Why is Pro Tools the industry standard?

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by cookiekixx

i was talking about multitrack audio not midi

What you meant was, Digi was the first to create a shitty sounding mediocre product for the masses.

There were already systems available that did multitrack recordign. And they did it better, and sounded better than Pro-Tools.

And the plugins that were out back then, sounded like crap as well. Including the waves stuff.

[Harley-OIART]

Originally Posted by Henchman

...a $hitty sounding mediocre product for the masses.

There were already systems available that did multitrack recordign. And they did it better, and sounded better than Pro-Tools.

U really are hard up for 'Nintendo' aren't you? "$hitty sounding product for the masses" come on man...

tutt try putting IMO in your posts for once.

[tamasdragon]

Originally Posted by Harley-OIART

U really are hard up for 'Nintendo' aren't you? "$hitty sounding product for the masses" come on man...

tutt try putting IMO in your posts for once.

Nintendo? As we all know digi's mix plus system is/was sonically inferior at it's age. Digi sold at full price. Nintendo is probably the best daw around, and your hands are not tied with a closed system. As I stated somewhere above, because of the quantity of those digi systems doesn't mean that they are the best.

Remeber soon digi users will have to pay upgrades by project length.
Regards Tamas Dragon

[quincyg]

ok, i gotta chime in. i love a good pt vs. native fight.

i think todays computers can handle the same load or better as the current hd systems for a fraction of the price and without the need for proprietary hardware and plug-ins.

that being the case the argument turns to which software do you prefer and what price are you willing to pay to run that software. i moved away from pt this year for a native rig. i love it with, but needed to get a cheap pt rig in addition for multitracking and audio editing. plus chances are that clients that cometo me will come with pt sessions.

it has also taken me months to find native plug-ins that sound as good or better than my hd plugs. a major advantage is that is if i change sequencers in the future my plugs will still work. also for some reason plug-in makers charge half the price for native vs tdm.

another advantage of native is that i can buy the craziest new computer every few years for around $1k after selling current one. this same update that i went through with digi cost me $5-10k each time.

[quincyg]

although i guess you can alway use rtas plug-ins with your hd rig which should give you more plugs than a strictly native system. so i guess you will never be quites as fast with a native only rig, but let's say we have reached a point where cpu is no longer an issue.

[HotRats]

In these days with 17.000$ you can get a the HD|24 Pro Tools Studio Bundle
(25.000$ full price)

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?...0&itemid=23568

HD|24 Pro Tools Studio Bundle

Control|24
Pro Tools|HD 2 Accel system (PCI or PCIe available)
96 I/O
MIDI I/O
Control|24 TRS DigiSnake Kit
Digidesign DINR™ TDM
Digidesign Smack!™ TDM
Bomb Factory Pultec Bundle
Bomb Factory Slightly Rude Compressor™
TL Space™ TDM Edition

An HD2 means

18 DSP chips for powering the mix engine and TDM plug-ins
Support for up to 64 channels of I/O
Up to 192 simultaneous audio tracks at 44.1/48 kHz (256 total audio tracks)
Up to 96 simultaneous audio tracks at 96 kHz
Up to 160 mono or stereo auxiliary inputs
Up to 128 instrument tracks
256 MIDI tracks
128 internal mix buses

Or it mens that with 1st HD card you can run up to 96 simultaneous audio tracks at 44.1/48 kHz and with the the second HD card you can run your TDM plug-ins
in addition to your RTAS plug-is.

With the Control|24 you get

Features include

24 touch-sensitive, motorized faders

Hands-on access to and control of Pro Tools recording, routing, mixing, and editing parameters

16 Focusrite Class A mic/line preamps
Comprehensive Control Room section capable of up to 5.1 surround monitoring
Illuminated switches for Mute, Solo, Record Arm, Channel Selects, and Automation Mode on every channel
Dedicated EQ and Dynamics switches on every channel
26 scribble strips provided for system feedback
High-resolution LED display for transport location at a glance
Integrated submixer with 8 stereo inputs
Touch-Sensitive automation of plug-in parameters using faders via Plug-In Flip Mode
Connects to Pro Tools systems via high-speed Ethernet
Cross-platform support for Mac OS and Windows systems
Optional, custom DigiSnake Kits available for easy, organized connectivity



***************

Is it expensive ?
Yes it is but not that much I think.

[MonoBrow]

First Post here.I finished my audio engineer course last year at the sae hamburg i was educated in a lot of hard/software we had to do a final Mixsession for our dipl work with pt+icon the system was nice to work with but it crashed atleast 3 times per session.I never ever have any crashes with sx3 and an rme Multiface,sure im offcourse not a pro and only 26 but what i gathered for me on protools and sx3/logic is what made my opinion! And tbh nuendo/sx3/logic > pro tools sorry but i almost never saw any daw that was that unstable/timing unstable and soo bound to specific hardware.
Just the 0.00002 of a noob if you want to say so.

[jackinthebox]

Originally Posted by Geert van den Berg

I forgot, in PT copying mixdata, settings, routings, plugins from other sessions is a breeze. Don't know of any DAW which does that as easy.

Errr? Logic? they're just different in my opinion. like different religions perhaps? he main advantage of protools used to be TDM plugins and real zero latency monitoring through said plugs. It's getting closer now but TDM still costs a hell of a lot more. Also PT is 48it fixed point and all the rest are 32 bit floating point apparently, i still don't know which is better in that sense. I use logic because i learned that way and i don't have any Digidesign hardware. One question i do have is how good is protools on a 002 say, without the tdm hardware. Zero latency monitioring? I was advising a guy today to go the logic route because he was buying a new mac and a fireface. The other option was a 002 which comes with protools but i believe only the LE version. Which would you guys go for?

[jackinthebox]

another advantage of native is that i can buy the craziest new computer every few years for around $1k after selling current one. this same update that i went through with digi cost me $5-10k each time.[/QUOTE]

very true. a friend of mine is still running OS9 with a PT mix plus system which was happening about 5 years ago but they can't upgrade without spending another 10k plus.

[quincyg]

thought i would post back since i wasted about 2 hours in logic doing something that would only have taken 2 minutes in protools.

i am working on a pretty dense mix and needed to repeat the chorus which meant simply copying those bars and repeating them at the end. i ran into stupid problems. had to unfreeze any frozen tracks. if i selected all the tracks and tried to option drag, the program would crash. snip and paste...program crashed. ok that sucked.

so i packed all tracks into a folder and chopped the chorus and duplicated it at the end. then unpacked. the unpack operation made a mess of my arrange. worked away for a while and realized some of my instruments were no longer playing. i must have selected unpack but dont create new tracks for overlapped instruments. damn!

had to go back and do it all over again selected upack and create new tracks for overlapping instruments. now this really wreaked havoc on my arrange as there are around 200 tracks now. one for each little piece of overlapped anything. getting really annoyed now. finally i went back and option dragged the regions one track at a time for 50 tracks and then had to recreate my edits that i lost.

at times like these i hate logic and think it is truly worthless for editing. unfortunately i hate pro tools for being a financial money pit. guess there is no real solution.

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by HotRats

In these days with 17.000$ you can get a the HD|24 Pro Tools Studio Bundle
(25.000$ full price)

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?...0&itemid=23568

HD|24 Pro Tools Studio Bundle

Control|24
Pro Tools|HD 2 Accel system (PCI or PCIe available)
96 I/O
MIDI I/O
Control|24 TRS DigiSnake Kit
Digidesign DINR™ TDM
Digidesign Smack!™ TDM
Bomb Factory Pultec Bundle
Bomb Factory Slightly Rude Compressor™
TL Space™ TDM Edition

An HD2 means

18 DSP chips for powering the mix engine and TDM plug-ins
Support for up to 64 channels of I/O
Up to 192 simultaneous audio tracks at 44.1/48 kHz (256 total audio tracks)
Up to 96 simultaneous audio tracks at 96 kHz
Up to 160 mono or stereo auxiliary inputs
Up to 128 instrument tracks
256 MIDI tracks
128 internal mix buses

Or it mens that with 1st HD card you can run up to 96 simultaneous audio tracks at 44.1/48 kHz and with the the second HD card you can run your TDM plug-ins
in addition to your RTAS plug-is.

With the Control|24 you get

Features include

24 touch-sensitive, motorized faders

Hands-on access to and control of Pro Tools recording, routing, mixing, and editing parameters

16 Focusrite Class A mic/line preamps
Comprehensive Control Room section capable of up to 5.1 surround monitoring
Illuminated switches for Mute, Solo, Record Arm, Channel Selects, and Automation Mode on every channel
Dedicated EQ and Dynamics switches on every channel
26 scribble strips provided for system feedback
High-resolution LED display for transport location at a glance
Integrated submixer with 8 stereo inputs
Touch-Sensitive automation of plug-in parameters using faders via Plug-In Flip Mode
Connects to Pro Tools systems via high-speed Ethernet
Cross-platform support for Mac OS and Windows systems
Optional, custom DigiSnake Kits available for easy, organized connectivity



***************

Is it expensive ?
Yes it is but not that much I think.

I guarantee you I can put together a system for less than half that and have at least vthe same, if not better functionality and better sounding pre's.
Those Focusrite Paltinum pre's are again the worst soudnign pre's I've used. Brittle and no headroom.

[zboy2854]

Every post in this thread should be ended with IMO. That said...

Having tried Logic and Nuendo, I ended up coming back to PT, because none of the others had all the software features or equivalents I use and depend on all the time.

From a purely raw power standpoint, there is no difference anymore, so it comes down to personal preference now more than anything.

IMO.

[C Heat]

Originally Posted by zboy2854

Every post in this thread should be ended with IMO.

From a purely raw power standpoint, there is no difference anymore, so it comes down to personal preference now more than anything.

IMO.

Amen to that.

It's a MOOT POINT people.

Jeeze.

Move on, yeh?

[the tortoise]

Wow, took me two days but I finally read the whole thread!

The original post has been answered many times and very well by different people.

All that other platform war stuff is simply adolescent.

As has been calmly stated, it's all a matter of preference these days.
Each program/hardware setup has its advantages/disadvantages, feature sets and workflows.
Each program has feature omissions, bugs, upgrade policies and performance issues, bar none.

Macs have proprietry hardware and force expensive upgrade paths, but there are obviously many people who find numerous advantages to using their systems and they clearly make a great product.

PCs offer more choice and greater power at less cost but with them come all the compatibility and stability issues that it takes more time to figure out.

Personally, I accept any shortfalls and limitations of any hardware/software rig (that are usually down to the history and evolution of that system and market forces) and simply get on with using them to do whatever it is they do well.

I enjoy using both PCs and Macs in mine and other people's studios.
I enjoy using PT, Logic, Cubase, Reason and Live on a daily basis.

Do I have occasional problems with each product? You bet
Do I have personal preferences and passions about individual products? Definately
Do I enjoy working out how to use such sophisticated and feature-rich products that allow me to do unheard of audio tasks? For sure.

Anyone who gets all high and mighty/condescending/precious about a particular way of working is, frankly, immature. They are tools and a great engineer/musician will get a great sound out of anything they they know how to use well.
Fourtet's entire critically aclaimed output was made on an old Dell PC with Audiomulch, Cool Edit, a pair of Sony speakers and the mic and soundcard that came with his computer.

Be passionate about what you love, but be realistic about the realities of the marketplace and the evolution of technology as well.

If I could add anything to the original debate ('Why is Pro Tools the Industry Standard?'), it would be that working in the PT environment is the closest to working with actual audio. I feel that when I'm learning how the software works, I'm actually learning about signal routing, gain structures and anologue pathways. It's simple.
With other software, I feel like I'm learning a program, something specific and relevant only to itself. It's hard to explain, I hope you know what I mean.

I think that this is another reason why it became the industry standard - engineers moving from the analogue world into the digital one found a program that presented the easiest, most logical shift in work flow to the way it's always been done.

Combine that with the hardware integration, stability, power and the fact that you only have to deal with one company and you have a platform from which Digidesign's savvy marketing/research team built upon to build their 'industry standard' status.

Sure, the industry and technology are changing fast, but all the companies will be falling over themselves to improve their products in competition with each other, to the ultimate advantage of us users.

Use whatever suits you and use it well.


Peace


the tortoise