracks Overview, Sequence Editor, Mixing Board and other windows. Support for video playback through third-party video hardware (from Blackmagic Design and AJA Video Systems) has also been added.

Availability
Workflow enhancements will be released in Digital Performer 9.02, to be released in Q1, 2016. The Next-gen Pre-gen engine, latency enhancements, SMPTE-Z plug-in and Hardware Insert plug-in will be released in a free update in Q2, 2016.

Here is the press release: http://cdn-data.motu.com/marketing/motu_products/software/dp9/dp9-namm-2016-pr.pdf

This is really interesting. Can't wait to try the demo.

 

From my experience version 9 is much improved over version 8 but still CPU intensive.
This applies for most modern DAWs for one reason or another. Usually the way
features turn on and off or, the way plugins are handled.

 

The "very innovative" Pre-gen engine is something Reaper featured in ~2007 and Cockos calls it "Anticipative FX Processing". It is the reason Reaper is still the most CPU efficient DAW of all. It helps immensely especially when using loads of plugins and pegging the CPU at 90%. Steinberg featured it in Cubase 7 a couple of years ago and they call it "ASIO guard".

If you name it differently it is innovative and not just copying others.

 

Last edited: Jan 29, 2016

SineWave, you are right sir!

 

I see there is a very small DP community here. I also didn't find many users on other forum except for Motunation. Other people are rather sceptical of this DAW. But looking at this video it seems to be a very solid DAW. Is there any particular reason or reasons for it being less popular?

 

Not to sound like a total jackass, but Just to clarify - What are the quarters of the year? Like, does Q1 mean January through March, Q2 = April through June, Q3 = July - September, and Q4 = October through December? Given 3 months is a quarter of a year. Or does NAMM have their own - rather weird - fixed schedule?

 

I totally forgot about it when Logic for PC came along. In the early days DP it was mainly for the Mac platform.
As I remember you had to spend more money to boost your Mac Classic and upgrade to SCSI drives.

You pretty much had to hack your PC to get it to run DP smoothly when it became available. Logic was much
more powerful in comparison.

I have run DP9 and found it to be solid. A bit of a learning curve but like Samplitude, lots of features and
peformance. Don't think it ever crashed, just ran out of resources like Pro Tools. That was on an i7 quad w/16Gig.

A Year later and the latest i7 CPU (unlocked), mainboard and memory should be able to handle it.

Will probably look at it again after next upgrade/replacement. Thinking about a custom built PC
production system rather than moving back to the Mac platform.

 

So they've upgraded the FX efficiency, but what about DAW efficiency?

I tried the DP8 demo a while ago. When I insert 1 audio file and do the Vocal designer thing, the whole DAW lags horribly.

MOTU DP has one of the best vocal pitchshifters btw.

 

From their description it looks like DP9 is taking advantage of idle CPU time by auto-freezing tracks in the background. ASIO Guard preserves CPU resources by running the overall project at a higher buffer size than the live, record-enabled tracks. For example, a user might set a 64 sample buffer in their audio interface settings for the lowest latency responsiveness on record enabled tracks, but when they hit play on the whole project everything else is actually running at a more stable 1024 sample buffer. Logic does this too. It definitely helps, but by no means does it yield 4x increases of plugin instance counts as this "Pre-gen" claims to do. I don't think they're the same thing.

 

Logic for PC?

 

Yes.. Logic 5 was the last PC version prior to Apple taking over and making it a Mac only product.

 

I always wondered too on why DP fell to the backgroung so much. It was my first real computer based midi sequencer, it was just "performer" then. The midi sessions it was able to handle was fantastic. I used to use one of these old bad boys!!!!

 

the way it handles midi is a disaster. dp sucks

 

Care to explain a bit more please? Because looking at the youtube video posted earlier DP pretty much handling midi well. What exactly you didn't like about it? What is your current DAW with which you are comparing probably?

 

ableton live, cockos reaper, presonus studio one. they just nail it. i also tried/used pro tools, sampli/sequoia, bitwig, even fl studio. they just nail the midi part

 

I would really like to try out that DAW but that shitty Motu audio bla bla kept me from doing it as it dont support my audio interface..
Everytime i tried to switch to my asio driver i got a mess saying Motu bla bla shit F**ck bla bla and i got no audio i really hope they rewrite the audio engine in future updaate in the win version so it is not so bloody maclookalike
A.k.a being in a prison its like use what we say you have to use nothing else is good enough..

 

I used Cubase then moved to Studio One and never looked back. I was satisfied with S1 but was curious about DP and was ready to give it a try.

The first feeling is that if your screen is less than 21", you will have some issues to work comfortably, unless you have a very good eyesight (which is not my case).
Next is with the VSTi: it probably works fine but it took me too much time to figure out how to assign an instruments to a track and how to edit it. I hate to have to go over the user guide, I prefer going by instinct, this is why it was so easy with S1.

The worst thing is that despite all this, I would still be happy to give it one more try (assuming I find a bigger screen) because it really looks like MOTU is doing some quality stuff.

 

Will DP9 have proper DPI scaling in windows?

It's 2016, 2560x1440 or higher resolutions are now standard in affordable screens..

 

DP has the best midi of all DAWs imo. However it is poorly optimized on windows, there's tons of stuck notes issues with kontakt, it always crashes for no reason, especially when you press ctrl+z to undo audio clips modifications (notice how David Das tells us to duplicate our audio takes before editing them..).

 

Maybe they found Reaper's source

What I know about DP is that it is master in crashing.