MOTU Digital Performer 6.02 Review

Apr 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Mike Levine

DP GETS A FACE-LIFT AND SOME POWERFUL NEW FEATURES

Plugging into DP6

The sexiest additions to DP6 are its two new plug-ins, ProVerb and MasterWorks Leveler (see Fig. 4). ProVerb is an excellent-sounding convolution reverb that's markedly superior to DP's other reverb plug-ins. You can choose from a nice selection of impulse responses (IRs) ranging from European concert halls to instrument plates to parking garages. For future revisions, IRs of classic reverbs and delays would be a useful addition.

You don't have to wait to expand your IR collection, though, because ProVerb lets you load your own. (You can find downloadable IRs at a variety of Web sites.) In fact, you can load any audio file as an IR (if it's in a supported format), which makes ProVerb a useful tool for sound design as well.

Other controls on ProVerb include four bands of EQ, Mix, Predelay, and Damping. A feature called Dynamic Mixing utilizes a compressor designed to duck the reverb tail, dependent on the input level and user settings. The idea is to let elements sound wet, but not overly so.

The other new plug-in is MasterWorks Leveler, which models a Teletronix LA-2A. It offers both compressor and limiter settings and four response curves: Slow Vintage, Fast Vintage, Slow Modern, and Fast Modern. The differences between the Vintage and Modern settings are subtle, but to my ears, the latter sounded more present and the former more tubey. You also get Gain Reduction, Makeup Gain, and Response knobs. As a whole, MasterWorks Leveler is easy to set and sounds really good. The additions of ProVerb and MasterWorks Leveler make DP's plug-in collection even more well rounded.

A related improvement is the new Plug-in Set feature. It lets you set up custom sets with only the plug-ins that you want active. Doing so will allow you to reduce RAM usage and make DP launch a lot faster. By holding down the Option key when you start DP, you can choose which Plug-in Set to load.

Burning for You

DP6 also marks the debut of the program's CD-burning capabilities. Within the Bounce to Disk window, you can choose Burn Audio CD from the Project Format menu. DP will then prompt you to insert a blank CD once the bounce is complete. You can alternatively choose to create a disk image for later burning.

The boundaries of the CD tracks can be defined by Soundbites or by Markers (or both), which gives you a lot of flexibility. You're also able to set the Pre Gap, which is the space between tracks, to a duration of your choosing. Note that CDs burned by DP are not Red Book compliant. If you're planning on professional replication, you'll need to burn the final disc in another application.

Thus Rendered

In previous versions of DP, if you wanted to include a virtual instrument track as part of your bounced-to-disk mix, you had to first freeze that track and turn it into an audio track before it would show up in your bounced mix.

As a result of DP6's new prerendering features, freezing before bounces is no longer necessary because virtual instrument tracks are now automatically prerendered unless you specify otherwise in each plug-in. Prerendering saves CPU because those instruments no longer have to render in real time during mixdown.

Score One for DP

For DP users involved with audio for video, the new Final Cut Pro XML import and export features will be of great interest. They allow for updating of files between DP and Final Cut Pro, either dynamically, with both apps running on the same machine, or through the sending of XML Interchange files back and forth. For composers dealing with constant picture changes (a fact of life in film and video projects), these capabilities promise to make life easier.

By invoking the Import Final Cut Pro XML command, you're able to see revisions from a Final Cut Pro file graphically indicated in DP's timeline and shown in an itemized list. The revised video itself does not get imported, so you'll need to obtain and import that separately in order to view it in DP. Going the other direction, you're able to send revised audio to Final Cut from DP, where it shows up in a new sequence in Final Cut's Browser window.

The Long and Short of It

Overall, I am very impressed with this latest incarnation of DP. From a performance standpoint, it's solid. I've been running it on a Mac Pro under OS X 10.5.6, and I've found it both speedy and stable. From a feature standpoint, the program has become even more comprehensive. I really like the new user interface, and the work-flow improvements have further streamlined DP's intuitive production environment.

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Mike Levine is EM's executive editor and senior media producer. He hosts the monthly Podcast “EM Cast.”