Mini Report: D8Bridge + Samplitude Pro X

[bitSync]

I've got a little preliminary mini-report regarding D8Bridge and Samplitude Pro X.

Having spit nails for a year with D8Bridge v1.1 and Sonar X2a, and having run out of troubleshooting options short of actually getting hold of an MCU and XTs to document the Mackie Control Protocol (MCP) initialization, I thought I'd look around at other DAWs that might do better with D8Bridge. I was reading up on Samplitude Pro X and was encouraged by reports of the DAW's stability, audio integrity, and particularly support for control surfaces, to especially include MCU/XT.

I downloaded the 30-day trial demo of Samplitude Pro X last night and although I'm just getting into it I'm already delighted with the depth of the D8Bridge MCP integration. Whatever MCP initialization anomalies Sonar X2a was choking on, Samplitude seems to handle with grace. There's a lot I haven't tested yet but what I have tested is just a thing of beauty. Stuff simply works as it should; that includes the SELECT buttons (non-functional in Sonar X2a), from both the control surface and from within the DAW GUI. I'm still anxious for the repairs to D8Bridge v1.1, but I may have found a far more workable solution, albeit an expensive one, in a different DAW.

It's funny. I've been with Cakewalk for 20 years, but the tight integration of a control surface with a DAW is so important to me that if the rest of my Samplitude Pro X evaluation goes as well as it has over the last few hours, I may have to say goodbye to my old DAW and train up on Samplitude X Pro.

I'll keep y'all posted.

[bitSync]

An update for you. Without getting into the Samplitude/D8Bridge blame game, I'll pass along a couple of recent observations with the Samplitude Pro X x64 demo and D8Bridge v1.1 x32.

Last night I experienced the same anomaly previously reported by some others here with the d8b LED ladder meters getting pinned to the maximum level (all LED segments illuminated) regardless of signal activity on the channel. That happened on just a single channel. I could resolve it only by rebooting Samplitude.

Another weird thing I observed was that among several channels playing back audio, the LED channel meter for one of those channels showed no activity while the other LED ladder meters showed activity that was consistent with the Samplitude mixer GUI. I never did resolve that.

Although Sonar X2a and D8Bridge have their own unique issues (for me, mainly the SELECT button non-functionality), I've never experienced either of these two LED ladder meter anomalies on Sonar X2a.

That's all for now.