PT vs Nuendo

[Dragonfly]

I am a long time ProTools user and really like how that program is laid out, although I do not want to be confined to one DAW. I now have Nuendo 3 to start learning, so can anyone give me some comparisons or contrasts in the strengths of one over the other? What I really want to know is what can Nuendo do for me the PT can't, and vice versa. I do mostly post production and sound design for film as well as music production. Thanks

Dante

[bunnerabb]

This is from another forum.

It's veracity is something that I cannot account for:

Nuendo has many advantages over Pro Tools:

200+ tracks
Support for third-party DSP cards
Distributed processing (linking computers for unlimited DSP power)
Non-partitioned DSP (no chip limitations on plug-in size)
Simultaneous editing of multiple events (speeds up drum editing)
Overlapping events
Snap-to-zero
Mixer presets
Offline processes such as Envelope
Offline Process History and Track Freeze, with unlimited undo
Full MIDI capabilities
Customizable hardware control
Open architecture, open standards, and support for third-party hardware
AES-31 support for universal file exchange
32-bit floating-point mixer
Support for 32-bit float files and stereo interleaved files

Pro Tools is advertised as a "fully 48-bit mixer." In reality, the plug-in bus is only 24 bits, and crossfades and offline processes are done at 24 bits. Every time you add a plug-in or process a track, you lose resolution. When you add a plug-in on a group or on the stereo bus, you lose even more resolution. Pro Tools is sonically inferior to most native DAW's.

Nuendo has a 32-bit floating point mixer. Crossfades, offline processes, and mix renders are also done at 32-bit floating point. You never lose resolution.

[beatzz]

I have not tried Nuendo so i can't comment on the difference. The only thing i can comment on is I listened to the India Arie record which was completely mixed in Nuendo. Don't quote me on that though! I heard reports that it was mixed in pro tools as well?


But oh man, that record really sounds great! That could obviously be attributed to other factors.........like the mixer, engineer............and probably is. Regardless it just sounds sooo pleasing to my ears. I'ts really a breathe of fresh air in the current R&B market!

[jlotto]

Other DAWs like samplitude and nuendo blow protools away in alot of areas. Even though I keep a samp system on pc still have my PT HD setup.

It seems like whenever and however u start a project. what daw u use or 2" or whatever- it winds up in protools anyway.

[aaronsternke]

Hiya,
I own both Pro Tools and Nuendo 3, and have swapped back and forth on them extensively. Here's my thoughts:

For Pro Tools:
-Nothing can touch the speed and efficiency of the editing in Pro Tools. Tab to transient, Beat Detective, Strip Silence, need I say more?

-Obviously Pro Tools is still the standard, and working exclusively in PT makes things a lot easier when transfering projects from here to there to wherever. Believe me, it is a headache transfering back and forth, we do it here all the time and it wastes a lot of time.

-Pro Tools always just works.

-Pro Tools thrives on the Mac platform (Nuendo doesn't... it was built for PC and still runs MUCH better on a PC)... Macs do not crash NEARLY as much as PCs.

-Pro Tools does a much better job of dealing with things globaly... for example, if you shift + option click on a group of selected tracks and select a plugin, or a send, it puts it on all those tracks. There is no way to do this in Nuendo. Sounds small, but it takes up a lot of time in the long run. Nuendo can do this with inputs and outputs, (by option clicking on selected tracks)... but not with anything else.


For Nuendo:
-After much careful listening and comparing, I must say the Nuendo mix bus sounds better than Pro Tools. Just getting rough mixes in both, Nuendo is clearer on the top end, tighter in the low end, and wider. This may have a lot to do with the fact that....

-Nuendo has full delay compensation everywhere... Pro Tools does with plugins, but not with buses. Nuendo 3 even compensates for delay in outboard effects. Sweet.


I'd say the ideal setup would be:

-Do all tracking, overdubs, and editing in Pro Tools.

and... if you're mixing in the box,

-Mix it in Nuendo.


My 2 cents!


Aaron

[RichT]

Both programs are great to record music with.

One's a bit cheaper.

One's a bit faster to edit in.

One supposedly sounds better.

One is the 'industry standard'.

Anyhoo, I want someone to make Nu-Tools or Proendo - the best bits of both.

[Winey]

Originally Posted by RichT

Both programs are great to record music with.

One's a bit cheaper.

One's a bit faster to edit in.

One supposedly sounds better.

One is the 'industry standard'.

Anyhoo, I want someone to make Nu-Tools or Proendo - the best bits of both.

Yeah me too!
Then I don't have the pressure of knowing two programs inside and out.
I like them both, but I'm way faster on Nuendo as far as editing and comping goes.
There are times where I really wish the rest of the world used Nuendo for my sake, just so I can more easily move projects from studio to studio.
Until then you might want to get PT, unless your projects will usually stay at your own place.

[theblue1]

Pro Tools is advertised as a "fully 48-bit mixer." In reality, the plug-in bus is only 24 bits, and crossfades and offline processes are done at 24 bits. Every time you add a plug-in or process a track, you lose resolution. When you add a plug-in on a group or on the stereo bus, you lose even more resolution. Pro Tools is sonically inferior to most native DAW's.

Is this true?

If crossfades are done at 24 bits, does that mean other level-oriented and summing processes are performed at only 24 bit resolution?

Now, with regard to plug ins, I'll admit, I'm a little hazy on the plug standards. Is there provision in VST and DX for passing longer word lenths to plug-ins? (ie, is Nuendo able to pass a 32 bit floating point value to a VST plug?)

Anyhow, as long as the plug itself can use whatever word length it needs internally, I'm not sure I see a huge problem inherent to the DAW passing the sound-to-be-processed to the plug at 24 bits and taking the processed sound back at 24 bits, which is an entirely adequate storage depth. (And, of course, what the plug does it its workarea is its own business and between the plug developer and the end user, as it were.) But, sure, the longer word length (greater numeric prescision) the better. You can never be too, rich, too thin, or...

Using 24 bit values for processing, OTOH, is obviously problematic, since every step that involves multiplication (and that's almost all of them) will result in a truncation to the resulting word lenth. Each truncation, brings another level of potential alias error at the 24 bit threshold. If, however, we throw a few extra bits of word length at our math space, we still end up rounding, but it's at a level that will eventually be discarded when we leave our (for instance) 32 bit 'workspace' for 24 bit 'storage.'

[T_R_S]

Originally Posted by aaronsternke

-Nuendo has full delay compensation everywhere... Pro Tools does with plugins, but not with buses. Nuendo 3 even compensates for delay in outboard effects. Sweet.

Protools has delay comp on all busses a well as external I/O (Look in the I/O page and click on hardware delays tab).

[Infernal Device]

I love this thread! Thank you! I needed this!

So, difference between Nuendo & Cubase sx3.0 ?

Also, PT has DSP core card to keep CPU drain down. Nuendo does not (am I wrong?)

I am getting ready to drop some cash on a DAW, $15,000 for an HD1 with a g5 is out of the equation. Since I just had a PC built, I figured to go with Cubase or Nuendo.


Cheers!

[greggybud]

With Pro Tools MIDI was an afterthought and they are still trying to catch up. Cubase was born out of MIDI. Nuendo and Cubase have the same sound engine, and MIDI is very similar in Nuendo.

For myself, I would much rather take the money saved with Nuendo or Cubase, and buy a quality ADDA converter like an Apogee Rosetta 200 , an additional UAD card and maybe a second PC to link since I run lots of UAD and Waves programs...not to even mention running Kontakt and Garritan Personal Orchestra at the same time.

[Ruudman]

Pro Tools is advertised as a "fully 48-bit mixer." In reality, the plug-in bus is only 24 bits, and crossfades and offline processes are done at 24 bits. Every time you add a plug-in or process a track, you lose resolution. When you add a plug-in on a group or on the stereo bus, you lose even more resolution. Pro Tools is sonically inferior to most native DAW's.

Well, here's a Gearslutz-quote from Rex Logos Digitalis, aka Nika:

If you want the sound of an analog mixer imparted onto your mix, use an analog mixer. If you want a mix that is more linear use a digital mixer. A digital mixer will perform better if it is a fixed point mixer than if it is a floating point mixer. Floating point does have advantages in other types of processing, though.

ruudman

[Roger Starr]

Originally Posted by Infernal Device

I am getting ready to drop some cash on a DAW, $15,000 for an HD1 with a g5 is out of the equation. Since I just had a PC built, I figured to go with Cubase or Nuendo.Cheers!

How can the argument that you just bought a PC, worth a peanut probably compared to the $15,000 you are planning to drop, be a good reason to drop PT, which by the way also runs fine on PC? I hope you have better arguments to not choose for PT then that, f.i. with SX or Nuendo and a good converter and some UAD stuff f.i. you'll have a very good and stable DAW running on your just bought PC for a fraction of the price of PT with a G5...

Roger

[cultureofgreed]

Everything will be on a PC in 5 years. Even PCs running the Mac OS.

As for the thread topic. I don't know about Nuendo, but I have used Cubase SX 2.0 and it sounds from the descriptions that the audio engine is probably very similar. I think Pro Tools has more head room. I rarely have to start pulling faders because my master bus is peaking, which is something that I always seemed to have to worry about in Cubase.

[Ruudman]

In 5 years we don't define PC as a Microsoft oriented platform.

People will say: "remember the PC/Mac war?"
The borders will fade.

In 5 years a PC will be what it actually is: a Personal Computer
(with huge network power)


ruudman

[Bang]

Pro Tools is the most unintuitive DAW on the market.... you can start using Nuendo and figure it out by the next day.. its very analog in nature and anyone who has used an analog console will easily work the mix window.. the edit window is also a ton faster then PT... I hate Pro Tools and work in it only when I have to. I mean I really really dislike it a lot and think that most people who like it haven't used Nuendo enough or just know it well enough from using it so many years that they can tolerate it.. just my opinion, I'm doing a project in PT now and its so slow.. yeah partly because the operator, partly because its not as easy and slick as Nuendo.. btw I edit in Nuendo REALLY fast, and while PT has these cool option click shift functions, I don't think its that big of a deal.

The mix window in PT sucks, the functions suck.. I want to have a mix playing to a master fader with master insert plugins, but I also want to reference an already processed mix NOT going to the master buss.. so ****ing hard to do.. and then you set up an aux for the master to go out.. but now you can't solo things... Nuendo you just send the mix to one output bus and the other to another output buss and DONE. I'd do anything for a Nuendo 3.1 update so I can stop using this horrible program... but its the only one that can import OMFs from final cut pro auto duck with automation..

Steve

[Ruudman]

Originally Posted by Bang

Pro Tools is the most unintuitive DAW on the market

Disagree competely. I was into PT the first day, I wasn't on Nuendo.

..the edit window is also a ton faster then PT... I hate Pro Tools and work in it only when I have to.

If you only work in PT when you have to, no way you can claim it's either slow or fast. I've seen a PT wiz working it lightning fast.

Just to show that sound, GUI, ++, it all varies - opinions, that is..


ruudman

[Bang]

Most guys I've talked to, even guys who started on PT, have agreed with me but different strokes.. True I'm not a very experienced user of PT but I can still understand when things make sense and things.... don't.

Lets say you have the edit window open in PT. You have two seperated tracks that are stereo. Within each window you have peaks and valleys in automation. However, you find that the peaks are not loud enough. Lets say in this track you have 16 peaks. Is there a way to select JUST the peaks, and raise them up a bit? I'm about to ask this at the DUC... but the future looks dim.. Nuendo this takes a second to do. I have a bunch of more issues but I'll DUC them..

Steve

[thenoodle]

...."Everything will be on a PC in 5 years. Even PCs running the Mac OS...."


Yes...and more importantly, ya know what that pile of stuff that constitutes a Protools HD system today will look like before the end of this decade? It will be EXACTLY like looking at a Synclavier...or Fairlight. If any of you remember THOSE systems (and their worth today) you will know exactly what I'm talking about.

The future is software. On fast native computers. The future is Nuendo. Steinberg's been here since the beginning...in fact Steinberg was making software when Digidesign was still doing nothing but making midi interfaces (or whatever it was they started out doing). Imo, Nuendo (in all it's future incarnations) is going to fly right by Protools at some point while Protools is frantically trying to "undo" itself from all that "Fairlight" type hardware it's built around.

[Bang]

Pro Tools is ridiculous. Its always sounded worse then native floating point systems, has less headroom unless you PT LE, and the fact that you are forced to use their A/D/As is just a joke.. I mean if they would just take their dicks out of their hands and just let people use their own shit... the 888s were terrible, the 192s are good but not great, and their software is behind that of Nuendo.. Didn't it not even have plugin delay comp till just recently? PT is what it was because it was first in the game when computers weren't even a tenth as fast, there's soon going to be a time where most native computers under a grand will be equal to or faster then a loaded HD3 system... Off to the DUC..

Steve

[Ruudman]

Originally Posted by Bang

Its always sounded worse then native floating point systems, Steve

Are you saying that a fixed point mixer can't sound good?

ruudman

[Bang]

Originally Posted by Ruudman

Are you saying that a fixed point mixer can't sound good?

ruudman

No, I didn't say that. I said a floating point mixer sounds better, I did this test SOO many times, its an audible difference. Going out to an analog mixer, its inaudible though. However, then there is headroom. You have more headroom issues in the TDM environment, bar none. You can easily do this, open up a TDM project in LE and do the bounce, compare the two.

Like I said before, if you like PT great, but I compare it to AOL. Its one of the first in the game, very popular, more expensive then the competition, and crappy to use imo.

Steve

[Dragonfly]

Can someone tell me what a floating point and a fixed point mixer are?

Thanks for the responses guys, it's giving me a lot to think about.

Dante

[T_R_S]

Originally Posted by Bang

Pro Tools is ridiculous. Its always sounded worse then native floating point systems, has less headroom unless you PT LE, and the fact that you are forced to use their A/D/As is just a joke.. I mean if they would just take their dicks out of their hands and just let people use their own shit... the 888s were terrible, the 192s are good but not great, and their software is behind that of Nuendo.. Didn't it not even have plugin delay comp till just recently? PT is what it was because it was first in the game when computers weren't even a tenth as fast, there's soon going to be a time where most native computers under a grand will be equal to or faster then a loaded HD3 system... Off to the DUC..

Steve

As much as I hate to slag here is an example of a quote of somebody talking facts with a lot of errors. First of all PT is not ridiculous .. That's why so many people use it of all DAW S/W available. It's laid out like a console and a tape machine it's familer to us old farts. Sencond you can use any A/D and D/A you want that's what the Digital ports are for. You can use M audio Interfaces with LE and connect and convetors you want too. PT was not first in the game it was NED Synclaver.
A Native computer is a long way off for 150+ tracks + 250 plug-ins with no stress on the system. My HD 7 Accel is way far off from a future native system power.

[Ruudman]

Originally Posted by Bang

I said a floating point mixer sounds better

I know I'm repeating myself:

If you want the sound of an analog mixer imparted onto your mix, use an analog mixer. If you want a mix that is more linear use a digital mixer. A digital mixer will perform better if it is a fixed point mixer than if it is a floating point mixer. Floating point does have advantages in other types of processing, though.

(Nika)

He's not God or anything, but he knows his math.
I use several software mixers, among them Logic. It sounds different:
wider, more "floating"
That's my personal impression of the Steinberg engine also.
Pleasing, but at the same time a little out of focus.


ruudman

[Bang]

Originally Posted by T_R_S

As much as I hate to slag here is an example of a quote of somebody talking facts with a lot of errors. First of all PT is not ridiculous .. That's why so many people use it of all DAW S/W available. It's laid out like a console and a tape machine it's familer to us old farts. Sencond you can use any A/D and D/A you want that's what the Digital ports are for. You can use M audio Interfaces with LE and connect and convetors you want too. PT was not first in the game it was NED Synclaver.
A Native computer is a long way off for 150+ tracks + 250 plug-ins with no stress on the system. My HD 7 Accel is way far off from a future native system power.

Have you used Nuendo? I know a great engineer who calls himself an "old fart" and after I got him into Nuendo, he doesn't see how he ever used PT which is the system he had in his studio for five years. There is just so many limitations with PT, its not nearly as slick and fast as Nuendo. So many people use it because its the standard, and that says nothing about the software itself. Basically, any time I go to PT I'm always saying to myself "great, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this.." where as when I have to use a lot of other DAWs like Samplitude and Sonar, its a lateral move. I'm surprised that people who made such a huge investment weren't enraged that their DAW didn't become plugin delay compensated for 2 years after most Native systems did. Different strokes..

Steve

[AlexLakis]

I was using Nuendo on a PC DAW until I moved to Los Angeles and realized that 19 out of 20 studios/clients are using ProTools on Macs, both of which I've never worked on before. I started using ProTools, and found that it was much more streamlined and easy to use in a professional situation. Macs work with ProTools. They're the stupid powerful box that sits there and is a DAW. I don't like em, but they work. The main reason to buy a mac and use ProTools, in my opinion, is so that you can be compatable with what a client is going to bring to you 95% of the time. As far as what sounds better, I've had great sounding mixes come out of both, I believe it's mostly a function of the D/A-A/D converters, and how you've treated the audio in general througout it's journey. Regardless, people have made platinum albums on both PT and Nuendo, so they're both good enough to get the job done. Just a matter of preference and individual professional demand. Personally, ProTools was enough to turn this mac-hater into a mac-tolerator.

[T_R_S]

Originally Posted by Bang

Basically, any time I go to PT I'm always saying to myself "great, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this.."
Steve

Maybe you should be specific again making banket state,ents and passing them off as facts.

[Ruudman]

Originally Posted by AlexLakis

Regardless, people have made platinum albums on both PT and Nuendo, so they're both good enough to get the job done. Just a matter of preference and individual professional demand. Personally, ProTools was enough to turn this mac-hater into a mac-tolerator.

Preach it, brother

ruudman

[Bang]

Originally Posted by T_R_S

Maybe you should be specific again making banket state,ents and passing them off as facts.

I've already said specifics about the automation environment (being able to change certain areas of automation in one swoop in Nuendo, can't in PT), and the limitless routing scheme in Nuendo... This is the last I'm posting about this.. we'll agree to disagree... To me its as obvious, Nuendo is just a smoother environment to work with, I can get stuff done literally twice as fast and most people I've turned it on to agree.. I use PT as an OMF transfer station to Nuendo and it works fine.

Steve