Why I'm going to upgrade to T2

[Lunch Money]

Rather than argue with people about why THEY should see the upgrade as fair, I'll just post why I personally will be upgrading. In exactly the same way as the NON-upgraders have their own reasons, these represent ONLY my personal reasons. In reverse order of importance:

1. Now that I know Amplitube LE is there, I'm pretty stoked. I was going to purchase this separately, which means the upgrade price of T2 will end up being very close to 'free' for me. Ditto for RMIV, though I was less likely to buy this one since I have the ST combi kits. The other plug-ins aren't a selling feature for me except Final Mix, which already ships with T1. In case we've forgotten, Final Mix is priced at $300 alone (is it worth THAT much? A matter for debate.) Slayer2 might get some use, but as a guitarist myself, I'm not so sure.

2. MIDI implementation seems way better. I'm not much of a MIDI guy, but it's nice to know that if/when I do actual programming of MIDI (so far I mostly do "live performance") the resources will be there.

3. Broadcast .wav files. The more I think about it, the cooler this is. I don't know what other apps import broadcast .wav, but if some of the other major players do, it'll make collaboration WAY easier!!

4. Controllable by Mackie OR other MIDI-capable controller. I don't have one yet, but a MIDI controller is way up on my list of things to buy, and I'm glad to know that T will now be accessible (and FLEXIBLY so!) from controllers.

5. Loop recording. Ie. being able to record several takes of my guitar solo or vocal part and comp together the good bits, or at least select the 'take' that I'm happiest with. This is HUUUUuuuge for me, as I am constantly making new tracks and manually repeating the same measure over and over again. That's a lot of wasted space, and a lot of mouse clicks. This one alone would nearly have won it for me. (and may have won it on its own depending on our upgrade path)

6. All the interface-related features. Scalable window? Great!! Now I can use 2 monitors in a more flexible way, or tuck T away into a smaller corner if I choose. Hiding filters and inputs? WOW! It doesn't seem like much, but this is huge! One click away from more real-estate and a more streamlined interface. Horizontal level meters on a per-track basis? I'll have some of that! No more shrunken 'volume and pan' filter during mixdown. Wonderful! Colour schemes? I love the default scheme, but I'm curious to see what other people cook up. Yet, it's all familiar and (thankfully) maintains almost exactly the same appearance. Nobody was pressured into 'fake hardware' stuff just to make it look all 'shiny and new'.

I don't know what the upgrade price will be, but if it's the full $120, I'm a happy man. I would have paid that price for the features alone, but if you want to talk pure fact and pure numbers, -$80 for Amplitube LE, which I've wanted to buy. That makes my upgrade $40 if I stop there. Would I have paid $40 for RMIV if someone offered it to me? You bet. My upgrade is now "free".

If you want to talk subjectivity (ie. my own value of things; other people value things differently) and features only, I would have paid $80 for a whole new Tracktion with only improved MIDI and Loop Recording. The remaining features I've listed above are certainly worth $40 for me, especially the improvements to the UI.

It's a done deal.

As a package at $199 msrp for 'new' customers, I still think it rates VERY favourably against its competitors. It's way cheaper than Cubase, Pro Tools, Logic, Live4, and is comparably priced to the 'budget' (and very limited) Cubase versions, Orion non-plat (whatever it's called), Fruity, etc., while featuring features not found on those (modular routing? When will others jump on this? Surely soon...). While it's no longer the "steal" it once was, I certainly feel that it's a 'bargain'.

I think that's the main thing-- to me, it seems appropriately priced (and even a little cheap for the feature set) and more than reasonable. It's a no-brain upgrade for me, and should still be a serious consideration for anyone looking at buying a new host.

For the record, I don't intend to 'back and forth' with arguments on this thread. I've made my points, and people are welcome to (and invited to!) comment or refute any of them, but I am making a strict vow to not engage in any sort of further elaboration or justification. It's just an opinion, after all, and this is the thread I should have posted in the first place instead of letting myself wind up in so many other threads.

Greg

[Improv]

3. Broadcast .wav files. The more I think about it, the cooler this is. I don't know what other apps import broadcast .wav, but if some of the other major players do, it'll make collaboration WAY easier!!

Cubase SX 2 does Broadcast .wave files.

[Beardedone]

[djsubject]

lunch money im with you

Shit T1 with all those plugs in a shiny box is a good deal, now with loop recording its the sale of the fukin centry

[headquest]

I will be upgrading too

I'm pleased with all the features, although many of them aren't aimed at me personally. But they all give the program more professional credibility.

And I think the price tag is spot on, personally. (In fact I predicted it exactly on a thread last month )

Top improvements/draws for me are:

1] Improved MIDI editing. If I only wanted to work with audio I could do so in Adobe Audition. Tracktion for me has to be good at dealing with MIDI too. It already is in that MIDI is clip rather than track based. But in version 2 MIDI editing is clearly going to be WAY better, and this alone justifies the upgrade cost to me personally. I'm assuming within this that the "note-dropping" bug has been fixed, of course.

2] Controller Mapping. I've not particularly used a controller other than playing in directly from my keyboard. But I'm looking at getting a desktop controller this year, so this is a great feature to know is in place in T2.

3] Improved metering. I;ve had problems with this in T1

4] Interface improvements. Particularly the show/hide inputs/filters, which will really help. But also the custom colours. I get the impression that there will be a few "skins" or colour schemes included, which might be fun.

5] RMIV. Which I nearly bought last month. Glad I saved my money! But I personally don't think the plugs added to the price tag - they are included for mutual promotion. And if they weren't there it wouldn't change my view about getting T2 or about the price being a fiar one. So having the plugs is an extra bonus. It will be great for my students, who don't already have soft synths, etc.

[mcnelson]

I'm pretty happy with the entire package, and more importantly I'm made up that it's 2 months away, gives me a bit of time to save some money and dick around with the beta.

I can't believe anyone is complaining about T2 so far....shit, I'll be upgrading, even if I had to pay the whole $199 it's still a sweet deal.

[Warmonger]

Another note about the price: if the dollar wasn't so astoundingly weak right now, it could very well have gone for $150. Anyway, as long as MIDI is improved (and hopefully dropped notes are taken care of), that's enough for me.

I'm really looking forward to the controller mapping as well. I don't generally do a lot of automation, but from the tiny screengrab, it looks like this could be a very good implementation.

[leeturne]

Lunch money - Spot on. I agree with all of your points but the main selling point for me is Midi syc. I use Ardour on Linux as a pure HDR system. I play most things in live except for programming drums for which I have had to use a drum editor in a Windows package. Now that T2 has midi sync and a much better Midi editor I can now run it on OSX with Ardour on Linux. Goodbye Bill.

Seriously it's a real bargain for me especially with the very favourable dollar/pound exchange rate. T1 cost me £40 which is the cost of an average night down the pub so for T2 I'll have to miss quiz night as well.

I've stated in previous posts and I'll say it again, Tracktion is the most intuitive program I've used.

[Richard M]

Here's a fresh perspective from a fairly new Tracktion user and someone who has been lurking and reading in these forums for the past month.

I've tried a number of different pieces of recording software.

I tried Kristal, which is a nice program but has limitations - no midi, only two effects per channel, etc.

I bought a copy of Cakewalk Home Studio 2004. Maybe it's just me, but I think it could be held forward as a case study in bad interface design. Despite the many hours that I've spent on it, I've yet to accomplish anything.

I stumbled upon Tracktion and was lucky enough to catch it while it was still a free download. I've been tinkering with it for a month or so, and consider it to be a brilliant bit of programming.

Mind you, I'm not a sound recording guy - I'm a musician. That being the case, I don't fully understand those who wail and gnash their teeth over the lack of a virtual representation of a mixer. I find the program works just fine to record and mix the music my friends and I make.

It's the one and only program that I've managed to sit in front of and understand just by looking at it how it works. I did eventually read the manual (such as it is) and learned some new things, but for the most part, I could get sound into and out of Tracktion just by playing with it.

As a point in case, six of us met last weekend to have a good 'ol jam session and record some music. Even though I had less than a month of fiddling with Tracktion, I managed to get some decent sounding multi-tracked acoustic sessions recorded. What's more, when it was my turn to play one of the others who had never even seen Tracktion before managed to sit down at the controls and did just fine.

It's a remarkably intuitive piece of work, and I'm having more fun than you could imagine with it - learning about recording, mixing, VSTi's, midi, etc.

Is T2 worth $199 US to me? I'll buy it in the blink of an eye, as soon as it comes out. I think some people are too close to this to have a real, fresh perspective on just how great this program is. You can pick away at the little faults and features that didn't make it into T2, but the bottom line is that the program is well worth it.

[amoebe]

You can pick away at the little faults and features that didn't make it into T2

No you can't. They full list of new features hasn't been published yet
Don't know if I'm going to upgrade yet. But I'm sure as hell going to grab that public beta.
(And then I'm probably going to upgrade as well)

[ModuLR]

Richard M, I love the way you put that. I might not be a newbie to T, but I have those exact same feelings. It's intuitive to me... and after toying with other software, I just don't accomplish much of anything regardless of what new fangled features they have.

Ultimately, the improvements in the piano roll and midi controller support are enough for me to fork over the upgrade cash... especially for software I would have gladly paid more for from the start. It's software which helps me be creative... that's all I really want. Thus far, the only thing that has sparked creativity in similar fashion is eXT; however, eXT makes me much more creative in sound design type of way, while T is where the vision of an actual arrangement is realized.

Jules, you will get my money... just tell me when!

[headquest]

Richard M,

Thanks for a great post...

...and welcome to Tracktion.

[gizmo]

A warm and fuzzy Tracktion thread! Days of old! Can't wait for T2 personally. I need to make the Poison Apple Green Skin!

[chico.co.uk]

<applause> Richard M </applause>

I pointed a couple of my work mates towards Tracktion when the NFR came out, one of them has used Cubase for a few years, the other uses something that I've not quite got a handle on, but I suspect is probably Cubase. They're both very technical people, not afraid of a bit of manual reading. One of them in particular is rumoured to dream only in 1s and 0s.

Anyway, point being, they both came back raving about how easy it was to work, everything was sort of where you'd expect it to be. Which was exactly my first impression, it made what should be a fun thing become a fun thing once more. Forget fighting with ASIO settings and midi on one track, audio on another, effects hidden under some sub menu on page 237 of the manual, it's all JUST THERE.

Thanks for reminding me why I use and rave about this program to anyone who'll listen. It makes making music fun again.

[MADatGOD]

I want most of the things I've seen it T2, but I already have a "network" of T1 users with whom I'm collaborating using archives. I know T2 will be able to open T1 projects... is there any word on whether you'll be able to open T2's archives with T1? Or whether there's an option to export as a T1 archive? This will probably be the deciding factor for me.