Making the switch to Digital Performer

[DanAbela]

I've finally decided to give up on Logic Pro 7 and make the switch over to digital performer 5 (which im going to buy later on today).
Has anyone on here used both logic and DP? and if so, how easy did you find the jump?
I found it dead easy to use pro tools, but I did do the 101,201,210 courses while I was at alchemea, which helped.

Also I remember someone on the forum saying about you can select to use the same keyboard short cuts for DP as Pro Tools, is this true?

Cheers
Dan

 

[Razorjack]

There's a PT style layout template and shortcut set for DP. You should find it very easy to switch over.

 

[006]

I had been a ProTools user for about 5 years when I finally switched to DP 4.61. I love it so much more than PT it's not even funny. I don't even use it now. I still use my 002R though, it's a good interface, but I can use it with DP, so that's a great feature that really attracted me to it.

My problems with PT were simple. 1) Editing was too much of a pain in the ass for me. 2) You have to have the hardware (002/R, Mbox, HD) connected just to open the host program. Digital Performer solved both issues for me. The editing is a lot easier IMO, and I can open up a DP session at any time to do some editing or mixing, without the 002R plugged in. I record bands live at venues onto my PowerBook with my 002R and an OctoPre, I would take my setup to the studio to do some of the work of editing and mixing, etc. and then I would take my laptop home and not bring my 002R...hectic schedules and such caused this. Then I would try to work on it at home and I couldn't open it up to do any work on it because I left my 002 at the studio. Now, I only have my rig hooked up when I'm recording, then I just take my lappie with me and do work whenever I feel like it. That thing with PT is really annoying after a while.

I'm more than 100% satisfied with my decision to switch. And as Razorjack said, there is a PT layout you can choose in a menu...it's really easy to use DP if you're use to PT in even slightest bit.

~006

 

[Kazrog]

I haven't spent much time in Logic, but I will say that DP crushes Pro Tools and Cubase.

The only thing bad about DP sometimes is that their major releases are buggy. DP 5.0 had some bugs for some people that were pretty serious. While I didn't experience any of those bugs myself, I've heard that the free 5.01 downloadable patch fixed those bugs for those people. Haven't noticed a difference either way myself, I'm loving DP5, I've wanted Track Folders for years!

 

[DanAbela]

Ive had Digital Performer now for about an hour, and I have to say, its been easy to get used to things, and the consolidated window style of working is actually really good.

Havent started looking into all the editting features yet, just going through all the help files and learning shortcuts etc.

I have to say I havent had any probs with crashing yet (i got V5) but im about to download the 5.1 update.

Cheers
Dan

 

[SPLASTiK]

A friend and I spent a few hours with it a couple weeks ago, 4.6.

We both come from a ProTools/Logic background and found it a pretty easy switch and didn't have any crashes or find anything buggy while recording audio and MIDI.

I'm not sure if I'd say it's faster for audio editing, we definately didn't find it faster and not sure how it really could be faster than ProTools, Logic perhaps. Especially since it doesn't have a Tab Transient feature.

The other complaints we had were it didn't have a "Spot Soundbite's beginning/end to cursor" which we use quite a bit in music and post work. Great combined with Tab Transient for lining stuff up exactly.

Also my friend's main gripe was the MIDI regions. In ProTools/Logic MIDI is treated as regions that you can move around. You can't do this in the "Sequence" view... You can in the "Tracks" view I believe, but since there's no zoom function you can't really be precise... My friend being a composer said that alone was enough to steer him away as he's dealing with MIDI 99% of the time, but if you could zoom in the Tracks view, or MIDI could be treated like regions in the Sequence view he wouldn't have a problem. Also I don't think it had an offline bounce... ProTools doesn't but Logic does, not really a concern to us though.