Why is Pro Tools the standard?

[UstadKhanAli]

But there are other DAW's that are probably better suited to particular situations, and nothing wrong with that either. There's really no right or wrong answer, any more than choosing your guitar or amp or anything else.

 

Does that include digital modeling guitars?

 

I would agree with this. There are a lot of DAWS out there, so it only stands to reason that some of them are probably better suited to particular situations (Ableton?). I don't believe they are the best either, but they have an interface and architecture that makes sense to me and has a good flow, and that's good enough. Also, a lot of people can bring me their mixes and edits, and I can open it right up. Any program that can successfully open up past sessions that are fifteen years old has something going for it.

[Kaux]

 

I don't really think Pro Tools is the best, and that's strictly a matter of opinion. They were the first, and for a long time the only game in town in terms of a professional DAW. And I agree that if you want to work in commercial studios, you'd better learn it. Digi pisses me off at times because I think to an extent they hold people prisoner who invested in them a long time ago, forcing expensive upgrades and the like. But, they developed a product that worked out of the gate, they did it before anybody else and a lot of people came to depend on it for a living. And there's no doubt that the interface is cool, intuitive, etc. But there are other DAW's that are probably better suited to particular situations, and nothing wrong with that either. There's really no right or wrong answer, any more than choosing your guitar or amp or anything else.

 

 

So how did you choose Reaper as your other daw?

 

I am really starting to like it!

[IsildursBane]

PT editing interface is great, but as far as DAW's for the home studio go, PT LE sucks: limited track counts, no ADC, limited hardware options, gotta pay for VST support, gotta pay for OMF support... There are better options for someone going all-native.

 

However, PT HD is another matter. The HD cards serve as a dedicated digital mixer & dsp platform, which allows you to use loads of plugins while tracking w/ no latency. Nothing else gets you close to that level of performance. That's the real advantage of Pro Tools and one of the big reasons why it's going to stay at the top for a while.

 

-Dan.

[Lee Flier]

 

PT editing interface is great, but as far as DAW's for the home studio go, PT LE sucks: limited track counts, no ADC, limited hardware options, gotta pay for VST support, gotta pay for OMF support... There are better options for someone going all-native.

 

 

Yeah, exactly. The lack of ADC in particular is just bizarre, I mean every $2 DAW has that now.

 

 

However, PT HD is another matter. The HD cards serve as a dedicated digital mixer & dsp platform, which allows you to use loads of plugins while tracking w/ no latency. Nothing else gets you close to that level of performance. That's the real advantage of Pro Tools and one of the big reasons why it's going to stay at the top for a while.

 

 

I dunno, that used to be more true than it is today. With multi-core CPU's now the norm, you can do a LOT with a native system now. Unless you're running a bajillion tracks with a bajillion plugins (which I tend not to), it shouldn't be much of an issue if any.

 

And there are other DSP cards around for less than Digi's e.g. UAD.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

PT editing interface is great, but as far as DAW's for the home studio go, PT LE sucks: limited track counts, no ADC, limited hardware options, gotta pay for VST support, gotta pay for OMF support... There are better options for someone going all-native.=

 

 

A lot of that is true, and I also find no ADC to be absolutely bizarre, and am disappointed that it's not in PT8 either. When are they going to bust this out?

 

Can you clarify paying for VST or OMF support?

 

I am running LE, and don't have a problem with the track count or anything else, and I have a reasonable amount of plug-ins and Elastic Time, so that's working out, but I do realize its limitations can be daunting for some.

 

I cannot believe they have not added ADC. Very very strange. I'll bet it's one of their most requested items, too.

[thedh02]

How is PT M-Powered in comparison to PTLE?

I was getting kinda excited about saving up for that ProjectMix i/o.

If I'm running that with PT M-Powered, I'm not gonna be running a crippled system, am I?

[BushmasterM4]

Tracktion 3 user here too. I started with Tracktion 2. Never really tried anything else. I did download Reaper and installed it, but I have not tried it. ProTools, in my research 2 years ago when first getting into recording, was too proprietary in nature. And very much more expensive. Why spend the extra money on ProTools (hardware and/or software versions) when there are many less expensive choices, that will do the same thing. And are not hardware dependant.

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

How is PT M-Powered in comparison to PTLE? I was getting kinda excited about saving up for that ProjectMix i/o. If I'm running that with PT M-Powered, I'm not gonna be running a crippled system, am I?

 

 

Depends on what you mean by "crippled". Compared to my PT HD|2 Accel system, yes, it's going to be limited in several ways. You won't be able to add additional I/O, and no matter what hardware you run, you'll never have more than 18 channels of I/O with a LE or M-Powered system. I'm running 32 on HD, and could hook up another 32 channels of I/O if I wanted to. There are also other software limitations in LE vs HD, not to mention the delay compensation and DSP of the HD systems... LE and MP rely solely on the computer's "native" computational horsepower, and automatic delay compensation is only available via an extra cost, third party plugin.

 

However, LE and MP systems are nearly identical in terms of software and capabilities. Gus, the moderator of KSS [the keyboard forum here on HC] is a M-Audio guru - he can tell you the details about the differences, but they're really pretty slight, and sessions are compatible between all three versions of Pro Tools.

[Phil O'Keefe]

A lot of that is true, and I also find no ADC to be absolutely bizarre, and am disappointed that it's not in PT8 either. When are they going to bust this out? Can you clarify paying for VST or OMF support?

 

You have to pay extra to run VST's in Pro Tools - the www.fxpansion.com VST->RTAS adapter. Works great. 99 bucks.

 

I am running LE, and don't have a problem with the track count or anything else, and I have a reasonable amount of plug-ins and Elastic Time, so that's working out, but I do realize its limitations can be daunting for some.

 

They've been chipping away at the track count limitation for nearly as long as LE has been around. First it was 24. Everyone was happy, but soon, calls for at least 32 rang out on the DUC. Then they went to 32. Still not enough for some people [although I've always felt that, with up to 128 tracks, and 32 voiced tracks, if you can't get it done... ], so eventually Digidesign released the toolkits that gave people the option of up to 48 mono OR stereo tracks. Pro Tools 8 ups the "standard" track count [as well as the toolkit track counts] yet again; this time to 48 as "standard".

 

Some people will still complain.... but again, if 48 tracks isn't enough [with an option for more...] then maybe PTLE / MP isn't "right" for them.

 

I cannot believe they have not added ADC. Very very strange. I'll bet it's one of their most requested items, too.

 

It's been in the "top five" for years Ken. On the bright side, editable MIDI notation / score features have been near the top of my list since day one... and they finally added that in PT8.

[Lee Flier]

Oh, and I did want to respond to this:

 

 

First off, if ease of use is your main concern, then I would consider changing your outlook or cancelling your recording class, because that's not a good attitude to have in this business.

 

 

If your intention is to be a pro engineer and work in commercial studios, you're right - you have to be willing to jump through whatever technical hoops are necessary to deal with a wide variety of situations. But if you're a musician and you just want a setup for recording your own projects, then ease of use SHOULD be the top priority, because you want your focus to be on the creative part, not the technical part. So the optimal pro studio and the home studio setups might be very different from each other. Mine certainly are.

 

So I wouldn't go around making blanket generalizations like this.

[Lee Flier]

So how did you choose Reaper as your other daw? I am really starting to like it!

 

Well, a couple of my friends and some people here on HC starting buzzing about it, so I checked it out. It's free to download, so why not, right? And I loved the philosophy behind it - a small company developing a cheap, full featured DAW with a small footprint, and being entirely responsive to input from users. I mean, bug reports get fixed within days, and new features are added constantly.

 

None of this would do me any good if the system was buggy, kludgy or didn't do everything I needed, though. Luckily, it turned out that it does. The other good thing is that I can collaborate with other musicians who record at home. I've had clients do their own editing or overdubs or rough mixes, then pass me the Reaper session file to do the final mix, etc. Since it's so cheap, has such a small footprint and works with pretty much any hardware, it's easy to get everybody on the same page, even if they're just a bunch of broke musicians.

[CME]

 

How is PT M-Powered in comparison to PTLE? I was getting kinda excited about saving up for that ProjectMix i/o. If I'm running that with PT M-Powered, I'm not gonna be running a crippled system, am I?

 

 

Unless something has changed the DV Toolkit, and I would assume the new Complete Toolkit, is not compatible with MP. However the Music Production Toolkit is compatible as far as I know. Other than that, and what Phil mentioned, it's basically the same as LE. Just you get to use M-Audio hardware.

[UstadKhanAli]

You have to pay extra to run VST's in Pro Tools - the www.fxpansion.com VST->RTAS adapter. Works great. 99 bucks.

 

Oh, that's what's meant by support. To me, that's just a fee to for a product that enables you to use VST, but okay...

 

Well worth it, regardless. Really opens up a lot of options. And if you buy the Mellowmuse ATA, the wrapper's $49.

 

They've been chipping away at the track count limitation for nearly as long as LE has been around. First it was 24. Everyone was happy, but soon, calls for at least 32 rang out on the DUC. Then they went to 32. Still not enough for some people [although I've always felt that, with up to 128 tracks, and 32 voiced tracks, if you can't get it done... ], so eventually Digidesign released the toolkits that gave people the option of up to 48 mono OR stereo tracks. Pro Tools 8 ups the "standard" track count [as well as the toolkit track counts] yet again; this time to 48 as "standard". Some people will still complain.... but again, if 48 tracks isn't enough [with an option for more...] then maybe PTLE / MP isn't "right" for them.

 

For most people and situations, 48 tracks is more than enough. I have had been told by some people who work in the film industry that they actually need as many as 128 tracks quite often.

 

 

It's been in the "top five" for years Ken. On the bright side, editable MIDI notation / score features have been near the top of my list since day one... and they finally added that in PT8.

 

I figured it was a "top five" item.

 

I'm glad they added five extra inserts too. I don't think I'll need them most of the time, but since the Mellowmuse ATA takes up one, you never know.