Why ProTools?

[VicDiesel]

Alsihad

I've never been able to figure out how whoever came up with that name.

Explain?

V.

[lavoll]

Alsihad

I've never been able to figure out how whoever came up with that name.

Explain?

V.

go here
http://marsh.prosoundweb.com/index.php/f/2/

and search for the mixerman diaries

they might laso be at recpit.prosoundweb.com

[TVD]

I used to work for Digidesign, they're both liked and disliked, a lot like the mac platform.

Of course "each to their own", though due to ProTools market dominance I'd have to say it's a good idea to at least learn what you can in the software.

I think Digidesign got market dominance by being the first to offer a scalable I/O configuration with onboard DSP for EQ and compressors, etc. This sort of mixing environment was impossible without dedicated DSP a few years back.

ProTools is still the most sophisticated popular audio-editing software, it has true sample-accurate region editing and playback (which most hosts do not) and it has MIDI timing which is superior as well (though I agree about the MIDI, and I know they continue to improve ProTools here).

ProTools is tough to talk about at times since it is a software-hardware combination.. As well, you get added software features with the full-version (non LE) Really there's a lot to say about both the software and the hardware as both have good merits.

Of course good music/mixes/whatever can be done without any of it, but it is a good result-oriented-solution.

I feel most comfortable editing and mixing in ProTools over any other software. Editing is no comparison, Logic has some nice BPM/song related features (like loop) but above this for any serious comping/tightening or non BPM-based editing nothing is more ergonomic and quick to me than ProTools.

I've mixed a fair amount in Logic too, but I typically bounce files out of logic and bring in to ProTools, the rough ProTools mix tends to beat my rough Logic mix in a matter of minutes... I would think the 56-bit stereo accumulator has something to do with this, but it wouldn't really make sense as Logic uses the same TDM mixer in my case. I guess this really just come down to UI, smooth fader increments by 0.1 db, more convienent automation adusting, etc.

-Steve

CORRECTION: Audition (formerly Cool Edit)can match Pro-tools in audio edited abilities.

But you are right about everything else. Pro-Tools was the first to have a market. Recording audio was & still is its biggest strength.

But with MIDI tracks, Pro-tools (counting LE & Free) still have some growing up to do. Logic, Cubase SX, & Sonar are still kings because they were MIDI recording softwares first and audio recording softwares secord.

Hell, even Tracktion, FL Studio, & Project5 are kings of MIDI recording at times compare to Pro-tools.

Some of us still need more than one host because of this topic.

But allow me to add more gas to the fire with this question:

Can we even make room for more than one standard of audio recording? Beside Pro-Tools alone, why not Audition (remember: I like to have both soon ) and other recording softwares?

[Count Feedback]

Alsihad

I've never been able to figure out how whoever came up with that name.

Explain?

V.

go here
http://marsh.prosoundweb.com/index.php/f/2/

and search for the mixerman diaries

they might laso be at recpit.prosoundweb.com

Urugggh!

Beat me to it!
Mixerman diaries is going to hit the presses soon, and coming out on hardcover! Highly recommended read.
My girlfriend is supposed to get a complimentary copy when it comes out.
I look forward to stealing it when it gets here.

[TVD]

SawStudio was the first program to natively record 4 tracks of audio on a PC.

Protools was first to run 8 tracks. This took much more money with less editing power and less effects. Soon after again SawStudio did more with less hardware. This is for the record of history on audio recording

This is if anyone cares

And even now, Pro-Tools is killing SawStudio because of better marketing. But can you tell me if SawStudio is "easy" to learn like Pro-Tools?

[VicDiesel]

and search for the mixerman diaries

"Bitch slap or bust"? Yeah, I read that 2 years ago. He uses the term left and right, but I've never found the explanation.

Not even in the glossary of terms.

V.

[Kim Lajoie]

Mixerman diaries is going to hit the presses soon, and coming out on hardcover! Highly recommended read.
My girlfriend is supposed to get a complimentary copy when it comes out.
I look forward to stealing it when it gets here.

Serious?? I've got to get a copy!!

I also read it a couple of years ago when it was unfolding, but it'll be great to read it on paper.

Forever,




Kim.

[Tatter]

Alive In Chernobyl!
Alive In Chernobyl!
Alive In Chernobyl!

at last...
How can I contact with you?
Please answer me. I see you never look at your "private message box" here.

what about your new album?

[7XL]

Has anyone ever heard of the Digital Audio Labs V8 AKA Big Block?

Just wondering. It's a dead product now. But when it was new it kicked Digi's ass.

[Tatter]

Or you can know sawstudio has been doing this for many years already natively at 44.1khz on Pentium III's!

Alive In Chernobyl!
Alive In Chernobyl!
Alive In Chernobyl!

at last...
How can I contact with you?
Please answer me. I see you never look at your "private message box" here.

[derek]

as others said, protools was first, thats really the big deal about it.

these days, speaking strictly feature-wise, there is really no huge difference at all. protools got some neat tricks here, nuendo there, logic somewhere else.

the listed advantages about sample accurate editing and playback or more precise midi timing, thats all long gone. every sequencer these days allows editing and (of course) playback with sample precision, and time stamped midi is old news, these days even windows has that itself as part of direct x.
integration with big studios is even better in nuendo - protools supports the traditional sync standards, smpte, vitc, mtc, always plus wordclock, the usual ltc stuff. nuendo does all these too plus the more modern (and most importantly more precise) steinberg thingies like asio 2.0, system link (which isnt all that great at "linking" but rocks when used just as a sync protocol), translating and using ADAT sync and such. even rewire could be mentioned here, allthough i have no idea whether protools does that or not. the traditional sync protocols could chase with sample precision but not lock. the more modern protocols can both lock and chase with sample precision, plus the lock times are a lot faster, feels more or less like being just one machine.

the only big difference remaining (assuming were talking about the big protools TDM systems, those with DSPS) is the basic architecture everything is built on.

protools is based on DSPs, it comes from a time where DSPs were badly needed. that has its pros and cons.

pros: next to no latency when monitoring through plugins. of course the more complex plugins have a latency of their own and protools cant compensate for that in realtime since like all mortal things it cant look into the future. but there is no basic realtime monitoring latency, just the plugins latency, where in native systems you have basic latency plus plugin latency.

in the real world (=including AD/DA conversion) were talking about something like 4 ms (protools) vs 4 ms plus whatever your setting is in your native systems audiocard. in good cases, i.e. with a hammerfall on a good system thats 5,5 ms then. not such a big deal really, and for critical monitoring like a real drummer, youll want to avoid any latency at all anyway and would choose the direct (plugin free) monitoring anyway.

of course you can also have much higher latencies if you have a crappy system and a cheapo soundcard that does 10 ms latency at best (then resulting in about 14 ms monitoring latency in real life). that old you-get-what-you-pay-for thing ;-)


cons: DSPs strenght is realtime processing, but its also their weakness. bouncing some tracks offline in a fraction of the songs lenght, nope. 100% latency compensation throughout all busses including subgroups and auxes, also problematic - in software solutions, all of this is always possible because your software can easily be programmed the way you want it to be. with DSPs aka hardware, you always have to deal with whatever architecture your DSP cards have, so there are limits. last time i checked protools didnt have complete latency compensation, i dont know if that is because its not possible or just because digi was still working on it and now its possible. another example: i hope nuendo will soon allow one to work and mix object oriented too as samplitude does (put 249676342 objects on the same track and each gets their own set of plugins and mix settings, independent of the mixer). since its all software, this is very well possible that steinberg will follow. with the DSPs and the time they take to reinitialize, i would imagine this wouldnt be that easy with TDM.


anyway, personally i think most sequencers have more or less completely catched up with protools as far as the audio editing part goes (the thing protools used to have the edge), logic is still a little behind, nuendo and also samplitude are on par, a little advantage here, a little disadvantage there.

on the other hand, protools definetly has NOT catched up completely with the sequencers in their domain. that goes for all things midi, and especially virtual instruments (the reason were all here ;-). protools is a bucket full of compromises and workarounds here compared to almost any modern virtual instrument host. it does work, but its, well, "not fun" IMO. and a lot less plugins to choose from.

speaking about the plugins, the effects in this case(i.e. the filterbank) - that was true some time ago but these days with powercore and especially the UAD, thats really a thing of the past too. absolute highend plugins can be had for every platform, the way it should be :-)

performance wise its also more or less the same: if you compare a typical PT HD setup with a fast dual CPU computer plus three or four DSP cards like UAD or powercore (which still would cost a lot less), its tought to say which would have the advantage.
in the past it was clear that a DSP system would always smoke anything that said "native processing" on the box, but then people used 300 mhz CPUs and not 3 GHZ CPUs, and no addon DSP cards like today.


so it really comes down to protools being "first" and now being sort of the standard - plus good marketing. of course cubase logic et all have been around for a long time too, but they started out as midi sequencers and thus were a completely different thing.

[TVD]

as others said, protools was first, thats really the big deal about it.

these days, speaking strictly feature-wise, there is really no huge difference at all. protools got some neat tricks here, nuendo there, logic somewhere else.

the listed advantages about sample accurate editing and playback or more precise midi timing, thats all long gone. every sequencer these days allows editing and (of course) playback with sample precision, and time stamped midi is old news, these days even windows has that itself as part of direct x.
integration with big studios is even better in nuendo - protools supports the traditional sync standards, smpte, vitc, mtc, always plus wordclock, the usual ltc stuff. nuendo does all these too plus the more modern (and most importantly more precise) steinberg thingies like asio 2.0, system link (which isnt all that great at "linking" but rocks when used just as a sync protocol), translating and using ADAT sync and such. even rewire could be mentioned here, allthough i have no idea whether protools does that or not. the traditional sync protocols could chase with sample precision but not lock. the more modern protocols can both lock and chase with sample precision, plus the lock times are a lot faster, feels more or less like being just one machine.

the only big difference remaining (assuming were talking about the big protools TDM systems, those with DSPS) is the basic architecture everything is built on.

protools is based on DSPs, it comes from a time where DSPs were badly needed. that has its pros and cons.

pros: next to no latency when monitoring through plugins. of course the more complex plugins have a latency of their own and protools cant compensate for that in realtime since like all mortal things it cant look into the future. but there is no basic realtime monitoring latency, just the plugins latency, where in native systems you have basic latency plus plugin latency.

in the real world (=including AD/DA conversion) were talking about something like 4 ms (protools) vs 4 ms plus whatever your setting is in your native systems audiocard. in good cases, i.e. with a hammerfall on a good system thats 5,5 ms then. not such a big deal really, and for critical monitoring like a real drummer, youll want to avoid any latency at all anyway and would choose the direct (plugin free) monitoring anyway.

of course you can also have much higher latencies if you have a crappy system and a cheapo soundcard that does 10 ms latency at best (then resulting in about 14 ms monitoring latency in real life). that old you-get-what-you-pay-for thing


cons: DSPs strenght is realtime processing, but its also their weakness. bouncing some tracks offline in a fraction of the songs lenght, nope. 100% latency compensation throughout all busses including subgroups and auxes, also problematic - in software solutions, all of this is always possible because your software can easily be programmed the way you want it to be. with DSPs aka hardware, you always have to deal with whatever architecture your DSP cards have, so there are limits. last time i checked protools didnt have complete latency compensation, i dont know if that is because its not possible or just because digi was still working on it and now its possible. another example: i hope nuendo will soon allow one to work and mix object oriented too as samplitude does (put 249676342 objects on the same track and each gets their own set of plugins and mix settings, independent of the mixer). since its all software, this is very well possible that steinberg will follow. with the DSPs and the time they take to reinitialize, i would imagine this wouldnt be that easy with TDM.


anyway, personally i think most sequencers have more or less completely catched up with protools as far as the audio editing part goes (the thing protools used to have the edge), logic is still a little behind, nuendo and also samplitude are on par, a little advantage here, a little disadvantage there.

on the other hand, protools definetly has NOT catched up completely with the sequencers in their domain. that goes for all things midi, and especially virtual instruments (the reason were all here . protools is a bucket full of compromises and workarounds here compared to almost any modern virtual instrument host. it does work, but its, well, "not fun" IMO. and a lot less plugins to choose from.

speaking about the plugins, the effects in this case(i.e. the filterbank) - that was true some time ago but these days with powercore and especially the UAD, thats really a thing of the past too. absolute highend plugins can be had for every platform, the way it should be

performance wise its also more or less the same: if you compare a typical PT HD setup with a fast dual CPU computer plus three or four DSP cards like UAD or powercore (which still would cost a lot less), its tought to say which would have the advantage.
in the past it was clear that a DSP system would always smoke anything that said "native processing" on the box, but then people used 300 mhz CPUs and not 3 GHZ CPUs, and no addon DSP cards like today.


so it really comes down to protools being "first" and now being sort of the standard - plus good marketing. of course cubase logic et all have been around for a long time too, but they started out as midi sequencers and thus were a completely different thing.

So if we buy Audition instead of Pro-Tools, are we better off? Why/Why not?

[derek]

never heard of audition, sorry.

[lavoll]

audition is the old cool edit.

i use both pro tools as well as cool edit (in different studios) and everything i do in pro tools i can do a gazillion times faster in cool edit.

someone tried to convince me that pro tools "sounds better". I cant hear the difference