The skinny on Tracktion

[Herman Munster]

Someone please do tell. There are no old posts on this since '04 that give any good information. Those posts mention problems exporting to PT LE, Cubase, etc. and difficulty with control surface integration. What's the experience now 2 years later. Is this a good DAW?

[chrisp2u]

I've only messed with it a bit, but thought it was decent. Recorded a practice of my band through a Mackie ONYX 1640... 16 tracks simultaneous using my 1.5 Ghz apple powerbook without a hitch. I'm usually a PT user, so the interface took a bit of getting used to, but I kind of liked it after a couple hours of messing with it.

As far as PT compatibility (I'm usually running PTLE7.1), I couldn't get tracktion to run on my dual processor 1.8 G5 tower for some reason... it would crash out when opening a session... so I batch imported the tracks into PT no prob and mixed. Not sure about the control surface thing as I don't have one (other than a TRANZPORT).

Gonna give it another try for band practice in the next couple weeks hopefully.
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c

[warhead]

Did you download the demo? I thought there was one available...

War

[Remoteness]

You probably check this out already but, I've seen a few thread in my forum...

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/searc...archid=1963903

If you don't find the answers you're looking for you could always ask the poster (that mentioned Traction) a question or two...

I'm not sure how helpful this link will be -- Give it a shot if you dare to visit the forum.

[MadGuitrst]

I think it's excellent.
Not to mention, you will never get more for you money.....it's crazy really.

Highly recommended.

FWIW, I had a free copy of Tracktion 1 and found a used copy of Tracktion 2 for $85 on Amazone.com of all places. All of the licenses were transfered no prob........the best $85 I ever spent.

[robd]

I found that it can be made to be funtional, butt I can't say I was terribly impressed with it. The old version was incredibly buggy, but the new one is a little better.

[Herman Munster]

Thanks for the replies. I do have a demo I have tried, but I only have a so-so M-Audio audiophile USB interface and the demo I have runs static through what you've recorded, so I cannot give it a fair assessment from the demo. As well, I'm new to digital recording and really wanted to know how it compares from a feature and stability standpoint to other options. I had originally decided to go with ProTools, but don't want to spend $1200 on an 002R with my limited time right now. The Onyx 400 has decent preamps and comes with Tracktion so I thought that might be the most inexpensive way to get my feet wet. That's where the question comes in. My other cheap option is to get a Yamaha i88x ($399) which is mLAN capable. This would also give me 2 good mic pres and I use a Motif ES and think mLAN actually might fly. My understanding is that the latest drivers really fix most of the issues. I'd likely get Cubase SL to start. So, those are my options. Which do you take?

1) Mackie Onyx 400F with Tracktion
2) Yamaha i88x with Cubase SL (leaning this way)

By the way, 2 mic pres is plenty for now. I'll want to add more later (one reason I'm not sold on the Onyx, no ADAT in, etc.). I also have a P4 with 512 RAM. Anyhow, that's where the question is coming from....

Mike

[robd]

I have a 400f, and I like it a lot,for the money. It sounds pretty nice, and quite clean. Traction 2 should probabley be useable, but I am not a big fan. If you got the 400f, you could always use traktion for a while and eventually get a better DAW. I think the sound of the 400f is definitely better than the digi 002.