Sending a series of numerical values, such a sequencer could direct many instruments, commanding which notes to play, at what loudness, and for how long to sustain them.

There are many deep features in the MIDI protocol; MOTU developed extended capabilities in Digital Performer for handling these controllers and other actions (including remote operation of the software itself) through user-customizable graphical consoles, allowing the operator direct access to deeper features of instruments, stage lighting and various types of machines, all via MIDI interfaces and custom graphic buttons and sliders.

Digital Performer was originally designed as a front-end to Digidesign's Audiomedia hard disk recording system, which later became Pro Tools.

As the Mac's CPU became powerful enough to record the digitized audio directly to hard disk, the DSP cards were gradually rendered unnecessary.

By 2000, Digital Performer allowed users to record, mix, and master audio for commercial releases.

After a complete rewrite, MOTU released Digital Performer 4.0 in May 2003, which ran exclusively on Mac OS X.

This version contains workflow enhancements, some new effect plugins, including emulations of the 1176 Peak Limiter and Craig Anderton's MultiFuzz.

This version includes a new 5 GB instruments soundbank, a time/pitch audio stretching feature, and a real time loop triggering function.