In my daily work I use the HOFA DDP Player Maker for reasons that will become obvious in this post but I’m about to introduce DDP into my mastering class so I finally looked at the Steinberg DDP Player because we have that installed with WaveLab Pro 9.5.
Side note, it’s not so easy to find the DDP Player installer. How are you supposed to send it to clients easily? The latest version I can find which is in the FULL WaveLab installer is 1.0.40 (build 62) which is why I was looking for the latest install to see if what I believe is a serious bug has been fixed.
We were going to use it to test the mastering of a live album that is not supposed to have any gaps between tracks, totally seamless.
I remember somebody mentioning this awhile back but it seems that the DDP Player cannot seamlessly play between tracks. When it switches from one track to another with gapless audio, there is an un-smooth glitch. This seems like the most obvious thing to test before release.
I assumed that it would have been fixed or updated by now but again, the download situation for this app is very elusive.
Can anybody confirm the problem I mention, or point me to the latest update?
For this to actually be useful, I think there needs be a clear link to send to clients to grab the latest Windows or Mac installers…and having a player you can trust to playback seamless albums tracks is also essential.
The 9.5.50 version history says it’s now available separately from the Steinberg Support download pages, and the Download Assistant, but I can’t find it anywhere. I had 1.0.40 installed (which i think is the latest) from my lastest updates, and it’s glitching between tracks on gapless sine. The same DDP in Hofa is clean.
Yes, I also remember seeing mention of a DDP Player update and/or new links for it but I certainly can’t find it. Maybe somebody forgot to do it.
Either way, aside from actually working correctly, we need reliable links to the player to send to clients. One for the Mac version and one for the PC version, that always gives clients the latest version of the DDP Player.
We can’t expect clients to download the Steinberg Download Assistant app and/or the full WaveLab installer and fish these DDP Player installers out, and I don’t think WaveLab users should have to handle hosting and maintaining links to the latest version of the DDP Player installers, although that would be better than the current option.
Again, I am a big fan of HOFA DDP Player for many reasons, I was just hoping to use the Steinberg DDP Player in my class to demonstrate how we can make a seamless DDP and test it in a DDP Player, but it’s how many months after the release of it and it can’t do a gapless transition? A sine WAV is my usual means of testing stuff like this but it’s so bad that you can hear it easily on a live album of music.
Yes the Steinberg DDP Player is free with WaveLab, but I can’t imagine sending out a DDP professionally and having the client ask why their transitions have glitches. Wow.
I will have to use my install of Sonoris OEM until the Steinberg DDP Player is usable.
On top of that, there is a notable percentage of clients (of a certain age ) who like to burn a CD from the HOFA DDP Player so I think skipping CD burning on the Steinberg DDP Player was not a good idea.
As far as i know this has been a problem from the very start and continues to be a problem. The DDP Player has simply never been available as a separate download.
Because it’s been problematic finding the installers from the start, it hadn’t even occurred to me till now that we can do it now like the Hofa player maker does it, and just copy the DDP Player installer folder in with every DDP. It’s only 44 MB, smaller than the apps that go in with every Hofa player maker DDP.
Since the DDP Player folder is definitely in the additional content folder in the 9.5.15 full installer now, and the DDP player install checks for updates, it would really be pretty much the same as the Hofa if we just copy that folder in with every DDP.
But I guess Steinberg has decided to do it differently, if they actually do make the downloads separately available as they say in the version history.
An interesting idea. I remember when HOFA DDP Player Maker came out, I was a bit worried about having anything in the DDP zip that wasn’t needed. HOFA assured me they looked into this and it was OK, and so far it has been in terms of CD pressing. I’m not sure if the same would be true for a random installer app to be in there. With HOFA DDP Player Maker, it’s just a sub-folder with actual apps instead that don’t need to be installed.
Ironically, the only trouble that having the HOFA DDP Player folder in the main folder has given me is when you drag a zipped DDP into Sonoris DDP Player OEM, Sonoris gets confused on the unzip and has an error. But if you manually unzip it, it can load the DDP with the HOFA sub-folder.
Anyway…
Back when I was using Sonoris OEM (before HOFA DDP Player Maker came out), I just had an email template ready that had links to both the Mac and PC downloads of the DDP Player, and info on how to use it. Then Sonoris would update the DDP Player now and then but the links would stay the same.
This is how the Steinberg DDP Player should work. Right now I just don’t think it’s ready for primetime.
You’re probably right. Better not to throw installers in there, I don’t know. It would be easier if there was no installation at all, like the Hofa player maker apps.
A couple of things I’ve found:
The standalone Windows DDP player installer from the full 9.5.15 Additional Content folder only finds the 1.0.30 update during install, not the 1.0.40 update.
The Steinberg Windows DDP Player standalone installer from the 9.5.15 full installer won’t install on a 32 bit operating system, like I tried to do on one computer. That’s another difference from the Hofa, in case you have a client with a 32 bit computer. The Hofa Player Maker players will open and play on a 32 bit system. Probably the Sonoris too, I don’t know for sure.
Yes the latest version 1.0.40 still has the gapless track glitch. To be specific (because there was another problem called glitch/repeat when skipping to tracks which I think has probably been fixed by now), in a continuous sine wav with CD Spllce markers placed randomly to make CD tracks, then made to DDP, that DDP will play with a glitch at the track change points in the Steinberg DDP player, but not in other DDP players. That continuous playback in a DDP or any continuous lossless audio player at track change points should never be audible.
) who like to burn a CD from the HOFA DDP Player so I think skipping CD burning on the Steinberg DDP Player was not a good idea.