Digital Performer 7 – New Mixer, Guitar Amp & Score Features

MOTU recently released a new version of Digital Performer, and we have now added a new training course for Digital Performer 7. The most notable improvements in this upgrade involve the Mixing Board and the QuickScribe score editor as well as a set of guitar and bass amp simulation plug-ins. This blog covers the highlights of these new features.

Mixing Board – A New Look

There are several new features related to the Mixing Board: the Channel Strip as well as new EQ and Dynamics controls and features. The Channel Strip is a separate window which displays one-channel slice of the Mixing Board and changes depending on which channel is selected. For those of you familiar with Logic or Cubase, the Channel Strip is basically the same as the Inspector in those DAW’s. In both the Channel Strip and the Mixing Board, you now have thumbnail views of selected EQ and Dynamics plug-ins which allow you to view and control the parameters without opening the plug-ins. We have created a YouTube video of an excerpt from our training course which explains how to use these new features.

11 Guitar & Bass Plug-Ins – Presets Not Included

This past year seems to have been the year for souped-up guitar rigs. Both Pro Tools and Logic included fancy plug-ins for guitar and bass amp simulation, pedals, and speaker cabinets in their last update cycle, so I guess Digital Performer decided it was time to jump on the bandwagon. The Custom ’59 Amp includes both power amp and pre-amp presets. There are also nine different pedals and stomp boxes. The Live Room G speaker cabinet simulator gives you a choice of different mics, mic placements, and cabinet models. If you’re a guitarist, you can have a field day putting together a rig with all these choices. But for the rest of us there are no factory presets like you have in Logic or Amplitube that will give you a realistic British Crunch or Surfer Rock sound, so you may feel a little lost. How does the sound of these plug-ins compare with the competition? We have added a Digital Performer guitar rig to the Amp Simulation section of our Listen & Compare feature so you can decide for yourself.

QuickScribe Editor – Lyrics & Chords

MOTU also added something for those of us who like to work with MIDI tracks as a score. There are new lyrics and chord tools for the QuickScribe Editor. In the past you could always use the text tool if you really needed to enter lyrics and chords, but it was a pretty clumsy solution. The lyrics feature has both a direct entry tool and a lyrics window. You can paste text into the lyrics window that you copied from a document and then auto flow it to the score. The chords feature allows you to both enter chords symbols and also automatically transpose them.

The Laundry List

For the record here’s a summary of the new features listed by MOTU. For what it’s worth, I’ve also seen several discussions in both the Motunation and Gearslutz forums praising the stability of Version 7. Personally I’ve never had a problem with stability in Digital Performer, but some people are claiming this release is a marked improvement.