who here uses pro tools?

...just wondering

I used to use it, but only for band recording purposes.

interesting to me how much it's not used in techno, which is why i ask. i can think of a handful of Names that use it but that's it. a few years ago i would assume b/c it was cost prohibitive, but it's not anymore. i suppose it's because cubase & logic got this market during those years...

well w/ Pro-Tools, its great for recording but to have a really decent system will cost an arm and a leg haha, most ppl use Cubase or Logic because of their great sequencers and easy interface.

PT rocks, I'd say it was loads easier than say Logic as well although not as flexible in a few matters

I couldn't really imagine Pro Tools being all that great for writing electronic music. Great for recording bands and "traditional studio" work... But the midi side of things are awful (almost non-existent) and your stuck with RTAS plug ins... none of your "fancy dan laa dee daa" VST's here i'm afraid which is a kick in the teeth for obvious reasons. But if you use Pro Tools for the right sort of work, and especially if your on a TDM system, it does reign supreme...

I'll go on a limb and say that if u spend the same $ u spend on a all full pt rig but on a MAC/Logic or a PC/Nuendo u can probably get a easier 2 handle and as pro sounding setup!

The PT as always been designed with the DAW/ mastering perspective..

SX/ Logic/ Nuendo with the electronic musician in mind! so it's loads more appealing!

I've stuck with cubase since it's earlier incarnations, and I would rather spend the same amount of a super Carrilion PC with RME and about 2 Powercore+2 UAD1 and sony/ waves/TC/ natives/ ETC plug ins!


PS - there is a program (can remenber the software house :doh: ) that make all VST i/ Plug-ins RTAS compatible! ;)

Z

my friend has a digi 02 and its fun to mix down tracks on it but i wouldnt buy it :cool:

wow and to think i was seriopusly considering buying a mbox setup. would you still reccomend getting the mbox if someone were to be needing a kick ass soundcard, and also writes some melodic cinematic soundtrack type pieces? is protools that versatile or should i just go with something else? im not really heavily midi hooked up and have primarily been recording my samples into soundforge and them pasting in acid.

"....some melodic cinematic soundtrack type pieces?..." if nothing else this would probably qualify yer needs towards PT ...


Z

my take on this is that in the last 5 or 6 years, the technology has advansed loads enabaling sequencer packages like cubase to include pro features that before were only avalable with pt type gear. Also incorporated with this, many electronic music users have grown up with cubase etc and are already used to itscontrol method as with most studio engineers have transfired to pt from using 24 trk tape. pt can also be easaly sinked with a 24 tk tape machine so this gives pt an advantage to many engineers.
myself, i have grown up going through many different collage's always having to go around to another mate's house and tinkering around with their set up. This has always been cubase in some guise so when I finally got my setup i naturally whent for cubase coz its what I know. :lol:

... I work with a lot of people writing and producing all sorts on protools and most people comment on how fast and flexible things are here ... certainly the midi features aren't as flexible in Protools as say logic or cubase but the audio editing makes up for it tenfold and more ... and it's so response as well, when you get a loaded session in a host based sequencer things start to get sluggish when you edit whilst playing whereas in protools it's still blindingly fast.

Bit expensive and as you say largely incompatible with VST plugins, although all the native instruments stuff works as RTAS and the Virus TDM plugin is amazing.

And the beat detective thang is blinding it's like having a recycle to chop up and shuffle your audio around at the touch of a key right in the middle of your track. Reverb One's not bad either, sounds better than most of the host based stuff I've tried (but we are back on outboard reverb again at the moment there's something just slightly nasty about computer reverb that doesn't make me want to avoid it as much as possible)

Admittedly we do run a PC along side for the more obscure plugins, particularly the more unstable ones so they don't crash the main system ... it's also pretty easy to us it like an insert on a channel so audio can come out of a track on PT and through the PC like an effects processor then back into protools rig for mixing.

I don't see that the sync abilities of protools are much above the sync capabilities of cubase. I mean I had an atari ST years ago running Cubase which actually had hardware control over my Fostex R8, you could click on bar four in Cubase and the tape machine would rewind, play, lock in time and cubase would start playing too from the same location and that was in 1995 or thereabouts.

The DSP cards for the new protools systems are amazingly powerful, so I think Digidesign may still have a good few years left in them yet. And whilst you may get the same track count and a similar number of plugins now on a fast PC as you would on a loaded protools rig the expanded DSP means you could say run the same high number of plugins but choose higher quality ones with better modelling or smoother eq math.

Still m8, when u think of the price of a PT rig, u can get a spanking new g5 + 4 gb ram, superfast disks (does mac use SATA?? - 10000rpm), best 2 graphics cards u can get+ 4 mf Apple monit.
MoTU or RME Soundcard, 2 UAD-1 (full softw packet)+ 2 TC Powercore FIrewire (full softw packet)+ waves plugs...

In the end U probably still have some cash and I don't think Logic (or somethin along the same lines in PC/ Cubase) will have any prob or slugishness what so ever!!


:cool:

Z

Yeah, it helps if you ignore the price when making the justification for sure ... but if you think you could have a nice new car or a protools rig it makes more sense ... i mean I've not got a driving license ...

(as someone said, owe the bank a tenner and it's your problem, owe them 10 million and it's their problem).

one of my teachers in school had a full Pro-Tools rig, it costed him $40,000 for everything, but he said he made back his money X4, renting his rig out to studios.

but that's TDM...

considering the hardware + software you get for $2100, the 002 doesn't feel expensive to me.