A world of effects processing at your fingertips

Digital Performer includes dozens of effects plug-ins that you can use during every step of of the recording, mixing and mastering process to perfect your recordings.

Plug-in Manager

Digital Performer's plug-in management features help you manage large numbers of audio plug-ins — from the dozens of included plug-ins to hundreds of third-party plug-ins (sold separately). You can enable or disable individual plug-ins, create plug-in sets, make plug-ins load even if they don't pass AU validation, re-examine updated plug-ins for validation and more.

Plug-in preset management

A dedicated Preset menu in the Effects window gives you quick access to both factory and user presets. When the menu is closed, the currently loaded preset is displayed; if it's been edited, it becomes italicized to show you at a glance. Next and previous preset button can be controlled with standard Mac keyboard shortcuts or from your MIDI controller.

User plug-in presets are grouped into a User Presets sub-menu. In addition, many factory presets are organized into convenient, categorized sub-folders.

User plug-in presets are saved independently from Digital Performer documents or the Digital Performer application itself. Instead, they are stored as preset files on disk. This makes it easier to access them across projects and share them with colleagues and clients.

Plug-in effects chains (channel strip presets)

Save, recall, and manage plug-in chains as single presets, including guitar effects chains and virtual instrument chains that include effects. Dozens of channel strip presets are provided for drums, guitar, bass, vocals, instruments and more.

If you drag and drop an effects chain preset onto a track in DP's Mixing Board, extra insert slots are added automatically, if necessary, to accommodate all the plug-ins in the chain.

V-Racks

What's a V-Rack? It's a place to load virtual instruments and effects that are available to all sequences in a Digital Performer project.

A V-Rack™ looks and operates just like a sequence, except that it holds aux tracks, virtual instrument tracks and master faders - no disk tracks. Any effects or instruments loaded in it are accessible from all other sequences in your Digital Performer project. It's like having a virtual effects and instrument rack — just like the name V-Rack implies.

Use V-Racks any time you have multiple sequences that share the same effects processing or virtual instruments. For example, you might load one instance of MachFive in a V-Rack and then play it from each of three different sequences, rather than having to load MachFive three times (once in each individual sequence). This saves you tons of CPU power and RAM, not to mention load time.

You can also use V-Racks for building a mastering chain (via a master fader), to which you then feed the master output from multiple sequences to achieve absolute consistency during mastering. You can use the same technique for consistent effects/return loops.

V-Racks are also great for virtual instruments or effects processing during live performance.

Mix V-Rack instruments side by side with sequence tracks

The Mixing Board allows you to view and mix V-Rack channels side by side with all of your sequence tracks, for a seamless integrated mixing experience. Tabs at the top of the Mixing Board channels clearly identify V-Rack and disk track channels. In all other respects, mixing is entirely consistent and intuitive across all channels.

Plug-in latency compensation

Running under MAS and DAE, Digital Performer's plug-in latency compensation is sample-accurate — for any MAS, Audio Units, TDM or RTAS plug-in (including virtual instruments).

And it's fully automatic. You just load your plug-ins and go. Latency compensation is especially useful for users of hardware-accelerated plug-ins such as the TC Electronic PowerCore and the Universal Audio UAD-1 or 2.

Previewing effects plug-in region operations

When you apply a plug-in as a region operation from the Audio menu Plug-ins sub-menu and then click the Preview button, the currently selected region loops continuously until you click the Stop button (or click anywhere outside the effect window). Parameter adjustments can be heard in real time as you change them. A preroll and postroll amount can be added to the beginning and end of the currently selected region for previewing purposes. These previewing enhancements have also been made for Audio Units being applied as region operations.

Three of the most famous guitar amps of all time, meticulously and faithfully modeled in one Digital Performer plug-in.

Fender® Bassman®

Originally designed for the Fender Precision Bass®, the Fender Bassman amp was quickly adopted by guitarists and eventually became perhaps the most famous and sought after guitar amp of all time. With its classic 4x10 design (four ten-inch speakers) and vintage lacquered tweed cover, the Bassman sound is a bona fide icon among guitar tones and a must-have for any tone aficionado.

Marshall® JTM45®

Introduced in the early 1960's, the Marshall JTM45 was essentially a clone of the Fender Bassman. Made popular by Eric Clapton, the so-called "Bluesbreaker" amp is named after Clapton's band at the time, in which he popularized the now signature sound of playing a Les Paul through the heavily distorted JTM45. Ever since, the JTM45 has been ensconced in the pantheon of world-famous guitar amplifiers.

Marshall® JCM800®

As guitar tones evolved during the '60s and '70s, the hunger among guitarists for more power became insatiable. By the early '80s, Marshall had developed the JCM800 to satisfy this craving, with higher power tubes and a power boost from 50 to 100 watts. The result? Perhaps the most widely recognized guitar tones of all time.

Create your own amp

Custom '59™, Digital Performer's modeled recreation of these three legendary amps, lets you play the sound of each amp with perhaps the most faithful reproduction ever devised. Even better, you can can mix and match the preamp tube, preamp circuit and tone stack from each model to create your own custom amp. The possibilities for tone are virtually limitless, all born from the iconic pedigree of three authentic originals.

Fender® and Bassman® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. Marshall®, JTM45® and JCM800® are registered trademarks and trademarks of Marshall Amplification Plc. These trademarks are not associated or affiliated with MOTU and are used solely for the purpose of identifying specific products referenced in the description of MOTU's sound modeling development process. Use of these product names and trademarks does not imply any cooperation with or endorsement by their owners.

A superb physical modeling speaker cabinet emulator with four mics, mixable mic positions (close, near and far) and three-band EQ per channel. Live Room | G adds unprecedented realism to guitar and bass parts — or any amped instrument.

It's a real speaker cabinet, in an actual room, at your fingertips

What convolution did for reverb, Live Room | G does for speaker cabinet emulation, thanks to the next-generation physical modeling technology at its core. Engineered for the unprecedented power of today's personal computers, the modeling technology in Live Room | G captures every nuance and detail of the hundreds of factors that interact to recreate the rich, detailed sound of a speaker cabinet in a real room recorded by four separate mics.

Five cabs

Live Room | G provides five cabs:

• 4 x 12 Modern — intended for ultra-distorted chunks and sludge, yet versatile enough to handle smooth Santana-style leads (...Mesa Boogie® with Vintage '30s).
• 4 x 12 Vintage — based upon an aging, road-worn British monster held together with gaffer's tape and AquaNet. Perfect for those '80's hair-band tributes and '70's proto-metal (...Marshall 1960B with greenbacks).
• 2 x 12 Combo — for Muscle Shoals-style southern-rock and country guitar tones (...Fender Twin with Eminence).
• 4 x 10 Combo — tuned for blues, jazz, rock and country (...reissue Bassman with Jensen reissue drivers).
• 1 x 8 Junior — this one was set up to record distorted rhythm guitar tones for rock and pop. If you like Eddie Money then this is your cabinet. You can hear the tube shields rattling in the rear mic when you drive it really hard (...Valve Jr. cabinet, heavily modded chassis, stock speaker that looks like a Weber/Mojo).
  

Multiple simultaneous mics with individual EQ and mixing

These days most cab emulations give you several mic choices and even some positioning control, along with the obligatory graphical representation of a mic in front of a cabinet. Live Room | G actually simulates the process of recording a guitar amplifier in a studio with multiple adjustable microphones. Live Room | G provides four mixable mic channels (two mono plus one stereo), each with their own predelay, sidechain output, 3-band EQ, solo/mute and volume. In addition, each mono mic has the following five positions around the cab:

• On axis
  
• Off axis
  
• Near
  
• Rear
  
• Far omni
  

The stereo (far) mic channels provide four different configurations:

• XY
  
• ORTF
  
• Blumlein
  
• Wide omni

Authentic guitar tones

First and foremost, Live Room | G is an indispensable component (usually the final stage) in your guitar tone signal chains. Combine Digital Performer's stomp pedal effects, Custom '59 amp emulator and Live Room | G's cab emulation in virtually unlimited combinations and you are now in guitar tone heaven.

Cab-mic anything

Live Room | G opens a world of possibilities for hearing any track through a speaker cabinet. What might take you hours of setup and tinkering with a real cabinet in a room with multiple mics will take just a few moments to set up on screen in your Digital Performer project. Try experimenting with just about any sound source to add depth, dimension and organic feel.

Digital Performer's suite of stunningly accurate classic guitar pedal emulations are modeled after all-time favorites from Boss®, MXR®, Electro-Harmonix®, Ibanez® and others. You get hundreds of dollars worth of classic stomp boxes, meticulously modeled after the originals. Dial in your favorite pedal settings, and the resulting sound is identical to — and indistinguishable from — the real thing. Experiment with hundreds of tones and thousands of combinations.

Tube Wailer™

Tube Wailer models the venerated Ibanez® TS-9 Tube Screamer® overdrive pedal, named for the "light" distortion it produces similar to an overdriven tube amp. The Tube Screamer circuit has served as the basis for an entire industry of distortion pedals over the last thirty years. Due to its popularity, the Tube Screamer is one of the most heavily "modded" (modified) pedals out there. Not to be outdone, Digital Performer's Tube Wailer emulation gives you your own mod: flip the "Diode" switch to simulate replacing the stock silicon clipper diodes with germanium diodes to extend bandwidth.

Unprocessed:

Tube Wailer + 4x10 Combo:

More examples »

D Plus™

D Plus emulates the MXR Distortion+™ overdrive pedal, one of the great classic pedals heard on countless recordings and used as a signature sound by many artists including Randy Rhoads (Ozzy Osbourne), Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead), Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü/Sugar), Dave Murray (Iron Maiden) and many others. Just like the original, D Plus produces a surprisingly wide range of tones considering the simplicity of the circuit design, from low-gain mild distortion, to warm tube-like overdrive, to crunchy overdrive "fuzz" with lots of sustain. Suitable for many musical styles, from jazz to heavy metal.

Unprocessed:

D Plus + 4x12 Modern:

More examples »

Delta Fuzz™

Delta Fuzz faithfully emulates the Electro-Harmonix® Big Muff π® pedal, first introduced in the early 1970's and made famous by artists like Carlos Santana and David Gilmour, who used it on two epic Pink Floyd albums (Animals and The Wall). While Electro-Harmonix had its ups and downs as a company over the years, demand for Big Muff's distinctive "sustained grind" sound grew and grew, pervading the recordings of many influential ’80s and ’90s bands including Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins, Dinosaur Jr., and Mudhoney.

Unprocessed:

Delta Fuzz + 2x12 Combo:

More examples »

Diamond Drive™

Diamond Drive emulates the Voodoo Lab® Sparkle Drive™ pedal, which is itself an Ibanez TS9™ clone, but with an innovative clean/saturated crossfader. By mixing the original clean signal back in to the overdriven signal, this pedal restores the "bite" and feel masked by the saturation, resulting in a perceived "cleaner" saturated tone — the magic that makes the Sparkle Drive one of the most sought-after pedals of all time.

Unprocessed:

Diamond Drive + 4x10 Combo:

More examples »

RXT™

RXT is an emulation of The Rat™ distortion pedal by Pro Co Sound™, first produced by hand in 1978. Over the next several years, the Rat quickly gained widespread notoriety via artists such as Jeff Beck, Joe Walsh, Andy Summers and many bands like Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Radiohead. Simply put, the Rat sound is truly legendary among stomp boxes.

Unprocessed:

RXT + 4x12 Vintage:

More examples »

Über Tube™

Über Tube is an emulation of the Ibanez® Super Tube™ overdrive pedal, a close but rare cousin of the Ibanez Tube Screamer™, with added mid boost control, introduced at around the same time as the original TS-9. A few years later, the Tube Screamer migrated to the Master Series where it was renamed simply Super Tube™ (STL).

Unprocessed:

Über Tube + 4x12 Vintage:

More examples »

Analog Chorus™

Analog Chorus emulates the Boss™ CE "Chorus Ensemble" series of foot pedals from the late 1970's and early ’80s, including the CE-2™ and CE-3™. Boss originated the chorus pedal effect with these ground-breaking products, and they are widely considered to be the ultimate analog chorus sound, especially for guitar, bass and electric keyboards.

Unprocessed:

Analog Chorus:

More examples »

Wah Pedal™

No pedal board is complete without a wah-wah pedal. This plug-in simulates the wah pedal experience with authentic flair and all the controls you expect, plus customizations any tweaker will love. Use it for guitar parts, bass parts, keyboard parts and even other instruments. Play it live for a conventional sound or use automation to create more unusual effects.

Unprocessed:

Wah Pedal + 2x12 Combo:

More examples »

Intelligent Noise Gate™

Intelligent Noise Gate is a noise gate designed specifically for recording instruments that are prone to AC mains interference. Easily eliminate buzz and/or hum, with fine-tune adjustments for slight variations in power frequency.

Before you play or record, you need to be in tune, right?

Digital Performer's Tuner plug-in lets you quickly tune your guitar, bass, sax, or other pitched instrument. Just load it as a plug-in, before or after any other plug-in inserts, and play each string (or any pitch on your instrument) to get it perfectly in tune.

The more complex the harmonics of the input signal, the wider the LED band gets. So if your guitar strings are wearing out, the Tuner's LED meter will let you know. Other features include adjustable tuning reference and test tone generation.

Inspired by legendary British large console EQs, the MasterWorks EQ gives you the look, feel and sound of the most sought-after classic equalizers.

Five bands of EQ filtering are provided, each with four EQ types that provide current popular EQ styles and vintage analog EQ styles alike. Two mid bands (LMF and HMF) include shelf filtering. Two additional bands of variable slope low pass and high pass filtering are provided.

The filter response display provides comprehensive control and visual feedback of the EQ curve being applied. The MasterWorks EQ has been carefully crafted and meticulously engineered to produce musical results in a wide variety of applications.

A classic compressor for your Digital Performer desktop studio...

The MasterWorks Leveler is an accurate model of the legendary Teletronix™ LA-2A optical leveling amplifier, known for its unique and highly sought-after Automatic Gain Control (AGC) characteristics.

Conventional compression and limiting with threshold, attack, ratio, release, etc. do not apply here: the heart of the LA-2A is the T4 opto-coupler, a photoelectric device with almost magical (signal dependent) self-adjusting behavior that makes optical compressors the tool of choice for smoothing out just about any audio material, from vocals to bass guitar to full-program mixes, without destroying perceived dynamics.

The MasterWorks Leveler controls match the front panel of the original LA-2A: Gain Reduction and Makeup Gain knobs, along with Limiter/Compressor buttons and an accurately modeled VU meter that adheres to IEC standards. The LA-2A evolved over the years, producing slightly different characteristics in each generation, so the MasterWorks Leveler also provides four different LA-2A models: slow/fast vintage and slow/fast modern.

A CPU-efficient convolution reverb plug-in for Digital Performer that delivers the sound of stunningly realistic acoustic spaces to any track or mix.

Convolution is a process where the characteristics of a real acoustic space, such as concert hall, cathedral or sound stage, are “sampled” (captured) and then faithfully reproduced, down to the last detail and nuance. Convolution reverb is known for its stunning realism, and it is widely considered to be the best type of reverb that money can buy. ProVerb delivers convolution reverb to your Digital Performer desktop with processor-efficient performance and unique features.

Acoustic spaces

Dozens of preset acoustic spaces (impulse responses) are included, from halls and stages, to plates and cathedrals. Plus, you can simply drag and drop any standard audio file into ProVerb's waveform display to add your own. ProVerb has been heavily optimized so that all parameters can be adjusted in real time, including those that modify the impulse response waveform itself. What might take 10-15 seconds in other convolution products occurs in real time in ProVerb, as you adjust the parameter. you can quickly and efficiently sculpt your sound with predelay, damping, four bands of EQ and four modes for adjusting the wet/dry mix.

Dynamic mixing

ProVerb includes a unique Dynamic Mix feature that automatically "ducks" the wet signal as the dry input signal rises, then raises the wet mix as the dry signal level subsides. Properly tuned, this feature allows a "wetter" mix while retaining intelligibility of the input signal. Threshold, sensitivity and strength settings are provided, allowing the feature to function just like a mix engineer expertly "riding" the wet/dry mix control during playback.

Stereo audio example

Here is an example of Proverb:

Surround support

ProVerb supports all of Digital Performer's channel format variations, including mono-to-stereo, stereo-to-stereo, and even stereo-to-n and n-to-n. ProVerb is an advanced convolution reverb processor suitable for even the most demanding surround mixing and sound design applications.

Pulsating, rhythmic, hypnotic, groovetronic — these are just some of the words that can be used to describe the rhythm-based effects in Digital Performer's Pattern Gate plug-in.

Choose a metric resolution (such as 16th notes, 8th notes, etc.), a pattern length from 1 to 16 steps, and depth (mix) for fully (or partially) muted steps. Click the sixteen LED-illuminated pads to program killer rhythmic patterns in seconds. A three-stage envelope gives you fine-tune control over the shape (attack/sustain/release) of each played step. An LFO can be applied to any of the shape parameters, such as attack, release, depth or sustain (or any combination). The result is a gradual modulation over time that makes the pattern "breathe" in time with your music.