Digital Performer Help

Digital Performer provides a separate type of audio track for virtual instrument plug-ins called an Instrument Track. To create an instrument track, choose Project menu > Add Track; from there, you have several choices:

• Choose a specific instrument from the Instrument Track sub-menu. This creates an audio instrument track for it with the instrument already instantiated, but afterwards, you'll need to create a MIDI track using the Add Track> MIDI Track.
• Choose Instruments with Options. This opens a dialog that lets you add the instrument track and a MIDI track for it at the same time. It also lets you create two or more instrument tracks at the same time.
• Choose Unassigned Instrument. Doing so creates the new instrument track with no instrument yet assigned. You can then assign an instrument in the Mixing Board from the instrument insert, as explained later.

The Instruments with Options command offers several convenient shortcuts for creating instrument tracks. Choose Project menu> Add Instrument Tracks> Instruments with Options.


Choose an instrument and the number of tracks of that instrument you wish to add. You can also choose the number of MIDI Tracks to be created and assigned to the chosen instrument. If you create multiple MIDI tracks and the instrument you choose has multiple MIDI destinations (such as the twelve individual parts in the Model 12 drum module), Digital Performer will map each MIDI device to a separate channel.

An option is provided to place the new instrument and MIDI tracks together in a new Track Folder, if desired. Each instrument is placed in its own folder, with its MIDI tracks.

Audio Unit instrument plug-ins appear in the menu with the company name followed by a colon and then the name of the plug-in. MAS instruments display just the plug-in name. This is how you can distinguish them in the menu (although it really doesn't matter — they'll function the same). If you have more than one AU installed from a particular vender (i.e. Apple), then all the AUs from that vendor are grouped together in a sub-menu.

If an instrument plug-in has both an AU version and a MAS version, and both versions are installed on your computer, only the MAS version is loaded and displayed in Digital Performer's instrument plug-in menus.

Instrument plug-ins work very much like synthesizers, samplers and other hardware instruments. You send them MIDI data from a Digital Performer MIDI track, and their audio output goes to the output of the instrument track itself.

When you first open ("instantiate") an instrument plug-in, it publishes its MIDI ports, which appear in the output menu of DP's MIDI tracks.

Make sure that the MIDI channel you choose matches the MIDI receive channel for the virtual instrument. If the instrument is multi timbral, such as MachFive, you can set up one MIDI track for each independent part. For example, with MachFive 3, which provides unlimited parts using 64 MIDI channels, each playing a different preset (sound or instrument), you could set up as many as 64 MIDI tracks (on separate MIDI channels) to play each of the MIDI channels in one instance of MachFive 3.

If an instrument plug-in provides multiple outputs, you can create audio bundles for them in the Instruments tab of the Bundles window.