PRO TOOLS? Why The Hype? Compared to SX, Sonar...

[Sidhu]

BTW: I run a G5 dual 2ghz with 3GigRam. Still Crashes

Mac stability becomes an illusion when your working in audio! But then again, windows boxes crash by them selves

BS.

[Zacchino]

I think your daw depends on your music too, for a great part of it.

But the great Daws are the one with which you can make any kind of music.

PC or Mac, well, depends on what system you're most confortable with. I chose PC because it lets you the choice to choose. Mac is great because it lets you the choice not to choose (yep, that's an advantage).

[SJ_Digriz]

I think your daw depends on your music too, for a great part of it.

But the great Daws are the one with which you can make any kind of music.

PC or Mac, well, depends on what system you're most confortable with. I chose PC because it lets you the choice to choose. Mac is great because it lets you the choice not to choose (yep, that's an advantage).

Zacchino, hey man I'm not picking on you, so please don't get offended, but this comment is exactly what I was talking about earlier about people not knowing what PT does.

The reason PT kicks ass in a production setup has NOTHING to do with music creation. What PT does in a post studio can't be duplicated by the other apps yet. Also, for extensive tracking and audio editing there is still a big gap.

Again, we are NOT talking about the process of sitting down and writing/creating a song. PT is extremely weak in that area even with the excellent audio editor. But, it has strong points in managing audio for a production environment including the setups for TV, radio and film.

[Sascha Franck]

If it was all about rock solid performance (and I really mean that'd be ALL I care about), I'd probably setup a Logic 5.5.1/PC. I have a laptop which I only use for mobile recordings, no net connection, no additional plugins apart from a few which have proven themselves to do no harm at all, just Logic 5.5.1 and a Hammerfall DSP (cardbus) card.
I've been setting up this system last year in march and have finished quite some intense recording sessions, including almost 24/7 use (well ok, make that 18/7 use, you gotta sleep at some time...) and including BOTH recording AND mixing (even doing the stage monitoring) a live gig through Logic.

I am in no way defending anything here, but guess how often this system has crashed... right: It hasn't! Not a single crash at all (fwiw, this system is running XP Home, SP1, only a few minor tweaks applied, on a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo, P4 3GHz, 512MB RAM)). I could stress it as hard as possible, no crashes. I wouldn't even happen to know how to crash it.
And it's defenitely more stable than Mac systems using the same or more recent Logic versions I had the questionable pleasure of working with.
I can plug in/out USB devices, such as QWERTY keyboards, external drives, etc. while recording 16 tracks of audio (24bit) simultaneously (yes, I've been doing such stress tests), not a single glitch.

However, the same might be true for "certain" SX based systems (even if on the very same machine SX isn't performing as well). And it might be true for some other systems too. It's just that I haven't seen a system as stable ever before.

Anyways, if I were to run a professional studio business, mainly dealing with multitrack audio recordings, yes, I might go the PT route, because, as others allready stated, it seems to be the most stable and versatile choice for that kind of job. Sure, I'd trust the system mentioned above any day (just that I wouldn't use a laptop), but tracking multiple takes of multiple inputs can easily become somewhat timeconsuming in Logic (or SX/Nuendo for the matter) - some area where PT still excels, IMO (mind you, I don't know PT much at all).
In addition, there's great plugins written for dedicated hardware, so chances of things crashing are at least somewhat reduced, compared to, say, "Oh, let me install this brand new plugin and use it while mixing in Sonar/Cubase/Logic".
And while programs such as Samplitude or Nuendo might catch up a LOT in terms of features, I do think they still have a rather long way to go to catch up in terms of stability - basically (or at least pretty much often) not a fault of the programs per se, but simply because they have to run on a multitude of natively based systems.
Just read all the numerous posts on KVR and other forums, such as "after half an hour of recording audio my system starts to crackle" - you just CAN'T afford any such a thing in a professional environment, unless you wanted your first job to be the last one as well.

In the end, I also agree with what has been said before: For your personal (or semi professional) studio needs, PT might not be the way to go at all. Stability of course still is an issue for everybody - but it's only wrecking your own nerves, rather than costing you money, let alone losing a job.
You would rather care about features, plugin compatibility and price. Regarding that PT is pretty much out of the game for the home/project/semipro studio market.

Finally, as I've been watching the increased stability of native systems (and as I've been wading through all the possible troubles of setting up systems for my own and for others), I can only say that things are improving greatly. Better OS's (XP is an incredible improvement over 98 for anything audio related, the same *might* be true for OSX), better hardware drivers, less poorly written code, better x-platform standards implemented (OMF, just to name one), powerful native processing, DSP acceleration cards.... all those are finally looking more than just promising - so, the days of PT domination *might* be over one day. But we're not quite there yet.

[popsych]

I think your daw depends on your music too, for a great part of it.

But the great Daws are the one with which you can make any kind of music.

PC or Mac, well, depends on what system you're most confortable with. I chose PC because it lets you the choice to choose. Mac is great because it lets you the choice not to choose (yep, that's an advantage).

Zacchino, hey man I'm not picking on you, so please don't get offended, but this comment is exactly what I was talking about earlier about people not knowing what PT does.

The reason PT kicks ass in a production setup has NOTHING to do with music creation. What PT does in a post studio can't be duplicated by the other apps yet. Also, for extensive tracking and audio editing there is still a big gap.

Again, we are NOT talking about the process of sitting down and writing/creating a song. PT is extremely weak in that area even with the excellent audio editor. But, it has strong points in managing audio for a production environment including the setups for TV, radio and film.

I think Sequoia matches if not Surpasses it for audio work and post-pro work.

@Sascha Frank : I haven't had a single crash with Samp. What makes you say it's not stable ?

[Sascha Franck]

@Sascha Frank : I haven't had a single crash with Samp. What makes you say it's not stable ?

Admittedly: Hearsay, nothing else. Haven't even tried the demo yet. But it seems a lot of people are having a lot of problems with V8.
But it's great to know of someone running it without problems - y'know, still occasionally looking for a Logic alternative (SX doesn't qualify at all yet). Too bad there's no x-platform support, which will effectively keep Samplitude away from quite some pro studios (I know, some are allready using it... still, most studios I know of over here are using Macs, be it out of tradition or because they're running Logic/PT).

[Zacchino]

But, it has strong points in managing audio for a production environment including the setups for TV, radio and film.

No offense taken. I was talking about the creative part so maybe I wasn't quite in the subject.

So I agree 100% : Pro Tools is a Pro Studio tool. When I saw how fast you could make a full chorus, fx included, taking shots, croping them, choosing the right one, etc... All in a speed of a thought (thanx to Pro Tools Engineers)... You know that it's made for professionnals that have 10 sessions a day.

[bugs]

Pro Tools has one great attribute to my mind--it will host the Oxford Plugs at a lower price point than PoCo. I am hoping Sony makes available these plugs in VST format or, at least, compatible with Soundforge.

[Armadillo]

I'd actually like to try it out just so that when one of the studios want to hire me at least I can say: "of course I know it like the back of my hand". But PT Free only works on Win98 it seems Do I really need to go out and buy 98 and install it on my pc just to get a look at Pro Tools?

PT free will give you a good feel of PT (thought the 6.x versions are a lot slicker)

Sidhu

I'd still need to get win98 then

[raapie]

A standard makes things easier to swap between studios. I mainly use Ableton Live and Nuendo for audio myself. The last session I did was on PT5 and Mac G4. A session of 2 days. I played guitar, didn't enigeer. Using Amp Farm plugin for some stuff. Worked very well. No crashes in those two days and everything went well.

My first experiences are with one of the first versions if I am correct, somewhere around 1994. I have nothing but good experiences with it. Maybe the LE versions are good as well, but I have no experience with those.

But I need to say Live and Reason is one hell of a combo too. I have done work on it running those 2 together for days and days without crashes. Even with Reason3 beta that is

[popsych]

Pro Tools has one great attribute to my mind--it will host the Oxford Plugs at a lower price point than PoCo. I am hoping Sony makes available these plugs in VST format or, at least, compatible with Soundforge.

Second that

[HHaynes]

The reason PT kicks ass in a production setup has NOTHING to do with music creation. What PT does in a post studio can't be duplicated by the other apps yet.

Erm Nuendo...

[popsych]

The reason PT kicks ass in a production setup has NOTHING to do with music creation. What PT does in a post studio can't be duplicated by the other apps yet.

Erm Nuendo...

I forgot to mention it alongside samplitude. Oops. Maybe it's cause i hate steinberg .IMHO though I find that SAMP and PT are a bit better off audio editing wise though. This is having tried Nuendo 2, PT 6.7 and Samp/Sequoia 8 mind you.

[raapie]

Nuendo is okay but not very good. A single FM7 plugin can crash Nuendo 2.239 by working on the automation. That really annoys me. Rewired application like Reason misses first note on rendering.

This kind of stuff works perfectly in Live 4.

[SJ_Digriz]

Erm Nuendo...

Errmmm...not even close. The project format transfer stuff is bug ridden as hell and Nuendo still can't multi-track and give you tracks of the same audio length even when recorded at the same time. That is an absolute disaster. These are just 2 examples. There are many more.

HOWEVER, I am NOT saying that PT is the be all and end all of DAWs. Far from it. I'm just pointing out that PT bashing is largely done out of ignorance. I'm a long time Cubase user. Version 5.1 NEVER crashed on me. Version 3.01 has never crashed on me. I can't say that about most of the releases between then and now. But I have been in a 24/7 TV studio and seen a PT setup get abused by multiple groups of engineers running in and out all day and all night for months at a time without a glitch.