Wonderful Mysterious Pro Tools LE-002 Problem

[Anderton]

 

I'm not trolling or anything, but I'll chime in a bit. I tried downloading a ProTools demo when it first came out, and it wouldn't even start up. As time progressed, I found I couldn't live without plugin latency compensation, and could live quite comfortably without having a musical stake in PT. I'll stay with Reaper, and force myself to live with it's free frequent upgrades, unlimited track counts, and ability to use VST and DX plugs...

 

 

The problem people have with Pro Tools bashers is that the material gets kinda old. I don't think any person who uses Pro Tools is going to read a forum post and say "What? There are track limitations and I have to pay a lot for upgrades?!?" Pro Tools's limitations are well-known by this point, and to a lesser extent, their remedies for those limitations are known as well. (And every time I see someone point out that Reason doesn't support third party plug-ins, I can't help but wonder if they just woke up from a very, very long sleep a few days ago.)

 

Reaper has its fans and every now and then, I download it because someone says "You really have to check out the latest version" but then I find it has some deal-breaker...like not being able to edit or create Acidized files, only read them. For someone who uses tempo changes as much as I do, and does as much audio for video as I do, that's a problem. For other people, that wouldn't be a problem at all. But, I'm not going to tell Reaper fans it sucks because it can't edit Acidized files.

[Anderton]

The other thing is blinders, like the clip gain feature. Avid says they have clip gain, and are jumped over immediately by people who point out, quite correctly, that other programs have had clip gain for years. But they say that without seeing how Avid implemented it, which is better than any other implementation I've used.

 

I simply cannot understand why everything in life is seemingly being reduced to a sports mentality where there has to be a winner, a loser, and a conflict to produce those two entities. I watched the Republican debate the other night and was shocked at how the intro was like an intro to a wrestling match (and I mean the fake kind). It was such an Idiocracy moment I couldn't believe it.

 

I don't see a lot of dialog in the world these days, I see a lot of sequential and sometimes even parallel monologues...my favorite being posts on forums expressing strong opinions from people who've never used what they're opining about. But, people are being pushed in this direction to a large extent by the media, which focuses on differences, and magnifies them to the create the kind of conflict that fits in well with a mentality that is taught dualism pretty much from the cradle on.

 

Technology may be digital, but the world is analog. People seem to want to simplify it (or dumb it down, take your pick) to a digital world where nuances and shades of gray are foreign. Every time I see some media person say "Answer the question! Yes or no!" I feel like slugging them. What's wrong with an answer along the lines of "Well, if A, then yes. If B, then no. If C, then neither is relevant."

 

I truly believe nothing's better left unsaid...but more importantly, nothing's better left unquestioned. And asking those questions should be about a search for the truth, not a competition.

[MikeRivers]

The other thing is blinders, like the clip gain feature. Avid says they have clip gain, and are jumped over immediately by people who point out, quite correctly, that other programs have had clip gain for years. But they say that without seeing how Avid implemented it, which is better than any other implementation I've used.

 

Makes you wonder why nobody else put a pop-up volume slider on a selected chunk of audio. Was there some technological breakthrough that allowed them to do it? I don't think so, but I agree that when what you want to do is make a simple volume change, it's easier and faster than drawing a volume envelope or even making what's already there visible, dragging it and then making it get out of the way.

 

Sometimes a manufacturer gets a new take on a part of the user interface right. Sometimes what they do is really stupid. I'm not arguing against Pro Tools here, everybody has screwed up a control now and then.

 

What I don't get is that some people expect that once a feature becomes available in one program, it will become universal. You can't use Reaper because it doesn't edit Acid files. Don't you have Acid for that? You can call any editor you want from Reaper. I was surprised when I did what I thought I should do in order to edit a file in Reaper (without reading the manual) and it asked me what editor program I wanted to use. So now when I'm in Reaper and need to edit a track, Sound Forge opens, and I already know how to use that so I don't have to learn a different set of key combinations. We get used to what we use, and often we'd rather fight a little with what we know than switch and learn a whole bunch of different things.

 

I think the Pro Tools want-nots are not so much concerned about taking a step back from what they have in order to use it, but more that with each update, they start to feel like it's getting closer to being something that they'll have to have. Indeed it's been that way for professional studios for many years now.

 

I watched the Republican debate the other night and was shocked at how the intro was like an intro to a wrestling match (and I mean the fake kind). It was such an Idiocracy moment I couldn't believe it.

 

It's entertainment.

 

I don't see a lot of dialog in the world these days, I see a lot of sequential and sometimes even parallel monologues...my favorite being posts on forums expressing strong opinions from people who've never used what they're opining about.

 

I've never tried Pro Tools (at the moment, it's the lack of a computer that's stopping me) so I try to refrain from making negative comments about it. But I take in what others say and will probably find myself influenced by what I read on forums once I get around to setting up a system. But then, I have no compelling need to use Pro Tools, nor, do I believe, do most of those who are making comments about "finally catching up" and costly upgrades.

 

But, people are being pushed in this direction to a large extent by the media, which focuses on differences, and magnifies them to the create the kind of conflict that fits in well with a mentality that is taught dualism pretty much from the cradle on.

 

Hey, those people had to invent ways to keep their jobs, too, just like software vendors.

 

Every time I see some media person say "Answer the question! Yes or no!" I feel like slugging them. What's wrong with an answer along the lines of "Well, if A, then yes. If B, then no. If C, then neither is relevant."

 

Unfortunately, that's the way the court system works, and there's too much of that on television. We get to know that this is how it's supposed to work.

 

I truly believe nothing's better left unsaid...but more importantly, nothing's better left unquestioned. And asking those questions should be about a search for the truth, not a competition.

 

I find that often when I ask questions about something technical, it's really hard to find the truth. Sometimes I care what the truth is, sometimes I don't. I try to look for things that I have a chance of finding and either accept or reject things for which I have unanswered questions. And sometimes I don't like the truth, or more often, recognize why the truth will be unpopular. Often the reason behind the reason is that someone decides that it's a better way to make money and that's what people who need the product and don't have a lot of money don't like to hear.

[russrags]

If your going to survive in a major music market, your going to have to know Pro Tools inside and out. Spend a gazillion bucks at Full Sail, and guess what, your going to learn Pro Tools. Like I said, people tend to like whatever they have their money tied up in. Can't everybody play nice???

 

Russ

Nashville

[MikeRivers]

 

If your going to survive in a major music market, your going to have to know Pro Tools inside and out. Spend a gazillion bucks at Full Sail, and guess what, your going to learn Pro Tools. Like I said, people tend to like whatever they have their money tied up in.

 

 

Nashville is certainly a major market as far as music is concerned, but the studios there had a long history of doing things a little differently. When NY and LA studios were buying Sony 3324 and 3348 DASH digital tape recorders, Nashville was using Mitsubishi Pro-Digi X-850s. Nashville wasn't a big film town, so the TASCAM DTRS recorders didn't catch on as well there (or in the rest of the country for that matter) as Alesls ADATs.

 

When DAWs started to be able to do serious work, Nashville studios were buying Radar recorders. And when Pro Tools really started to take hold, there were some pretty well known Nashville engineers who went with Nuendo - probably, at the time, for some good reasons like its mixer sounded better than Pro Tools, they could use whatever converters they wanted, and it had a pretty good emulation of a studio monitoring system in software.

 

So is Nashville like everybody else now? Or are there still some standout holdouts?

[UstadKhanAli]

 

The problem people have with Pro Tools bashers is that the material gets kinda old. I don't think any person who uses Pro Tools is going to read a forum post and say "What? There are track limitations and I have to pay a lot for upgrades?!?" Pro Tools's limitations are well-known by this point, and to a lesser extent, their remedies for those limitations are known as well.

 

 

Yes, this and that they're non-sequiturs, and complete interruptions. It'd be different if they were typically in context, if someone were discussing the shortcoming of PT or comparing it to other DAWs.

 

 

I simply cannot understand why everything in life is seemingly being reduced to a sports mentality where there has to be a winner, a loser, and a conflict to produce those two entities.

 

 

This is one of the great mysteries of life, viewing things without nuance, context, or any idea that a continuum typically exists. I suppose it's just *easier* to comprehend.

[russrags]

 

When DAWs started to be able to do serious work, Nashville studios were buying Radar recorders. And when Pro Tools really started to take hold, there were some pretty well known Nashville engineers who went with Nuendo - probably, at the time, for some good reasons like its mixer sounded better than Pro Tools, they could use whatever converters they wanted, and it had a pretty good emulation of a studio monitoring system in software. So is Nashville like everybody else now? Or are there still some standout holdouts?

 

 

Mike the top guys have always had their own special niche club of gear going on. I can remember when Flying Faders was popular, they were using GML, Radars come and gone now. Yes there is a Pro Tools / Neuendo thing going on, but many Neuendo users are switching over to Pro Tools Native at the moment. Call up any of the major studios and book a session and ask them what you'll be recording on, the answer will be "Pro Tools." The guy's at the very top, pretty much all have their own studios and can use whatever they want, because their not having to book outside clients, but for the commercial studios who do rely on outside clients, their not going to be offering their clients Sonar, Reaper, Acid etc unless it's tucked away in a corner somewhere in some pre-production/writing type of space. I make my living entirely from music, I know what I have to use to keep that going, if someone has got a nice place to work in a bedroom, use whatever you want, doesn't make any difference to me. People who go against the grain and do things differently, have the ability to change the world, so go out there and change it.

 

Russ

Nashville

[Lee Knight]

 

I simply cannot understand why everything in life is seemingly being reduced to a sports mentality where there has to be a winner, a loser, and a conflict to produce those two entities.

 

 

I just posted some very similar sentiments over at the songwriting forum. It's like trying to find the "winner" between a flat head or a Phillips screwdriver. Clearly a Phillips head sucks. I mean, with a flat head, I can jam it into the Phillips head screw and budge it. So... flat head wins! Phillips sucks!

 

Well, I'll keep both in my arsenal.

[Coaster]

 

I just posted some very similar sentiments over at the songwriting forum. It's like trying to find the "winner" between a flat head or a Phillips screwdriver. Clearly a Phillips head sucks. I mean, with a flat head, I can jam it into the Phillips head screw and budge it. So... flat head wins! Phillips sucks! Well, I'll keep both in my arsenal.

 

 

torx or square drive hands down

[Anderton]

Pro Tools IS a de facto standard. But, I know one prominent engineer (who swore me to secrecy) who does all is tracking in Pro Tools. Then when the client leaeves the studio and he needs to edit, he immediately transfers everything over to another program, and works with that. He's afraid he'd lose business if he revealed his wasn't using Pro tools.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Pro Tools IS a de facto standard. But, I know one prominent engineer (who swore me to secrecy) who does all is tracking in Pro Tools. Then when the client leaeves the studio and he needs to edit, he immediately transfers everything over to another program, and works with that. He's afraid he'd lose business if he revealed his wasn't using Pro tools.

 

 

I've also met a recording engineer who had purchased an inexpensive M-Audio setup with Pro Tools just to be able to honestly advertise that he had Pro Tools to clients, also to try not to lose business, and would use another DAW whenever possible. I get people occasionally who ask if I have Pro Tools, and have even had one who insisted on wanting to record on the "industry standard Pro Tools" for a new recording session.

 

Marketing.

 

Same reason why seemingly all kids want to go to McDonald's.

[UstadKhanAli]

I just posted some very similar sentiments over at the songwriting forum. It's like trying to find the "winner" between a flat head or a Phillips screwdriver. Clearly a Phillips head sucks. I mean, with a flat head, I can jam it into the Phillips head screw and budge it. So... flat head wins! Phillips sucks! Well, I'll keep both in my arsenal.

 

 

I've been posting this sort of sentiment of "Why must everything be viewed as a sporting event" in discussions here for years. Whether it's gear, philosophical approaches, politics, techniques, whatever, it's struck me as odd that people would adopt an either/or approach. Aside from being facile, I don't really understand this viewpoint at all. Rarely in real life is something ever that cut and dry, in yet things are frequently framed this way. And I don't think the media helps either in their depiction of things, whether it's the news, reality TV shows, dramas, or anything else. Us/them, with us/against us, black/white, great/sucks, there/here, Democrats/Republicans, this/that, good/evil, my way/highway.

[philbo]

The problem people have with Pro Tools bashers is that the material gets kinda old. I don't think any person who uses Pro Tools is going to read a forum post and say "What? There are track limitations and I have to pay a lot for upgrades?!?" Pro Tools's limitations are well-known by this point, and to a lesser extent, their remedies for those limitations are known as well. (And every time I see someone point out that Reason doesn't support third party plug-ins, I can't help but wonder if they just woke up from a very, very long sleep a few days ago.) Reaper has its fans and every now and then, I download it because someone says "You really have to check out the latest version" but then I find it has some deal-breaker...like not being able to edit or create Acidized files, only read them. For someone who uses tempo changes as much as I do, and does as much audio for video as I do, that's a problem. For other people, that wouldn't be a problem at all. But, I'm not going to tell Reaper fans it sucks because it can't edit Acidized files.

 

Precisely. I'm not saying PT sucks. I'm saying it's not the best option for me, just as you say Reaper is not the best option for you.

 

It's not a winner takes all or win/lose scenario, it's more like we each pick the tools that work best for what we do.

 

Why would anybody pound in nails with a screwdriver (phillips or flathead)?

Though I've seen people (my Dad) drive in wood screws with a hammer...