I exported a DDP file. I opened it in the player. Two of the tracks inserted noise (actually sounded like another part of the track!) at the very end of the track. I imported the DDP into Wavelab, which built a montage that behaved exactly as it should. I burnt a CD with the montage and it also plays exactly as it should.
My client opened the DDP file in the player app on his computer. Varying noise at the track ends, sometimes just a burst, sometimes a few seconds!
He now has a major trepidation about sending the file for replication. No wonder!
Has anyone seen this behavior?
Another annoyance. When I open the DDP player for the first time in a session then select the ASIO driver, the meters move, but no sound. I close the app and open it again, again selecting the ASIO driver (it never remembers). The file plays with sound. This has happened every time I have used the player app.
Now I don’t trust the player, plus, I now have a credibility problem with this client.
Yeah, I think in a few ways the DDP Player is not ready for “prime time” use and it’s unfortunate that you had this issue and may credibility issues your client.
I really think it was silly for Steinberg to add this since HOFA (also a German company) already has the DDP Player Maker perfected pretty much. Steinberg would have been better to license it from HOFA like the did with Sonnox and iZotope stuff rather than end up in this situation.
You name it. Same Steinberg DDP-Player Bug here.
It was not the file. It is the incomplete player.
When I skip from one track to the next, it plays again a little peace from the beginning of the before played track. After that the next is played.
Sometimes it works as it should, but most of the time not. (On MAC-Version it works more often, then on PC-Version)
And yes, i made the latest DDP-player update within the latest Wavelab update.
It is a very good thing to have such a DDP-Player feature, but…
the bad thing on this story is, that i gave this Steinberg DDP-Player to my client to here back and confirm his masters, and he was scary about the result.
So it was a bad situation for me as a pro. But in the meantime i’ve cleared this situation with him.
I tested the same DDP-image in HOFA free DDP-player testing-version. All is working well with it anytime.
So please Steinberg, hurry up with an update, bugfix please and in the meantime rename this actual version as “DDP-PLAYER BETA-TEST-VERSION” to use it not for clients at the moment.
It seems the player plays from Index 0 instead of Index 1 when you use the Skip to Next Track button. The Hofa plays from Index 1, which you would expect a DDP player would, because CD Players play from Index 1, not Index 0.
Smiley, is that possibly what you’re seeing? Are you clicking in the list or using the Skip to Next Track button? Using CD Track Start and End markers, or CD Track Splice markers, or both?
Also, Index 0 is called “Forward”? I’ve never seen that term used. Is that like move Forward, or is it meant as Foreward to the track, like a Foreward to a book? If that’s the case, it’s misspelled. I think it would be less confusing if it was called Pregap, like Hofa, or something similar.
This happens most of the times in both cases, when i press the forward skip to next button and when i click on a track button.
In this case i use CD Track Start and End markers.
If i create a new DDP-File in my Wavelab Montage and create “Pause-Tracks” with 2 seconds, it is not happening that a fragment of the first played song is to hear.
Also there is shown a different CD Total-Time e.g… in Steinberg DDP-Player it is shown 63:12 in HOFA-Player 63:10. strange…
I’m not getting an audible problem with the Steinberg player, and I’m not sure what pieces you’re hearing where. Maybe if you sent PG a test DDP file that does that.
My complaint is with the fact that the Steinberg player plays from Index 0 (the pregap of each track). If someone makes a montage with audible Audio-In-Pause between tracks, the Steinberg player will start with that audible audio. That’s not right, because that’s not how a CD Player will play it. The CD Player will always play from Index 1. Since DDP is still a CD Image file, the DDP player should play it how a CD Player will play it. Hofa does that correctly, and the Steinberg player doesn’t.
Also if you click on a line in the Steinberg player, without playing, and then click the next track button, it steps through every Index 0 and Index 1, which is confusing. The Hofa steps from Index 1 to the next Index 1, so you know what track you’re on.
But I think the Steinberg player is very nicely designed, prefer the look over the Hofa, and like the fact it’s sized horizontally smaller than the Hofa can go. And it displays the pregap times correctly. My latest version Hofa Player Maker doesn’t: all pregap times say 00:00, when they’re not.
Also the Steinberg displayed track durations don’t match the Hofa if there are pregaps, which I would hope one or the other would sort out.
I get the opposite (Hofa 2 seconds longer than Steinberg). Hofa is adding the two second Track 1 pregap to the total time, which you can see if you export a tracklist PDF from Hofa. That’s their prerogative. The Steinberg player total time is program time only, and matches the total time of the Wavelab montage. I’ve always supplied total time this way, as program time only. But technically the Hofa total with its added 2 seconds will play into it’s warning total if you get within seconds of it’s 80 minute length warning.
I think I’ve been able to reproduce rtorstrick and smiley’s problem of short burst of sound before track start.
To reproduce, create a montage with audio-in-pause enabled.
Place a CD Track End marker overlapping the end of one of the clips so the end audio is audible after the CD Track End marker. Place the next clip and CD Track Start marker after about one second of silence.
Make a DDP.
Play the DDP in the DDP Player from the start. Click the Skip to Next Track Button.
At the track where the marker/clip overlap is, you should hear the end of the track (audio in pause) playing from Index 0 and then a repeat burst of sound before the next track starts (Index 1).
One other thing about the player I think is really not good is if you are checking starts using the Skip To Next Track button:
When you get to the last track and click that button it goes to the first track and plays the first track. IMO, this is really not helpful, especially for the client, when they’re checking a master with a fixed number of tracks and it plays another track when they get to what should be the end. The Hofa doesn’t do that.
Maybe this is completely covered in the upcoming DDP Player update, but I’ve just tried the DDP Player again, 1.0.15 build 25, and something is happening that I swear wasn’t happening with the same player before all my recent Win 10 updates in the past few weeks.
Load a DDP. Press Play. It starts playing Track 1. Press Skip to Next Track. The player plays about 1/4 second of the start of Track 1 again, then starts playing Track 2. Etc, etc. all down the line.
This is sort of like the problem before, but now it happens on every track of every DDP I load. But the really strange thing is it only happens on first play. If you continue pressing Skip to Next Track, when you get to the end of the album, it goes back to Track 1 and starts playing. And then it starts getting better, and stops doing the repeat thing when you skip to next track. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m pretty sure the same version player wasn’t doing this a few weeks ago, not on every track. Also if you load a DDP that’s been previously loaded and tested, it doesn’t do the repeat thing, which is also strange.
Testing on a second Win 10 computer with latest updates, I get exactly the same thing.
Maybe I’m remembering completely wrong and I’m thinking of an earlier version of the Player, but I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I tested this version of the Player many weeks ago without this happening. Not on every track of every DDP.
fwiw, all the DDP’s i’m trying were made from Montages with splice markers between tracks, not track end and start markers.
Hopefully this has nothing to do with Windows updates, and I didn’t fully test with splice marker DDPs before. But I really thought I had, because it’s all I make. And Splice marker DDPs always exhibit this on first play.
I agree with S-EH. Check with Hofa with ASIO, or reimport to Wavelab. Maybe it makes little difference on some systems, but the Steinberg DDP Player no ASIO connects.
