MOTU Digital Performer – the Guitarist’s DAW?

Date:2020/2/22 16:38:59 Hits:

It’s a given that most modern DAWs bundle amp sims, whether of their own design or a “lite” version from a third party. Granted, you’re going to get more options from AmpliTube, Guitar Rig 5 Pro, G|T|R, and other dedicated amp sims because that’s what they do — but it came as a surprise to me when Digital Performer bundled sophisticated sims and stompbox effects back in Version 8. Although DP is perhaps known best for its mature film and video scoring features, most musicians might not be aware of just how much DP’s rich complement of plug-ins also accommodates guitarists and bassists.

The Presets
Of course you can create your own sounds, but the presets are solid. I’m not a fan of presets, because I’m picky about tweaking sounds specifically for my needs. However, many of the options that are included with DP are, at least to my ears, useable as is. There’s an emphasis on distortion, and I’m not sure different versions are really needed to cover different parts of the stereo field (e.g., separate center, left, and right presets for the “Gold Label Rhythm” sound). However, that does make it easy to call up a preset and have it sit where you want, within a proper acoustic space.

There’s also a good selection of metal and special effects presets, with a lesser number in other genres. The names don’t always line up with the genres — for example, not all clean presets are “clean” — but that doesn’t detract from their usefulness once you decide which ones are favorites. The only issue is that the preset levels aren’t matched particularly well, but it’s easy enough to compensate.

Tuning Time
Unlike amp sims that include the tuner as part of the entire sim, the Tuner is a separate plug-in.

Because it’s gentle on your CPU, you can add it to tracks with impunity — so a tuning check is always just a few seconds away, and it’s accurate enough to check intonation. It’s less of a hassle to use the plug-in than to deal with a clip-on or pedal tuner.

The Live Rooms
Much of what makes an amp sim sound “real” is creating a physical environment for it, with miking and room characteristics. DP has put a lot of effort into this, and the Live Rooms are the highlights of the plug-in suite.

The simplest option is the Live Stage space. It provides nine guitar cabs plus four cabs for bass, with five mic positions: on-axis, off-axis, near, far, and far omni. Although not as sophisticated as the live rooms we’ll cover next, in many cases, Live Stage provides what you need. It’s also a good effect to place in an Aux track to blend in with the Live Rooms for a little extra depth.

Live Room G for guitar models a physical space that provides an environment for the nine amp cabinets (there’s also a Drive control to vary the crunch going into the cabinet). The four mic channels include two mono mics for miking the cabinet and stereo mics for ambience.

All mic channels have lo, mid, and hi EQ, as well as a Predelay control (for moving the sound forward or backward by up to 10ms). The amp mics have a pan pot for stereo placement, and the ambience mics offer a Width control. The amp miking options are on-axis, off-axis, near, rear, far omni (useful for a more ambient sound), and none if you want to take a mic out of the composite sound.

The ambient mics use stereo miking techniques that act as you would expect. XY has the most focused sound, with Blumlein giving wider imaging than XY. ORTF also gives wider imaging than the XY position but picks up less ambience than Blumlein, and the mono compatibility isn’t necessarily as good.

Live Room B for bass has more similarities than differences. There are four bass cabs, but the mic choice is bass-oriented: AKG 112 emulation, Sennheiser 602 emulation, SM7 emulation, Subkick mic, M-Audio Sputnik condenser, far omni, and none. (Also the bass room’s virtual hardwood floor is shinier, so I guess I’ll need to bring out the virtual hardwood floor wax from time to time.)

With both Live Rooms, although you can’t move the mics (for example, move the on-axis mic across the cab to pick up different positions along the speaker cone), the ambience mics are a big plus for creating an acoustical space. Furthermore, you can choose an overall Decay to set the room’s size, while Damping affects the acoustics’ high frequencies.

An even more interesting option is that you can treat the four mic channels the same way you would multiple outputs from a virtual instrument, so you’re not limited to only the options in the Live Room itself. These outputs are pre-EQ/pan/fader/solo/mute/output gain controls, so you can do whatever you want with the raw feed. With mono tracks, each mic output appears as an available input. With stereo tracks, the two main mics are on separate channels of one stereo pair, and the ambient mics are on another stereo pair.

Tweaking Time
Like virtually all amp sims with heavy distortion settings, most of the amp settings benefit from a notch filter at the output to reduce the effect of any undesirable resonances — which you tame the same way you do in other amp sims. Insert the ParaEQ 4-band after the amp sim or amp sim-based preset, boost the Gain with a narrow Width, and then sweep the Frequency control until you find a frequency that jumps out in a distorted, screechy way. Pull down the Gain on that one band, and you’ll get rid of the resonance.

However, this can also dull the sound, because you’re reducing highs. No problem: set another stage to a high-frequency shelf, boost the gain by about 3dB, and start the shelf at about 1kHz. This will brighten the sound, but the steep notch will still keep the resonance under control. I also like to use a de-esser in front of the sim to pull back on high frequencies — sort of like rolling back on the tone control, but more intelligently because it reduces high frequencies only when needed. Here’s what the complete preset looks like, and sounds like (audio example 1).

Listen to how this preset delivers thick, bright power chords that work well with metal and hard rock.

The De-esser is also useful with Vox AC-30 sounds. If you try to boost the treble too much, the sound becomes harsh and screechy — so you need to be realistic about how bright the sound can be. But you can use the De-esser to zero in on the brightest incoming frequencies, reduce them, and then apply a treble boost to the audio that gives a sweet but authoritative brightness.

Listen to this sound – it’s clean, bright, and on the verge of a slight breakup.

Stompboxes? Really?
In addition to the three amps — a “Vox” Ace-30, Custom ’59 (Marshall JTM45, JCM800, and Fender Bassman), and Soloist (Mesa Boogie-type amp), there’s quite a complement of stompboxes.

You’ll find emulations of “old standards” like the Tube Screamer, BOSS Chorus, E-H Memory Man delay, and several MXR effects (Phase 90, Distortion+, and Dyna-Comp). These are joined with simulations of the Pro Co Rat, E-H Big Muff, and Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive distortion boxes, as well as the E-H Small Stone, E-H Electric Mistress, Dallas Rangemaster, Ibanez Super Tube, a Fenderish spring reverb, a wah pedal, and noise gate. However, bear in mind there are also standard effects that are useful with guitar and bass, even though they’re not emulations of specific stompboxes (ring modulator, chorus, delays, dynamic EQ, de-esser, and the like).

Although most of the guitar goodies were introduced in DP8, DP9 has added to the collection. I was also tickled to see DP now includes the Multifuzz, which according to the documentation is a “spot-on reproduction of Craig Anderton’s legendary QuadraFuzz multiband distortion kit from decades past…the results range from sublime warmth to absolute filth.” And it does indeed nail the QuadraFuzz sound. However, there are also three synth-type effects that made me wonder if someone from Electro-Harmonix is maybe doing some moonlighting.

Of these, MegaSynth is the biggie — and that includes sonic size. You feed it an audio input and get audio direct output, square wave, octave up, and octave down synthesized outputs, as well as patchable processors (two filters and VCA) and several modulators (envelopes, LFOs, and Pattern Generator — note that the Pattern does an on-off action; you can’t vary the level for each step).

Although single notes produce the cleanest sound, MegaSynth can handle polyphonic input — and since an audio example is worth a thousand words, listen to audio example 3. MegaSynth excels at generating massive synth sounds from guitar.

MicroG (for guitar) and MicroB (for bass) are like eco versions of MegaSynth. They include the same four audio outputs and a master triggered filter.

So yes, DP9 is pretty heavy on the guitar goodies. As mentioned at the beginning, a lot of DAWs include some kind of amp sim — but if you want to turn things around and claim that DP is an amp sim that includes a DAW, maybe you’re not all that far off.

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