I guess I don't expect anyone to except my opinion but here goes!
Whether you have the stock ECU or the 'magic' ECU, the thing still won't run right without proper set-up. Throttle synch, idle fuel trim, etc. and matched injectors help too.
That's why some shops have 100% happy customers and other have 0%.
How a shop gets paid for that attention to detail is another question. The customer can't imagine that he should pay for it since the bike costs plenty to begin with. Warranty doesn't want to pay 'cause they assume they all work great out-of-the-box.
I don't have a lot of experience (any actually) replacing stock ECUs with DP ECUs, but I have seen some dyno runs where the cyl-to-cyl AFRs are dismall.
Some DP cals are probably good and others maybe not so good. (then there's injector variation and fuel pressure variation to mess with that.)
Whether the DP cal is good or not, the bike still needs proper set-up or it will start poorly and run like butt at low speeds. And, the customer or the service guy without a dyno can't tell if they run right at WOT.
If the DP cal has a good timing table, then the fuel can be adjusted with a Power Commander and you can have a good result. The DP cal turns off the closed-loop O2 sensor strategy so you can tune it at part throttle and disables the immobilizer so you can put it on any bike.
All of the Ducati cals I've seen previous to 2008 have really retarded (4-6 degrees) idle timing which makes you open the throttle to get enough air to idle, which kills a bunch of vacuum at idle. (Harleys idle at 20 degrees!) A 996 074UCH chip idles at 4 degrees advance.
It's no wonder they are such a bear to set up.
Then above idle they usually increase the advance so the engine just wants to migrate to the advanced timing area. Can you say 'idle up'?
OK, so, I'm rambling.
If you can assume that the injectors are all the same (they are not!) and the fuel pressure is consistant (it is not!) the available calibrations are not impressive in many ways.
My hat is off to anyone who can make a Ducati start and idle well without two O2 sensors and access to the cal tables. But, if you don't have AFR data for both cylinders from off-idle to WOT you don't know the complete story and it is a big stretch to assume that any 'canned' map is good or even adequate, no matter where it came from.
Doug
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