Why ProTools?

[LBN]

This article states that the reason Sony lost its initial marketplace dominance with the Betamax is because VHS offered the ability to record two hours on a single tape versus Betamax's one hour tapes. (People wanted to be able to record full movies, unattended, off the television.) By the time two-hour Betamax tapes were available they had lost their market share.

Dunno how this applies to a Pro Tools debate.

Edit: Oh yeah, now I remember... Pro Tools could easily lose its market dominance based on being slow to react to market demands. I have no idea what these demands could be but new ones might arise at any moment. Better MIDI support? Dunno. I'm happy with my DAW and softsynths.

[warbug]

did you email that to the pro tools team .....

[shamann]

This article states that the reason Sony lost its initial marketplace dominance with the Betamax is because VHS offered the ability to record two hours on a single tape versus Betamax's one hour tapes. (People wanted to be able to record full movies, unattended, off the television.) By the time two-hour Betamax tapes were available they had lost their market share.

Interesting read. So now we know the truth.

I found a more detailed article here.

I think what it means for ProTools is that it shows how market forces can lead to one form of technology becoming an industry standard.

Cheers,
Steve

[anfmusic]

The reason Sony lost the VTR market had nothing to do with the length of tape recording. Sony got greedy with the licensing! So greedy, that the other manufacturers ganged up against them and released an alternative. It's the same mistake that Apple computers made with their licensing arrangement.

Agree on Pro Tools though; there are many great apps chipping away at its need. I love seeing the independent programmers like Frits making Podium, and Jorgen making EnergyXT. They are the hope of market and will either take out the more established Programs, or force them to get better.

[bitcrusher]

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

[duncanparsons]

I thought it was because it's an anagram of 'loop rots'.. weren't they going to call it that, but some one thought that ProTools was a little more snappy and less likely to alienate the dance music scene..

I could be wrong...

DSP!

Oh, and I'm happy with NTrack as well...

[Kim Lajoie]

'loop rots'

Loops rot
SloTools (slow tools)
ProToys
Alsihad

Forever,




Kim.

[Kim Lajoie]

Forever,




Kim.

[hoffy]

i think pro tools is an incredible tool

but so is cubase, logic, reason and floops.

it all depends on what you want to do, and which app provides to you the easiest way to achieve what you want.

I think the reason Pro Tools is so popular is because of it's non-destructive audio editing capabilities and dedicated DSP hardware which means that it is capable of some pretty serious number crunching.

and saying it came "first"- not too sure about that. Logic and Cubase have been around for a long, long time.

and anyway, there's no such thing as "the best" anything- only opinions. And despite the flak that pro tools gets around these parts, considering the amount of audio engineers that use it- who no doubt would have also used cubase/logic at some point- there's got to be something good about it

Personally, i can't imagine working without it anymore!

[Alive In Chernobyl]

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

[HanafiH]

gotta agree with you guy's on the VHS Vs. Betamax debit.

I was going to make this comparison myself. The reason Betamax failed wasn't because it was worse than VHS (which it was clearly superior medium). Was because of poor marketting and cost (well so i've been leed to believe).

Shame really...

I always thought that a big part of the success of VHS over betamax was that VHS's quality was substandard and so allayed the film industry's fears over rampant high-quality pirating.

It's an example often cited when reviewing the mp3 thing as it affected the music industry.

Same goes for minidisc. I can remember when they first came out how nervous the industry was that it was digital recording media. Although CD sound-quality is superior.

I also think that was why it took DVD so long to catch on (remember when it was the next big technology for like 5 years running in the glossy tech press).

Cheers,
Steve

The notion that BetaMax was better than VHS is a myth. This is known as the meme of the networked market, and is the root cause of the dot com crash - people believing that being first into marketplace (for technologies whose value rises with the number of people using it) is more important than quality or service.

Betamax failed because the tapes were too short and people couldn't tape a whole movie in one go.

Read the full story at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/commen ... 80,00.html

[electro]

Latency is the monster. I suspect that protools has lower latency than native DAWs. The UAD is great but the latency on it stings. When we get the entire channelstrip at sub millisecomd latency and are able to track thru the plugins without any percieved delay, digital will have arrived. Currently with the right soundcard (RME) and high samplerates (192Khz), we can achieve sub millisecond latency thru plugins. We need good disk performance to use these samplerates. Freeze helps alot here.

I think that dual Opteron + a good freeze system @ 192Khz can give us what we need to beat protools latencywise. Featurewise our Native DAWS trounce it.

[Alive In Chernobyl]

Latency is the monster. I suspect that protools has lower latency than native DAWs. The UAD is great but the latency on it stings. When we get the entire channelstrip at sub millisecomd latency and are able to track thru the plugins without any percieved delay, digital will have arrived. Currently with the right soundcard (RME) and high samplerates (192Khz), we can achieve sub millisecond latency thru plugins. We need good disk performance to use these samplerates. Freeze helps alot here.

I think that dual Opteron + a good freeze system @ 192Khz can give us what we need to beat protools latencywise. Featurewise our Native DAWS trounce it.

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

[electro]

explain.

[Blue Days]

I guess protools still has an edge, because of plugins like these:

http://www.mcdsp.com/products/filterbank/qa.html