Thinking that DP is a better sidekick to Live 5 than Logic

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 4:33 am

DP = Digital Performer.

OK so I have an ancient 800mhz powerbook, and a dual Gig tower. With both, it's hard to justify purchasing a new machine until the macintel powerbooks come out.

Avoiding any misuse of Live, and using another DAW on the tower I can synch them via Tiger's Netwerk MIDI, and use Logic to run virtual instruments from Live, nice!

OK so then it comes time to record.....
well there are two options...

1- Send MIDI to Logic and render each track in Logic. OK but sort of redundant I think.

2. Use Wormhole, and record audio directly in Live. This is a little tiresome too, you have to set up a MIDI track to send to Logic, then set up an audio track with Wormhole on it, then send the audio to another track to record..... three tracks in Live, plus compensating for latency.

All this has me thinking about Digital Performer. In DP you set up a MIDI and an Audio track for a virtual instrument, so any VI is automatically able to record it's MIDI as audio on the fly, (hopefully, as long as DP doesn't freak out about Netwerk MIDI like Live seems to ) . DP prints FX to audio in it's editor, and DP is arguably the better editor of audio in general. No dongle as well.

DP is almost as CPU hungry as Live 4 is, but honestly all I really need are a few more instruments and FX, and a good mixer solution.

I'm throwing this out there as a reminder to mac people that for some things Logic is possibly the lesser solution.... as a companion to Live, DP seems like the better choice to me. Unfortunately for me, my Memorymoog is my baby, and the extended public beta of Soundiver requires the dongle .........

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 5:44 am

I would be interested in what decision you make in the future. More and more people I deeply respect are using DP these days and I am curious to learn more regardless.
Danny Elfman uses it (I read,) and watching Charlie and Choclate factory I felt the the music completely dwarfed the rest of the movie, plot, kitsch, CGI and all. Truly stunning, blended use of metallic synths, electro-pulses, and seemingly endless simltaneous tracks of cavernous, contrasting, harmonious dynamics.

If you decide to stay with your current setup I would be equally interested in why, or how you got it to work. I think that with a dual G5, and some clever use of midipipe and soundflower I will be able to make things work realistically, internally, and with managable latency, but I feel no loyalty to Apple after they set (imo) a premature discontinuation of software development date for G5's due to the change-over to intel.

Part of me would really love it if what you suggest is true. I can still get a good price for all my G5/Logic and be mobile! I am not as geeked about Logic as I was before I bought it. It just doesn't seem to work with Live the way I wanted it to, and I don't know if it's worth my time trying to make it.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 8:37 am

It's not really that I have any disrespect for Logic, rather that whether I start something in Logic or not, it will eventually end up in Live. I've used Logic live before, and it works, but Live is just much more suited for that. Consequentially any big time DAW should work as an audio clip producing machine in my case, and Logic doesn't really gel with the idea of live MIDI (as in networked live to Logic ) to virtual instruments as a recording source.
In your case with a G5, I would assume your concern for power wouldn't be as high as mine on a 800mhz powerbook.

BTW, the G5 will be supported for at least 5 years I bet, it really is as simple as selecting both x86 and PPC in the software when finished.

ChiDJ · Post by **ChiDJ** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 4:56 pm

I've been using DP since it was just "performer" (over 10 years ago). I use it daily on my dual G4 1.42 with LIVE rewired into it. It works flawlessly! I would highly recommend it. I do just what you are wanting to do. I bounce parts from DP into LIVE, manipulate / filetr / blend and then record back into DP. With a dually G4 you should have plenty of power to run LIVE and DP on the same machine. I'm also running MachV, Poco Virus, RMX and Mx-4 at the same time.

I would recommend DP 4.6 and Tiger. It's very stable plus it has a new "Melodyne" like pitch feature that is just awesome and a new pattern gate plug-in!

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 8:23 pm

ChiDJ wrote:I've been using DP since it was just "performer" (over 10 years ago).

Hey thanks for chiming in! I used DP in 1988 no less!

Chose it, and a Powerbase 180 in 1997 when I wanted to get back into electronic music.

Rewire defeats the purpose of all this for me. The powerbook isn't than much less powerful at running Live 4 than the tower, so why not use the tower as a VST/AU host? Rewire kills Live 4's ability to send MIDI, so you effectively have to write in DP. I want to write in Live on the powerbook, with DP on the tower synched to Live as an AU host and audio clip render farm.

I'm pretty sure DP would be more suitible to my needs in this case than Logic, as I seem to recall DP being able to record it's AU (MAS at the time), as audio pretty dammed easily.

The effectively keeps me from having to buy a powerbook until the macintel powerbooks come out, and my price for DP would be a whopping $149, unless they lost my registration, but I bet they would honor it!

glsimonsen · Post by **glsimonsen** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 2:54 pm

It's encouraging to hear from ChiDJ that DP rewires well w/ Live, however I can't make it work at all. I open DP4.12, set the track inputs to Ableton, then open Live 4. Live won't function for me at all as a slave to DP on new G5 single processor 1.8 w/ 1.5ram. I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

Apocrypha · Post by **Apocrypha** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 2:59 pm

Dp + Live = GOOD TIMES

I have no complaints here. It's a great combo!

ChiDJ · Post by **ChiDJ** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 3:24 pm

glsimonsen wrote:It's encouraging to hear from ChiDJ that DP rewires well w/ Live, however I can't make it work at all. I open DP4.12, set the track inputs to Ableton, then open Live 4. Live won't function for me at all as a slave to DP on new G5 single processor 1.8 w/ 1.5ram. I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

Is your LIVE input in DP in italics? Check your input routing. Sometimes after a new DP install, your old LIVE inputs need to be updated. Just add a new LIVE input, restart LIVE and see if that helps.

Agent47 · Post by **Agent47** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 8:27 pm

I use Tracktion2. It rocks! Check it out.

backwards · Post by **backwards** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 8:34 pm

glsimonsen...

I am at work right now so away from system...took me forever to get rewired into DP until I figured out I had to set up my rewire tracks in DP AND record enable at least one of those tracks THEN open Live. At least that's how I remember it here from work...

I just ended up saving a DP set with tracks set up and record enabled so it would flow better...hope this is correct info...will double check when I'm with system....

Kush'd · Post by **Kush'd** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 11:19 pm

Are you guys all using Live 5? I've just started really looking into Live for only the past 2 days, I always saw it around but never really messed wtih it because I've been using Logic for everything for a while. It seems to me, from the amount I've read about it these past 2 days, that Live 5 can pretty much be used as a DAW on its own for most people. I'd be using it for creating tracks with MIDI/recorded audio and also for recording mixtapes with no MIDI. Here's my question: what is it that Live can't do that makes you need to use it with Logic/DP?

Agent47 · Post by **Agent47** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 11:50 pm

Live gives me a big hard on. Nuff said.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:05 am

Kush'd wrote:Here's my question: what is it that Live can't do that makes you need to use it with Logic/DP?

Live does not edit audio files, it's MIDI editing is pretty basic, and it's a CPU pig. The same AU instrument set in Logic will use 40% less CPU than in Live, in Digital Performer it drops to 20% less CPU than Live.

I have two old ass macs, and Live doesn't use the second CPU on my dual Gig G4 for much, while Logic and DP use both pretty well. So the dual acts like 1.6Ghz in Logic, and a 6-700mhz machine in Live. It evens out a bit on the 800mhz powerbook, so I tend to use Live on the powerbook and think of hosts/solutions to utilizing the duals CPU networked to the powerbook.....

Live is much more set up for live performance, and that fits my needs well.

Kush'd · Post by **Kush'd** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 3:10 am

Machinesworking wrote: Live does not edit audio files, it's MIDI editing is pretty basic, and it's a CPU pig. The same AU instrument set in Logic will use 40% less CPU than in Live, in Digital Performer it drops to 20% less CPU than Live.

Thanks for the info! It brings up a couple new questions: 1) As far as the AUs taking up CPU power; doesn't the new "freeze track" take care of that? 2) When you say the MIDI editing is pretty basic, do you just mean as far as editing the length and volume of notes? Thanks in advance.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:30 am

Kush'd wrote:[Thanks for the info! It brings up a couple new questions: 1) As far as the AUs taking up CPU power; doesn't the new "freeze track" take care of that? 2) When you say the MIDI editing is pretty basic, do you just mean as far as editing the length and volume of notes? Thanks in advance.

1. Freeze is cool, but it gets in the way a bit when writing....

2. Logic will allow you to adjust all velocities to the same setting, or fade in or out at the velocity level, you can instantly change from quarter notes to eighth or what not..... There's a dedicated window for midi editing, and dedicated sub windows to that to further refine the the MIDI etc... you can select and quantize separate parts of the MIDI notes in a track....
I still work in Live most of the time, but there are times when I switch to Logic for the deeper MIDI stuff.