Protools Users, how do u do it >>>>>>

[SleepyP]

i love your sig Johnny!
i agree with your post philosophically, but sometimes you can just get sick of something (i mostly did with Cubase SX). anyone hear of PT users getting sick & tired of PT?

[whyterabbyt]

"Some people" like to chime in on posts and instead of supplying info, they like to start wars.

Yes you do, dont you.

[Midi_Glider]

anyone hear of PT users getting sick & tired of PT?

You will be surprised.


Best,
midi.

[whyterabbyt]

I'll say it again. PT get's an unfair bad rap by some people here.

Given any thread about any host, effect or synth, you'll get that. At the end of the day it should be about what suits you not someone else's opinion.

And, again, I'll say that PT is one of the best out there for its core functionality; tracking and mixing. However when I was looking for a host, there was other software out there which offered the same core functionality, and then some. That 'then some' included a lot of stuff that serve my workflow better. And they've added a lot more since, whilst Digi has (in many ways) barely caught up with then.

And countless companies have made that mistake; tied their business to expensive proprietry hardware, become complacent and slow-moving, and lost entire swathes of market to more more forward-looking companies. SGI, for example.

Pro Tools is the LEADER in the professional audio industry, bar none. I'm not talking home studios. I'm talking the "industry"

For tracking and mixing, yes. Because that's what its designed for. But not for MIDI, which is what the original poster primarily seemed interested in.

Pro Tools is a VERY stable host, more stable then most

We still find students rebooting our PT systems because of crashes, though. So its not 100% stable, as someone else basically tried to claim.

Pro Tools has come a LONG ways to reach to the budget market. Sure, they are not "caught up" yet in some people's eyes, but I'll explain this in a minute.

I still think it has a much longer way to go, though, for it to fit with my kind of workflow. Ihave an MBox borrowed from work, and I'd definitely use it for sound design, if I had the VST-RTAS wrapper.(*)
And I'm definitely interested in seeing what we get in 7.

(*And Im not even sure if Reaktor5 has an RTAS version these days. Certainly, the RTAS version of Reaktor4 was tagged as a beta, and fairly flaky.)

Pro Tools is more accessible than ever

Do you mean in terms of UI, or availability to Joe Public?

Pro Tools DOES compete with modern sequencers(This one is purely subjective).

Plain and simple, while not for everyone, PT does work. It just does. Every sequencer has limitations of some kind. PT has a few that I agree probably shouldn't be there. But the limitations aren't as drastic as people show them to be.

They're drastic for me, though. I see no reason for any modern host to restrict my available track count, or number of plugins per track.

Here's the cold, hard facts. Just cause an artist says in CM magazine(mostly synth based music) that other methods are used doesn't mean that's the new "law". People still do, more than ever, use PT. Next in line in Pro level studios, Nuendo. Want proof? Come meet me in Nashville, you'll have all the proof you need. The vast majority of music you hear on the radio was tracked, edited, and mixed in PT. Why? Because PT got to where it is first.

How much of it was composed and written on PT, compared to the other sequencers, though?

Now, you may say, why is PT behind compared to some sequencers? Simple. It wasn't designed to do what they do. It was designed for the big studio, and it was designed around the hardware. It wasn't until recently that they even considered all the "extra" features. But with version 6 and up, some of the greatest improvements have been made.

In short; it was designed as a replacement for tape, and everything else has been forced into that mindset. Which is fine if that suits you, but if it doesnt, PT doesnt have 'enough' to fit into a lot of other ways of working. And many other hosts do have that flexibility.

And once you learn the hotkeys or at least your way around, for most people it's a dead easy to use solution.

True of any host, though.

And now it's getting those features we so direly require in today's sequencers. I know beta testers of PT, and I can say that more is on the way. It's hard to say, with the way things are going, what direction Digidesign will take. But so far, it seems they are getting where hosts like Cubase and Logic are.

Are, or were? They're a moving target, and they're moving faster, IMO. And they're not trying to maintain their expensive proprietry hardware businesses, so they dont have to artificially limit their 'budget' product, or drop support for older hardware (so you have to buy new hardware just to get new software features).

I say these things to bring us back on topic(kinda). Between 6.4 and 6.9 where it is now, MIDI has been improved, as well as alot more. And with version 7, it's planned to get even more. If you are skeptical, you may want to wait before taking the plunge. It may not have what you desire yet. It's way of handling synths is similar to the days of the analog console, and may take some getting used to if you never worked that way.

Amen.



That all being said, and to make a long post longer, PT is NOT for everyone. Hey, I don't use it all the time. I use T2 for my own stuff. I would love to use Sonar 5, as it looks to be ready to become a new leader.

It's a truly exciting time. Software is in a place where you have a ton of options. And not using PT doesn't make you less "pro". It just makes you work differently. Try them all out. I don't always recommend PT to people. I don't always recommend T2 to people. I work here in Nashville and I will say that it's sad that some people don't know they have the options they do. So go ahead, experiment. It's alright!

Amen.

And remember, it's about the music, not how it's made.

Absolutely.

[/quote]

[jens]

but they cannot produce the "polished" feel you get with protools...

care to explain?

[whyterabbyt]

but they cannot produce the "polished" feel you get with protools...

care to explain?

Maybe PT adds 20-40% more 'polish'.

[bduffy]

EDIT: never mind.

[jens]

However, here are some hard facts about PT:

Pro Tools is the LEADER in the professional audio industry, bar none. I'm not talking home studios. I'm talking the "industry"

irrelevant

Pro Tools is a VERY stable host, more stable then most

any test-results you can refer to - or is it merely your personal experience on one certain system?

Pro Tools has come a LONG ways to reach to the budget market. Sure, they are not "caught up" yet in some people's eyes, but I'll explain this in a minute.

so it's not as f**king expensive anymore as it was before - but does that make it any better?

Pro Tools is more accessible than ever

in which way?

Pro Tools has so many more features than many people even try to realize.

speaking about the 'hard facts' you promised us: do you care to give any examples?

Pro Tools DOES compete with modern sequencers(This one is purely subjective).

WOW - so it's catching up with the rest?
- but wait - didn't you try to convince us a moment ago that it is actually better than the rest?

Plain and simple, while not for everyone, PT does work. It just does. Every sequencer has limitations of some kind. PT has a few that I agree probably shouldn't be there. But the limitations aren't as drastic as people show them to be.

confused & polemic - where are the facts?

Here's the cold, hard facts.

Just cause an artist says in CM magazine(mostly synth based music) that other methods are used doesn't mean that's the new "law". People still do, more than ever, use PT. Next in line in Pro level studios, Nuendo. Want proof? Come meet me in Nashville, you'll have all the proof you need. The vast majority of music you hear on the radio was tracked, edited, and mixed in PT.

repetition of this pseudo-argument doesn't make it less irrelevant

Why? Because PT got to where it is first.

that's your opinion - now give us the hard facts you promised

Now, you may say, why is PT behind compared to some sequencers? Simple. It wasn't designed to do what they do.

wasn't it 'first' a minute ago? Now I am confused!



can't be bothered to put the rest of your bollocks into pieces...

[jens]

but they cannot produce the "polished" feel you get with protools...

care to explain?

Maybe PT adds 20-40% more 'polish'.

[Nev]

In my personal experience of Pro Tools, and with it running on 8 of the machines at work I'd say it is fairly stable. Then again I nearly exclusively use it for Audio/Video work and not with tons of plug-ins and again in my experience these are what cause problems in most hosts.

Nev

[james0tucson]

Why the constant arguing? I've decieded your best with what you know.

I don't know that it's so much "arguing", as frustration that people out there somehow don't know there are alternatives -- and it stops them from doing *anything*.

For instance, the guy I get my haircuts from, is a conga player. Pretty popular, works with a lot of local bands. He's not recording, because he's got the idea that you can't even begin to think about recording unless you have ProTools. Seriously. I've tried to explain that there are many more ways to do recording than ProTool, but that's the only thing he's ever heard from people he takes more seriously than me, so he's totally brainwashed about it.

The problem is, he ends up not doing *anything*.

There's a lot of this out there. I think I'm pretty savvy, and even I thought for a while that it was necessary to have Cubase in order to run VST instruments.

Not everybody with an interest in doing music has ever heard of KVR, for instance. And lots of people have no idea at all that there are lower cost alternatives to using a regular studio, or that it's conceivable that there are other digital recording tools besides PT.

[jens]

For instance, the guy I get my haircuts from, is a conga player. Pretty popular, works with a lot of local bands. He's not recording, because he's got the idea that you can't even begin to think about recording unless you have ProTools. Seriously. I've tried to explain that there are many more ways to do recording than ProTool, but that's the only thing he's ever heard from people he takes more seriously than me, so he's totally brainwashed about it.

The problem is, he ends up not doing *anything*.

that's pretty sad - similar to people who are doing graphics-stuff and learn that they need a Mac for it... (but even more tragic in this case) - f**king capitalistic arrogance/ignorance

[ross g]

Why the constant arguing? I've decieded your best with what you know. I know cubase, others know logic etc. You stick with it unless you need to change because of whats available (mac - pc or working in someones studio). Fatboy Slim (whether you like him or not he's done his job well) still uses a very old sequencer (cake?), AKAI 3000's and Technics 1200's... His music sounds... ...proffesional... so surely its about doing the best with whats available, and to do that you've got to stick with it and learn to use it perfectly.

i read (or maybe it was on mtv "cribs") he uses an old Atari with either Creator (precurser to Logic), or cubase...

rg

[koolkeys]

whyterabbyt, when I said more accessible, I meant strictly price wise.

Jens, I don't know what your problem is, but your answers to my comments were useless. I could care less to answer most of your "intelligent" questions.

But I will say this. The things I said are true. PT is the leader in the "industry", relevant or not. PT IS very stable, on more than my system. I've used over 20 different PT systems on all levels of hardware, and very rarely have I had problems. I know of many others that use it also, with no stability problems. Can I prove it in the way you want? No, but then again, you're just talking crap. So who cares.

I never said it was the best, so I don't know where you got that from. And I never said that it caught up with anyone. So I don't know where you got that from either.

PT WAS there first to WHERE IT IS AT. This is why it is very popular among pro studios, because WHERE IT IS AT with power and hardware processing, it got there first. I never said it was first to get features that are currently available in other hosts. I said first to WHERE IT IS AT. But again, you try to turn my words.

I don't have the time to comment on all the things you said, even though they were all the same. But if you are so confident in your side of the argument, go ahead. Produce something that proves me wrong. You may be able to, and that's fine.

You want the cold, hard facts? Come to Nashville some day. I'll buy you lunch and I'll show you the things you ask. You want features listed that are "better". I don't need to post them. It's in the details of the program. It's in the little things it does. If that's not proof enough for you, oh well. I don't give a crap.

Everything from my previous post remains true. And I still condede, as I have all along, that PT has limitations that I don't think should be there in the LE version, such as track count(which isn't actually limited, just the tracks that play back, which is automatable to change which tracks are playing. MIDI tracks aren't limited). PT isn't where Cubase, Logic, etc is because, again, it wasn't designed to be that way. It is playing catch up, because it needs to as that's what users want. If you don't like it, go use something else. No hurt feelings here. But if you ARE going to debate these things, at least come up with something intelligible. This thread wasn't about the details, so they weren't included as you wanted. But then again, I wasn't talking to you anyways. But I am now. And now I'm done. Get over it.

Koolkeys

[ross g]

i'm pretty sure those who hated protools before weren't won over by this thread...

a few points:

protools established itself in the pro marketplace by combining hardware and software...the track count, bouncing, and ease of use was unheard of... without special proprietary hardware, just a mac...most other stuff at the time was a LOT more dough...there were a few systems out, remember them? yes, newer native systems have come out but the high end PT systems still hold a place...all the processing is done with zero hit on the cpu in question, it's gonna give you performance you can count on including the TDM FX and synths (but it's f-u-c-k-i-n-g expensive!)

it's already been pointed out that PT never came off like a midi sequencer at first, lots of producers still use MPC's, ARS10's, a different computer for sequencing or sample streaming, etc....PT is a really good tape recorder...

i don't really understand why people keep talking about lack of vst and such, i'm still wrapping my head around this...i know this is a primarily vst web site, but it's kind of silly to point out over and over how your host is the best, PT really ain't a "host" as such, it's a damn digital tape recorder... the business Digidesign got it's grips into still exists regardless of guys at home producing tunes, they've added more midi stuff to provide some flexability and maybe a one stop shop for some, but there will always be a need for the heavy duty midiseq guys that PT will never accommodate...and there are so many musicians that will never, ever touch a VSTi or download VST FX...

one thing i have to say about the mbox that hasn't been brought up: it gives the regular dumbasses out there a chance to to do some tracks at home and go into a bigger "real" studio and record drums and such in a good room, nice mics and pres, that sort of thing..and mix....without a bunch of hassles with files and whatnot...

please understand, i've used PT, it's the one i know, but i won't buy it, it cost too much and i went a slightly different direction than i thought i would...the mbox doesn't have the i/o i need and the 002 systems don't have the bang for buck -I- need...
but i would get it if i had a commercial studio, i'd probably have a PC loaded with vst crap too...

the other thing i really wanted to address is the complaints on the track count limits in PT...the LE limit is 32? i think Cubase LE is 48? now i gotta ask, how many tracks do you need? what on earth are you doing where you have 30 tracks and you think "man, i need another 20 tracks or this song is going to to suck"? boheimian rhapsody 2?


enough outta me,
rg