Glenn - Why use so many different programs? I guess no one program suites everybody, hmm and what does that say about the programs. I'll admit I'm not at all familar with Radar. One comment I read on their website was "Protools is great, but it cannot compete with Radar for tracking." - Can you expand on this? I mean, I don't find tracking in Protools hard at all, in fact, punching in in Protools is glorious compared to how I used to do it on my Tascam 4 track cassette (with DBX) back in my high school daze.

J.

I don't track into Protools either... I just got used to machines at first DA88's and now i use DA98's. I only have Protools LE/Digi002rack and punching is harder for me on the computer. When your punching hip-hop vocals and the artists says 'I don't like the way I said 'dope' can you just get that one word' The Tascams are way more fluid on punching and I actualy like the sound of there converters when you push good preamps on em. I do need better converters going from the 78's into the computer, any sugestions?
sam

Man, I have 001 PTLE on a G4 and i only use protools cause i like it and it does all i need and that of which my clients ask of me.


Raj, brings up an excellent point, being compatible w/ da big boys. I have an RnB client that tracks at my studio and mixes at a local bigshot studio. He pays me $30 an hour to track and pays $90 plus to mix.
Going from an LE session to HD/TDM is a piece of cake.
Sometimes i have to save a song as 2 sessions, the the eng just imports the tracks into one session. LE has a 32 track limit, that can be worked around.

To the original poster: Does your bidna justify $15,000 on a pt setup, or $600? Only you can answer this.

Hope this helps.


sdf

S.D Whats up with that? My boi told about a way he gets aROUND USING JUST 32 TRACKS ALSO, BUT COULDN'T DEMO IT AT THE TIME. HE SAID SOMETHING LIKE IT WORK SIMILAR TO GHOST TRACKS OR VIRTUAL TRACKS. The difference is he does it within the same session .

He makes additional tracks I think, then copies what he;s done already to those tracks as ghost tracks, that opens up the other 32 for nmore recording. Maybe he copies them and turns them to AUX tracks. HMMMMMMMM, since I'm here, let me try it out.
RaJ............Out...........................1

Sup Raj!!

Dig the new pics BTW...

PTLE allows you to have 5 playlist per track, at least in 5.2.1...

I think what yer boi is doing is using 32 audio tracks, and maybe creates a new playlist for all the audio tracks, which hides the "old" playlist, or old track...and records new ones.....I use this method for recording different takes of a git solo or vocal take.
Or, when tracking a band, we might keep multiple takes of the same song and compare them later.

My RnB dude makes his beats in Acid, bounces down all instruments as its own seperate stereo .wav. All are locked to tempo, i import these into LE, same tempo, and we record vox over them. Before i run out of tracks, i willmake a submix of the beat only, import it back into LE, and line dat ho up!! Otherwise the track will be out of sync w/ itself.

I save one session w/ all the beat and some vox, and the other session w/ ALL the voxes and a stereo beat. So one session has like 12 stereo tracks and rest mono, while the other is all mono cept one stereo track. Homie says it works great and the eng at da BIG studio has no trouble using the "import track from session" function in PT.

I always use the "save session copy in" function and copy all audio and fade files, making sure to clear any unused regions as needed.

rock

sdf

Justin,

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Pro Tools (well... maybe just a little ) but my point is: at this stage in the game, most of the DAW software out there is pro if pro's use it. Yes, Pro-Tools might be the most popular, but that doesn't mean its the best. We use RADAR to track because its bullet-proof, sounds better than ProTools (that I will argue to the end) and acts like an old fashioned tape deck (being the ancient dinosaur that I am). When I am working with clients who like to work fast, RADAR is unbeatable. Of course, no plug ins, no drag and drop editing, etc. makes it necessary for me to have at least one other DAW. They use Logic (which rocks) and I use DP (which I love). We wind up on RADAR to mix because I don't like the sound of mixing inside a computer (something else we can argue about later ) - I like RADAR's D to A's into a Neve or API console. No ****ty Pro Tools summing busses for me.

And, of course, it all starts with a great song....

Hate to break up your Blow Tools circle jerk. Here is just a short list of hack rank amatuers using inferior pro sumer DAW's;

Logic, Herbie Hancock,Lee Ritenour,George Benson, George Duke, Marcus Miller, Micheal Brecker,John Mc Laughlin, Peter Gabriel, Hans Zimmer, Al Di Meola and thousands more.

Nuendo, Alan Parsons, Frank Fillipetti, Phil Ramone, Elliot Scheiner, Chuck Ainley and thousands more.

DP, Pat Metheny, Danny Elfman, Aerosmith, Chick Corea,Jeff Lorber. I could go on all night. Frankly I think Its embarassing that our forum administrator would make such a rediculous statement and then stand by it . You Laid this turd Justin. Now I am going to rub your nose in it. Be man enough to to admit your just plain wrong. But no, you will probably just blow up my post. Like I said . BRAINWASHED.

Well said ma man... But I heard Aero Smith did their Push and Play in PT. That album was a sonic disaster, maybe that's why they are useing DP now.

Vinco - I'm sure they use all the DAWs they can and get lots of endorsement money for saying they do. I don't pay much attention to what the music mags say, just what I know from watching producers/engineers work with Protools

Bottom Line: use whatever you want, then try Protools and learn why it is the industry standard.

As for sound quality between DAWs, as far as I'm concerned the DAW itself has little (or nothing) to do with sound quality (assuming there's no processing on) - Mics, Mic Pres, Digital convertors are where the sound is made. I've heard the stuff about the Protools summing buss and ya know what - it's BS. The Protools summing buss sounds awesome.

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