Just because people use Pro Tools does not mean they will be successful in their productions. With so many DAW options out there on the market, almost all of them achieve the same thing. Whether you use Pro Tools or not has very very little, if anything to do with the quality or success of the final production.

The quality of the resulting production has to do with the CREATIVITY, VISION, EXPERTISE and MIXING AND PRODUCTION SKILLS of the producer and engineer, not the brand of software they are using.

As far as I am concerned, anyone can create a hit album on Cool Edit Pro just as quickly as they might on Pro Tools. And I know many many people including myself who can be just as quick on other multitrack programs as you can be on Pro Tools, with all kinds of editing - music multitracking, spotting SFX for foley work, radio spots, you name it.

That's what's wrong with the recording industry these days. Marketing has poisioned and infiltrated everyone's purchasing decision. Less people spend time evaluating products to determine what's really the best. Digidesign, Apogee, and many other companies all have ruthless advertising campaigns and software and hardware upgrade programs that are designed to make people spend money.

If you compare Pro Tools side by side against many other editing packages, you will indeed find that the software falls short in many ways. Here are two:
- Handling of stereo regions: Pro Tools did not support stereo regions until post v5.0.1. Many other programs, including Cool Edit, Vegas, Nuendo, etc. did.
- View resolution: Very inconvenient and difficult to do precise down to the sample editing with Pro Tools. Programs like Cool Edit, Vegas, Nuendo, Saw Pro, all have better horizontal and vertical view resolution, more clearly marked, and editing is more precise.

There are many more areas where Pro Tools falls short as software. In addition, screen scrolling on my PT 24 Mix Plus 5.0.1 is slow in comparison to other DAW programs available at the time, and it takes FOREVER to boot up. Sonic Foundry Vegas has many more keyboard shortcuts for view zoom in/out, and editing with the cursor (and they all are identical with Sound Forge 7, which is an excellent 2 track editing program - Digidesign discontinued their 2 track s/w).

I have evaluated the competition and I am sorry but no one will convince me that Pro Tools is the best s/w, hardware, etc. for any reason. However, I can use Pro Tools just as easy as I can anything else.

And, I am sorry to say but I've seen people who are very very very quick on editing platforms other than Pro Tools and the results turned out better than Pro Tools. I've also seen people struggle painfully with Pro Tools' vices. People like Pro Tools because it's easy to use and doesn't require a lot of brain power to learn. It's not necessarily the best or most full featured.

Greg