Recommendations for PC DAW please

[Fast Castle]

A good friend of mine is finally upgrading from PowerTracks to a more serious DAW. His music's good, but he doesn't know his DAWs, so he came to me for advice.

Now, I'm a mac guy and have only used Logic Pro. I'm not inclined to recommend Pro Tools to him. But I've not used any of the other PC friendly daws, so really I'm not in a very good position to give him advice.

He's got a decent computer, plenty of memory, running on XP. He records mostly audio, with the sole caveat that he really wants a natively run drum machine, or drum samples, or easy midi control of drums, or something... his wording was "I really want drums in my daw, like PowerTracks has."

Of course I've got Ultrabeat in Logic, but I don't know if any other daws come with a rythym instrument plug-in or not. I could look it up, but I thought I'd ask the experts around here what there recommendations would be. Thanks in advance.

[manning1]

lol.....
i URGE HIM to try another daw.

in fact i urge him to try them all.
music123.com and zzounds.com and many other
sites have lists....of music software for pc.
knock yourselves out.

then maybe he'll appreciate what a nice product he has.
with great respect....ive tried them all.
your friend is going to have to spend a ton of money. to better it.
imho powertracks is a VERY SERIOUS DAW.
but some folks are sold on marketing ...jeesh.
what version is your friend on ??

i'd be curious what your friend feels he is missing.

[Fast Castle]

Hey manning,

Well, I think my friend would be inclined to agree with you. He's been happy with PowerTracks and is only recently starting to cave in to people like me who say, "PowerTracks? man, get something serious!"

Well, that's not fully true. Lately he's been unhappy with the audio quality too.

But, in other words you might be right. I did once use an older version of PowerTracks and thought it was bad. Any kind of processing on the original audio seemed to be detrimental to the sound.

What wordlengths can PowerTracks record at? What wordlengths does it process at? You know, I just looked at their site and there's not a word said about wordlengths that I can find. That bugs me right there.

I still think he'd be better served by something else. Any other recommendations?

[Fast Castle]

Oh, and I don't know what version he's on. His PowerTracks is a couple of years old.

You certainly got me thinking though. Leaving plug-ins out of this for a second, are you saying that a current version of PowerTracks will sound just as good as, say, Cubase?... given that only lite processing/mixing duties are required? If that were the case I'd tell him to stick with what he's got, and start saving for some convertors.

[manning1]

castle...
sound quality depends on ONE THING...
the QUALITY OF THE SOUND CARD.

i specifically asked about wordlenghths to one of their techs......
heres the response i got ...
powertracks mix math etc.....
To clarify a question manning had up-thread a bit...
All the mixer and DX/VST plugin hosting code in PTW(powertracks)
and BIAB is performed in floating point format...
32 bit single float busses, 64 bit double float
coefficients and temp values, and 80 bit float math
operations in the computer's FPU (floating point processing unit).

This is carried out regardless if the song SEQ is set to
16 bit or 24 bit integer audio format. During playback or
render-to-disk, PTW reads the 16 bit or 24 bit integer
tracks and converts them to hi-res float right off the bat.
The only time the audio is converted back to 16 or 24 bit integer,
is right after the Master output, before the audio is sent to a
soundcard or written to a render file.

IN SUMMARY CASTLE FROM AN ENGINEERING STANDPOINT IT DONT GET ANY BETTER THAN THAT.
notice the 80 bit and 64 bit comments.

with greatest respect.....
ive a feeling your friend is useing a less than stellar sound card.

if you tell me what he is useing i can advise further.

for example if he is useing a cheap sound card OF COURSE SOUND QUALITY IS COMPROMISED.

[manning1]

castle...
i forgot to mention.
tell your friend to put in a hi quality EXPENSIVE SOUND CARD like a lynx for example. AND RUN A TEST>...THEN judge the audio.
in summary its all in the front end signal chain and sound card convertors.

by the way...if you ever want a friendly (and i mean FRIENDLY ) comparison of
logic and what i use....just pm me.
powertracks has some neat tricks up its sleeve you might not be aware of.

ps...what your friend will find is....like me...
he'll go round n' round in circles...(been there done that many times to see if i could find better without spending a trust fund....i dont have...lol.)....
trying lots of software....getting frustrated at something or other and be back at square one.
as i said i urge him to try them all.

[MustacheVerra]

Originally Posted by Fast Castle

A good friend of mine is finally upgrading from PowerTracks to a more serious DAW. His music's good, but he doesn't know his DAWs, so he came to me for advice.

Now, I'm a mac guy and have only used Logic Pro. I'm not inclined to recommend Pro Tools to him. But I've not used any of the other PC friendly daws, so really I'm not in a very good position to give him advice.

He's got a decent computer, plenty of memory, running on XP. He records mostly audio, with the sole caveat that he really wants a natively run drum machine, or drum samples, or easy midi control of drums, or something... his wording was "I really want drums in my daw, like PowerTracks has."

Of course I've got Ultrabeat in Logic, but I don't know if any other daws come with a rythym instrument plug-in or not. I could look it up, but I thought I'd ask the experts around here what there recommendations would be. Thanks in advance.

I jus t want to say that Samplitude sound way better than Cubase no mater what the sound card you use. You don't even have to be an engeneer to here it trust me...SAW studio sounds good but the midi didn't work out for me.

So if sound is important, forget cubase. I know some people say they cant hear a deference but that's not true. BTW i really like Cubase and I'm use to it but once i heard Samplitude i realize Cubase was not in the same leage, no joke! You friend can test Samplitude, just import a project and watch his reaction.

If he buys Samplitude 8 with in the month of august, he can upgrad to Samplitude 9 for free which will come out with in a month...I'm buying tomorow.

BTW i don't mean to start a fight as to which DAW sound's best and the sound deference between Cubase and Samp was obvious.

[adzski]

Originally Posted by Fast Castle

Of course I've got Ultrabeat in Logic, but I don't know if any other daws come with a rythym instrument plug-in or not. I could look it up, but I thought I'd ask the experts around here what there recommendations would be. Thanks in advance.

He should check out Samplitude. It has an old-school beat-box that comes with it, and version 9 ships with Sampletank LE.

[manning1]

re..samp....
ive always had a lot of technical respect for it.
the one part of samp i really liked was the mixer display.
i would have been a user a long time ago except for a couple of things.
1...the lack of in depth midi for the longest time..which i believe is now being addressed.
(does it now have midi notation editing ?? ....)
2...pricing. this was my main serious gripe.
3...initially i found it difficult to set up.....and thought this might be difficult for newbies. one particular gripe i seem to remember was GOTTA REMEMBER TO CHECK THAT BOX THAT SAYS PLAYBACK ALREADY RECORDED TRACKS WHILE RECORDING CURRENT ONE.
frankly i never liked the whole vip approach..sorry samp users.
but thats how i feel. HOWEVER....once i had the environment set up properly,
it was a very nice experience.
the ONE THING THAT REALLY IMPRESSED ME.....was at the time a few years back....
i thought i would try and outfox it by purposely running it on some old junk laptop a friend had with the most junk hard drive known to man....lol.
an old p3 if i remember. it gave me 24 tracks easily.
i really wish tho samp would get their pricing down.

[Hexfix93]

saw sounds the best, but its a nightmare to use. samplitude is the nice inbetween, it sounds way better than the others, just under saw, but the interface is spot on, almost like cubase in many ways. but man, once you get a few midi objects going, trying to open one makes the system slow to a crawl and bog and act sluggish, i dont understand why at all.

[manning1]

hmmm...re saw a nightmare to use ....

i really cant agree with this.
in my opinion.....the developer of saw.....bob lentini,
is a very very talented highly professional computer engineer.

his use of assembler techniques in coding saw was a v clever move.
and a lot of carefull thought was put into the product.
like samp.....(and what i use..) ...saw will run on some pretty bad pc's often underpowered.
if saw had have had a different pricing structure i would have been a buyer once again. i had minor quibbles about the graphics also. but i understand skins are available. but overall the product is highly impressive.
just wish the pricing was different.

[MustacheVerra]

Originally Posted by manning1

hmmm...re saw a nightmare to use ....

i really cant agree with this.
in my opinion.....the developer of saw.....bob lentini,
is a very very talented highly professional computer engineer.

his use of assembler techniques in coding saw was a v clever move.
and a lot of carefull thought was put into the product.
like samp.....(and what i use..) ...saw will run on some pretty bad pc's often underpowered.
if saw had have had a different pricing structure i would have been a buyer once again. i had minor quibbles about the graphics also. but i understand skins are available. but overall the product is highly impressive.
just wish the pricing was different.

Agreed, but i think Hexfix93 is refering to MWS(midi in SAW), my guess .

[BB Edwards]

[quote=MustacheVerra;858172]

If he buys Samplitude 8 with in the month of august, he can upgrad to Samplitude 9 for free which will come out with in a month...I'm buying tomorow.

QUOTE]

I just bought Samplitude 8 today-can I still upgrade to 9 for free?

[MustacheVerra]

[quote=BB Edwards;865657]

Originally Posted by MustacheVerra

If he buys Samplitude 8 with in the month of august, he can upgrad to Samplitude 9 for free which will come out with in a month...I'm buying tomorow.

QUOTE]

I just bought Samplitude 8 today-can I still upgrade to 9 for free?

I don't think so, the offer ended on august 31, which is when i bought them.

Call your syntax representative and give him hell, tell him you didn't know about the date etc...you should have the same deel as me if you ask me...Tell him to change the date if he has to, you know, push! push! push it!