|
Any Pro Tools (9) users here? (pg. 2)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Timothy |
| Pro Tools 9 is fine for producing. I only use it for mixing though, but the midi is good enough from what I tested. |
|
|
| wrzonance |
My buddy Torin does most of EDM production in ProTools. He says it's great.
I stopped using it circa version 7 era. And my MBox2 mini is just stuffed in a drawer somewhere in my studio.
I've been a Cubase owner/user for years now.
However with the recent updates allowing 3rd party interfaces and the vast improvements in midi handling --- I'm going to check it out again if I get some dough.
I always liked how quick it was to edit audio in ProTools, but that's about all it was good for --- oh and it was a requirement at the Art Institute I went to. |
|
|
| DJ RANN |
I'm still on 8 for professional purposes (studios don't like PTHD upgrades until all the bugs are well and truly gone) but AFAIK, there was not much midi development or further implementation between 8 and 9.
My opinion is that PTHD is "usable" for EDM production, but doesn't compete with Cubase or Logic in the midi stakes.
Audio? hands down, PTHD vastly outstrips any DAW both in terms of editing options and functionality. Once you have the techniques down it's so damn powerful, and something I find a little lacking in comparison with Logic or Cubase (which in fairness are fine, just not as advanced).
My overall opinion, is that becuase EDM is so midi heavy in use, you're better off with one of the major DAWs rather than protools, but if you're a sample/tracking/editing/mixing heavy guy then PTHD is a better solution.
Now it's native, it has opened a lot of doors but personally, the only thing I may do in PTHD is mixing, but even then, I probably would find it difficult as I always teak sequencing/arranging in the mix stage which could be impossible unless I'm happy to fully commit and bounce everything to audio proir to mixing (never happened yet). |
|
|
| cryophonik |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
My overall opinion, is that becuase EDM is so midi heavy in use, you're better off with one of the major DAWs rather than protools, but if you're a sample/tracking/editing/mixing heavy guy then PTHD is a better solution.
|
That seems to be the general consensus amongst most EDM guys, but I have yet to see anybody provide any specifics as to how/why PT is lagging behind the competition on the MIDI/sequencing side. Having used PT pretty much exclusively over the past month, and being a pretty well-versed Sonar, Cubase, and Studio One Pro user, I'm just not seeing it. Aside from Sonar's step sequencer, everything I can do in the other DAWs can be done in PT and, in many cases, more efficiently. Personally, I think Cubase has the clunkiest, least intuitive MIDI implementation of all the DAWs that I have used. I think PT's MIDI capabilities only suffer from one "flaw" - its reputation as being weak on the MIDI side, which stems from its admittedly weak MIDI side in earlier versions (i.e, prior to 7.5 IIRC). I think most people don't realize that all those awesome audio editing tools are available, where relevant, to the MIDI editor.
But, it's not all good news. The three areas that I think do make it a bit weak are: (1) the fact that it's only 64-bit compatible and not a true 64-bit application, (2) RTAS seems to be serious limiting factor in terms of efficiency, and (3) no freeze function. But, it seems that true 64-bit is on the horizon (hopefully in a 9.x update). Hopefully, they wise up and add freeze soon - it's far too important to EDM guys, even with a powerful CPU/64-bit platform. |
|
|
| wrzonance |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
it's far too important to EDM guys, even with a powerful CPU/64-bit platform. |
I can second that. Even today, with 12GB of 1800MHz RAM and a water-cooled over clocked i7... I can run out of CPU headroom pretty quickly... especially since it seems to be a vicious cycle in programming techniques, people tend to program sloppily because they know that the CPUs can take it, ironically, this means that leaps forward in CPU don't mean squat :( (or at least not a huge improvement)
Freeze is invaluable. I mean... you can get around it by bouncing out the track to audio... then disabling the source track... but freeze is by far more convenient --- and when it comes to creative flow, nothing sucks more than "Oh crap, CPU headroom gone, gotta bounce this track... okay gotta disable that track... okay NOW I can get back to the music making" |
|
|
| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
That seems to be the general consensus amongst most EDM guys, but I have yet to see anybody provide any specifics as to how/why PT is lagging behind the competition on the MIDI/sequencing side. Having used PT pretty much exclusively over the past month, and being a pretty well-versed Sonar, Cubase, and Studio One Pro user, I'm just not seeing it. Aside from Sonar's step sequencer, everything I can do in the other DAWs can be done in PT and, in many cases, more efficiently. Personally, I think Cubase has the clunkiest, least intuitive MIDI implementation of all the DAWs that I have used. I think PT's MIDI capabilities only suffer from one "flaw" - its reputation as being weak on the MIDI side, which stems from its admittedly weak MIDI side in earlier versions (i.e, prior to 7.5 IIRC). I think most people don't realize that all those awesome audio editing tools are available, where relevant, to the MIDI editor.
But, it's not all good news. The three areas that I think do make it a bit weak are: (1) the fact that it's only 64-bit compatible and not a true 64-bit application, (2) RTAS seems to be serious limiting factor in terms of efficiency, and (3) no freeze function. But, it seems that true 64-bit is on the horizon (hopefully in a 9.x update). Hopefully, they wise up and add freeze soon - it's far too important to EDM guys, even with a powerful CPU/64-bit platform. |
I hear you Dave, and agree that the reputation of it being crap for midi is probably not valid anymore with the newer versions. 8 changed a lot of those problems and I'm sure than 9 will go further.
I can't comment on 9 as I'm not a regular user of it yet, however, I can give you specifics as to why PTHD 8 lacks:
1, Does not have ability to create groove templates from midi files, meaning quite a ballache if you want to copy a groove from one loop or section to another.
2, No dedicated midi edit window - this means for any editing, you have to just zoom in on the midi region in the arrange window, which itself has two annoying things; obscures the view of the rest of your arrangement and it takes at least 7 button pushes of the zoom command to get to the same zoom level as logics midi edit window view (and then another 7 to get back to your normal arrange zoom level)
3, No extra midi information displayed in the track header section (like inspector in logic). With logic I can see nearly a dozen parameters including delay, transpose and quantise setting for that midi track at just a quick glance.
4, There are some deeper event list and extra midi functionality things (like midi to score and change all midi values in an event list etc). that are not in PTHD.
They may be minor but unfortunately the greatly affect a fast workflow, which PTHD is all about.
Aside from that, the cost of rtas or TDM plugins are extortionate compared to their AU or VST counterparts in some cases, and many plugins simply arent' available in rtas or TDM.
In fairness to the statement about sloppy programming, it's not really true - you have to realise that when PTHD was developed, they programmed to meet their own hardware, and now it;s native, it has to run on a wide variance of hardware, for which it's obviously not going to be optimised for, not to mention the host running normal OS functions which the PT hardware never had to worry about.
In all, the gap between other sequencers and PT in terms of midi has never been smaller, but there are still a few things I prefer about logic, mainly workflow related that won;t get me to switch just yet. |
|
|
| cryophonik |
Hmmmm...maybe PTHD is different but most of the issues that you mentioned don't apply to PT9 and, from the video tutorials I've been watching on groove3.com, most of them don't apply to PT8LE either. Maybe PTHD is different, but as discussed below, I believe that all of these apply to PT8LE as well as PT9.
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
1, Does not have ability to create groove templates from midi files, meaning quite a ballache if you want to copy a groove from one loop or section to another.
|
I just made a Digigroove template from MIDI files in PT9 and it worked fine. Highlight a MIDI region, go to Event > Beat Detective, select "Groove Template Extraction", and hit "Extract" > "Save to Disk".
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
2, No dedicated midi edit window - this means for any editing, you have to just zoom in on the midi region in the arrange window, which itself has two annoying things; obscures the view of the rest of your arrangement and it takes at least 7 button pushes of the zoom command to get to the same zoom level as logics midi edit window view (and then another 7 to get back to your normal arrange zoom level)
|
There is definitely a dedicated MIDI editor window (in addition to the inline editor mentioned above) and I've been spending most of my time in it. Just double-click on any MIDI region and it will open by default. There is a tutorial that is based on the PT8LE version at:
http://www.groove3.com/str/whats-ne...ro-tools-8.html
(click the question mark next to "MIDI Editor Window" to see an overview)
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
3, No extra midi information displayed in the track header section (like inspector in logic). With logic I can see nearly a dozen parameters including delay, transpose and quantise setting for that midi track at just a quick glance.
|
I'm not familiar with Logic's display, but PT's MIDI and inline editors can show you a handful of parameters (i.e., quantize, duration, delay, velocity, and transposition) in the Real-Time Properties, or you can open PT's MIDI Event List to see the detailed info.
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
4, There are some deeper event list and extra midi functionality things (like midi to score and change all midi values in an event list etc). that are not in PTHD.
|
PT has a pretty cool MIDI-to-score viewer as well. In the MIDI editor window, there is a button with a two-sixteenth-notes icon - click it and it will display all of the MIDI parts in the viewer as a score (i.e., without changing to the Score window, which is also possible).
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
Aside from that, the cost of rtas or TDM plugins are extortionate compared to their AU or VST counterparts in some cases, and many plugins simply arent' available in rtas or TDM.
|
TDM plugins are definitely more expensive (although, I have no idea why they cost nearly twice as much in most cases), but not the RTAS versions. Nearly every plugin that I own came with both VST and RTAS installers, with no additional charge. In a few cases, I had to download an additional RTAS installer from my account, but not one of my 100+ plugins cost me anything more for the RTAS version. In some cases (e.g., Tone2), there isn't an RTAS or TDM version available. |
|
|
| Timothy |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
That seems to be the general consensus amongst most EDM guys, but I have yet to see anybody provide any specifics as to how/why PT is lagging behind the competition on the MIDI/sequencing side. Having used PT pretty much exclusively over the past month, and being a pretty well-versed Sonar, Cubase, and Studio One Pro user, I'm just not seeing it. Aside from Sonar's step sequencer, everything I can do in the other DAWs can be done in PT and, in many cases, more efficiently. Personally, I think Cubase has the clunkiest, least intuitive MIDI implementation of all the DAWs that I have used. I think PT's MIDI capabilities only suffer from one "flaw" - its reputation as being weak on the MIDI side, which stems from its admittedly weak MIDI side in earlier versions (i.e, prior to 7.5 IIRC). I think most people don't realize that all those awesome audio editing tools are available, where relevant, to the MIDI editor.
But, it's not all good news. The three areas that I think do make it a bit weak are: (1) the fact that it's only 64-bit compatible and not a true 64-bit application, (2) RTAS seems to be serious limiting factor in terms of efficiency, and (3) no freeze function. But, it seems that true 64-bit is on the horizon (hopefully in a 9.x update). Hopefully, they wise up and add freeze soon - it's far too important to EDM guys, even with a powerful CPU/64-bit platform. |
The Midi in Pro Tools 9 is very basic, especially in comparison to Logic. It's still lagging behind Logic. I don't use Sonar so I can't compare it with that DAW.
But it's good enough to use for production. |
|
|
| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
|
VERY interesting. My knowledge of PTHD is based on usage in PTHD 7.x - Even though we switched to 8 recently, I haven't actually done any midi intensive work in it yet.
From what you've posted, it seems they've upgraded the shortcomings of previous PT versions.
Damn you dave, I'm going to have to install PT at home to do a comparison with logic :whip: |
|
|
| cryophonik |
Yeah, I have to admit that I was in pretty much the same boat (i.e., skepticism) not having used PTLE since an early 7.x version as well. They have obviously made some huge strides in the MIDI/sequencing side, but they obviously haven't escaped their reputation as being way behind the competition. That said, RTAS/DAE etc. seems to be very inefficient and I'm having a helluva time getting my track count up to anything useful for EDM. I just bought the FXpansion VST/RTAS wrapper last night, so hopefully I can avoid that issue altogether.
Hey RANN, have you (or anybody else) ever compared TDM side-by-side with the same plugin in RTAS or VST format? I've never used TDM, so I'm wondering why they cost so much more. Is it a PTHD elitism thing, or are they substantially better? |
|
|
| wrzonance |
| I always thought TDM plug-ins were better because they were processed on the HD gear itself... no host CPU cycles essentially. |
|
|
| DJ RANN |
Firstly, (sorry forgot to answer it in the last post) PTHD is incredibly close to PTLE - the main differences are track count, I/O and some built in options and plugins packs. In terms of functionality and usage, they are virtually identical.
As for RTAS vs TDM there is no difference in terms of sound quality - IMO, the extra cost comes from the fact that the developers had to program an entirely different code for the same plugin to utilise the PTHD cards, and that cost was passed on to the consumer directly, (as the system was a "pro" system and they could afford it etc).
The only real difference is latency and performance - TDM used the HD card resources whereas RTAS obviously uses the host computer.
Some of the problem is that I personally don't believe that PT was that efficiently coded - it's still OK but I don;t think it's like logic, cubase or sonar where a ton of R&D is constantly being done to streamline the code to make it efficient.
I think that one of the reasons PTLE is limited to 32 tracks (aside from the obvious upgrade incentive to get you to buy a PTHD system) is that it's bloody resource hungry as a sequencer and by limiting it, they knew most computers would be OK.
The bottom line is that TDM take the resources from the cards, and rtas use host processing, so the extra cost is really to offset the performance.
Now that host processing has got cheaper (multicore CPU's etc) it's probably cheaper to spec out a super power host and run all RTAS, than buy a used PTHD system and all the TDM plugs at the extra cost.
One thing I do have a feeling about though (not certain) is that PT runs more effciently on the a mac in terms of pound for pound comparison.
I'm going to install PTHD 9 on my imac and let you know how I get on. |
|
|
|
|
