ok for everyones edification i have copied and pasted these comments from the unicornation site dp forum thanks to the origonal poster Brian W. Ralston
if you are loged in to unicornation copy paste this otherwise register and look of the NAMM day 1 thread on the dp3 forum .
http://www.unicornation.com/cgi/ultimatebb...ic;f=1;t=001860Well......you all have been waiting for some MOTU news. Here it is.
There are a lot of things to go over and I will try to touch on them all.
First of all......I saw DPX. They demonstrated it to the audience and said it was "coming by the end of the first quarter." They would not be any more specific. But, in talking to other developers there (like the Mackie UAD-1 guys, etc....they said they expect DPX to be released by the end of March). Who knows if they have the inside scoop due to their card having to work with DP in OSX.
Tangent: OK......about DPX and MOTUs attitude towards it today. I have to digress. There is one word I can sum it all up in......"pissy." Now, This is day 1, I was there from the opening this morning so it is not like they had been asked about DPX constantly for 4 days straight. The first MOTU guy I talked with (who shall remain namesless here) was a complete ass. A guy next to me asked about DPX....the motu guy turned his head and pretended to ignore the question. The guy politely asked again....the MOTU guy seemed to shake his head in disgust and said in a firm voice....."it will be out when its done." The Visitor asked if he could give any more info. The MOTU guy went on and on about how it is a priority and it will be out when it's out and turned away like he did not want to talk any more with us. Now...we were extremely polite...just inquisitive. I really was shocked. What was with the attitude? If there is any place to explain any progress at all with DPX it is at NAMM.....he was simply a jerk. I asked (politely) about 324/424 drivers saying I could care less about DPX right now, but the 324 drivers would be nice to have due to OSX only applications I have to run. He had the same attitude about that and said, "it will be out when its done."
I then (politely...I swear) asked how many people are on the DP programming team. Now he was completely offended it seemed....he said, "I am not at liberty to divulge such information and walked away."
I don't know....I was a hairline close to going over to eMagic's booth next door and plopping down $$$ for Logic 6.
Anyway....back to stuff.....
As I said, they did show DPX. It looked the same. From the audience perspective I could not see a difference in the UI except to notice the OSX bar at the top instead of OS9. Now the good news:
OSX not only supports core midi (which they touted in their press release), but there will be full core audio support as well as audio units AND MOTU audio system. Both will work. Yea!!!!!!!!
The quickscribe tool has been completely upgraded and now will produce printed music that is easier to read, more user friendly to make and has lots of options to notate a piece of music differently than what is actually being played. This was a cool feature...though not something to die for.
Later in the day.....I went back to MOTU and spoke with another MOTU guy who was MUCH NICER about my questions, DPX info and 324 info. I got some more info from him. I asked about the latency issue in DP when using the UAD-1 card.....he said for OS9, it will probably not be fixed and the buffer plug-in is what will patch that problem, but for OSX DP.....the UAD-1 card works seemlessly and there will not be any latency issues. Yea again!!!!!!!
I had a discussion again about the 324 drivers and their importance now regardless of DPX...he looked me in the eye and said softly "can you wait one more week? One more week and they will be there." So.....we'll see how that goes......and if that week is on MOTU time or not. But...also good hopeful news. Yea!!!!!
Now the surprise.......MOTU announced, showed off and is releasing a new program called MachFive. This is a universal software sampler (think reason meets Gigastudio). It runs on OS9, OSX AND Windows. It supports Audio units, MAS, RTAS, HTDM, VST and DXi. It will import sample formats from Kurzweil K2XXX, AkaiMPC .snd, Creamware Pulsar, WAV/ACID, AIFF, SDII, REX and has soundbank import formats ofr AKai S1000/3000/5000/6000/MPC2000/MPC3000, Roland S7XX, EMU III/ESI/IV/EOS, GigaSampler/Gigastudio, ESX24/ Samplecell, Creamware Pulsar STS and HALion. Wow!
It runs very well as a Virtual instrument / software sampler in DP, supports 24-bit 192KHz audio with on the fly conversion. It is a 5.1 surround-capable sampler. It has key switching like Gigastudio and the ability to take sound files right in DP, import them into MachFive, assign them to a keyboard layout and play them back like an instrument. So...you can have a guitar player come in and play some licks. Cut them up to the tempo in pieces. Assign each piece to a different key on the keyboard (mapped out however you want), and now you have a new virtual instrument of your guitar players licks you can play back and create further stuff. The MachFive also comes with 4GB of samples.
Now...this thing is awesome. Its integration with DP (and the fact that you can use Gigastudio samples now on a MAC right in DP) is amazing. BUT...I can't help but think all the time they put into this thing is a possible reason they are so behind on OSX. I mean this thing is really cool...I have to have it. but it seems like this was their big surprise for NAMM 2003 and in my opinion, they should have spent more resources into DP for OSX and release this MachFive thing later. I mean really...how many software samplers are there now days.....it is cool...but not really ground breaking.
And it just seems a little odd that MOTU (remember that jerk I spoke to in the morning session?) would complain how OSX did not support midi or audio till recently almost saying that nothing is really out yet for OSX that works yet....and 15 feet away emagic is showing off Logic on all OSX machines.....announcing Logic 6 and 25 feet away Digidesign is showing of Pro Tools 6 (the industry STANDARD) for OSX to hoards of people. Hummmmmm......Did someone at MOTU put all their hopes into this MachFive thing....thinking OS9 would not die as quick as it did and now they are bitter about having to play catch up?
It seems so to me.
In related news...Kind of Loud Technologies is discontinuing RealVerb MAS. They are putting all their efforts into the UAD-1 card which will have OSX support (no more latency in DP), RealVerb Pro and a NEW "DreamVerb" bundled with the card in the coming months. I spoke with the president of Universal Audio Matt Ward and the senior Vice president of Mackie, Paul Rice at the same time. In my discussion, they agreed that there should be some upgrade path for users to RealVerb MAS to go to the new UAD-1 card for DPX (with the new reverb pluging) at a reduced rate or rebate...since we are being left in the dust with Realverb MAS being discontinued. He said they would discuss it more, they took my info and would get back to me. Very nice and professional people. I will probably go this route simply because of my discussion with them today. So...hopefully there will be some good news regarding RealVerb for anyone interested. The new DreamVerb according to Matt Ward at UA, blows RealVerb out of the water and has similar customizable features.
So there is some good news about DPX. Core Audio and Audio Unit support as well as Motu Audio System. Better quickscribe. Better support for Third party plug-ins and DSP cards. Better file management. DPX does work, it was there on show. A new universal software sampler to go with it all. 324/424 drivers this month (we'll see on that one) and some pissy attitude in a pear tree.
Was DP running on OS X, Namm Report Anyone
Fri 17 Jan 2003, 07:42
, shown already at Paris'Apple Expo in September, so it's not that which is slowing them. As they make a MAS under X, I think THAT's the slowing thing. Heavy job.