But you hear that kind of stuff about every company. Digidesign is no better and no worse than any other.

Anaconda, to me it makes sense that you recorded to analog tape first then moved it digital. We all know there's a richness to 2" tape that hasn't been duplicated in digital. But if I had a choice of moving it to a 2424 or Protools, I'd choose Protools without question. Why? mostly so I could do clean edits but also because of the mixing power.

Pichaga - I'm sorry you got bad customer service in 1995 from Digidesign over an Audiomedia III card. The year is now 2004 last time I checked. I think after nine years you owe it to yourself to re-evaluate Protools TDM. Two studios I work with have recorded countless bands on Protools Mix+ and still do today. Protools HD offers a lot more processing power but many do not switch because they would have to replace their plugins which is also costly. Your comments about CPUs being powerful enough today isn't far off with the coming of 64bit software to take advantage of 64bit processors. However I still disagree. The two Protools cards I have in my HD system are gigantic PCI cards and chock full of dsp chips. I think of them as containers for the number of instances of DSP (plugins) I can use at one time. Really, check out Protools HD sometime and you'll see what I mean.

To all -- look this thread is getting kinda tired. If you all wanna think I'm from outer space for thinking Protools is a better product than the rest - so be it. I find all your observations informative and fun and will take them under advisement. And by the way, yes, there are tons of features I'd like to see added to Protools. For example, software instruments and samplers are awesome when they work right but great sounds can be very processor and memory intensive. The highly anticipated Mach Five fell short for most people. They'll get it, it's just not quite there yet. I'd like to see the power of Gigastudio incorporated into Protools. That'd be something. Cheers.

Oh and Anaconda. I'll try to keep that wood in my pants if it's ok with you

Justin, the power of Gigastudio - actually greater power than Giga 2 (the current version) - is in Emagic's EXS24. Kontak isn't as efficient, but the latest version is also very good. The only problem is that it's not practical to run EXS24 on multiple machines, and until we get 64-bit memory addressing, one machine isn't really enough to deal with large libraries (e.g. Vienna Symphonic Library).

Everyone's eagerly awaiting Giga 3.

However, Pro Tools isn't set up to deal with these large libraries, especially the orchestral ones. Briefly, the reason is that you need to have dozens of articulations loaded up and ready to try out for each phrase or even each note.

I'm not posting this to fuel the stale argument, just explaining that other samplers than MachFive are working very well.

By the way, the Access Virus Indigo plug-in for PT is awesome if you're looking for a software synth that won't eat up your CPU (since you have Pro Tools hardware).

It was stale 6 pages ago.

Two things, though:

I agree, Nick. For the most part. But, back to the MBox - they released a standalone driver for the product to make it compatible with other applications 3 to 4 months AFTER they made it available in PT 6 (I think it was actually prior to 6 - its been so long, and has happened so many times). There were no significant differences between the driver they used in the LE release and that released as a standalone. I know, I had to borrow someones disk for the install. Fortunately they did not require authorization of the software to get the driver to work, which makes my point - they could've made the update available to all, and didn't (the PT update can't be used without the iLok stuff anyway). The ploy is to get people to upgrade to 6 (which they don't need, because they don't use it) just to get the driver. They've done this on a consistent basis. That is not support - its extortion. I've not had that situation with other companies - on the contrary, most other companies strive for compatibility.


Didn't you at one point say you were a BTester for FXTeleport? Whatever happened with that? Was that on PC or Mac? It seems like a viable solution, but I check in at the site every once in a while and there's still no word....

Peace.

Digi's extortion-like business practices also really cost me a LOT of money and time years ago with my nubus system and soured me on their company. The smpte slave driver ripoff, the optical backup systems that didn't work, software conflicts and stability issues... Avid did the same crap even before they joined forces - putting their logos on stock apple drives and selling them as "sanctioned" equipment for twice the price. As soon as the opportunity presented itself to work on another system that got the job done, I never looked back. I believe in spending my money (as much as possible) to support companies that treat people fairly and honestly, & that have good energy behind them. If you think because 5 or 10 years have passed that changes exclusionary intentions or unethical ways of doing business, that's rediculous, particularly in this instance.

Justin, here's the clincher: I heard that Bush is using Pro Tools to pre-record his weekly radio addresses. Whaddaya think now?

FXT is PC-only at the moment, but what it does is stream audio and MIDI over ethernet from one machine into another. That's a substitute for a sound card or a mixer - a great thing but a totally different subject.

The reasons you can't use EXS24 MK II (as opposed to the player, which doesn't stream) on multiple machines practically are that a) you'd have to buy a whole new Logic Pro to do that, and b) even if you were to do that, the workaround to keeping multiple Audioinstrument channels open for live input involves inserting I/O plug-ins on all the tracks you want open. That eats up too much CPU.

By the way, I sure wish Emagic would come out with an EXS host program. Not only would that let you use EXS on multiple machines, it would let you run that program on the same G5 as Logic so you can get around the 2GB-per-program limitation.

Some people tried running multiple instances of Logic on G5s and using the I/O plug-in trick, but it turned out to be impractical for actual use.

Anaconda's comment about Digidesign's marketing campaign is right on the money.

Logic, which I believe is a very powerful program, still has the perception in the marketplace as a "complex tool for composition". Don't know if Apple intends this or not or where they're going with it. Pro Tools, on the other hand, has the perception as a "utility"...i.e. everyone needs it (this perception is overseas as well). I couldn't imagine a serious, commercial studio existing without Pro Tools.

As a Logic user, I've been reluctant to add Pro Tools to my own set up because:

a) I love the way Logic's proprietary plug-ins integrate with the application.

b) Powerful midi AND recording capabilities

c) Open architecture (i.e. it works with less expensive hardware).

While I do think there's a place for Pro Tools in my set up (don't know at what price), things keeping me from going there are:

a) General fear of plug ins (add'l cost and my own lack of knowledge about which ones are high quality)

b) LE or TDM....can't decide

c) Possible project maintance hell (i.e. I already have difficulty maintaining Logic files on my HD).

Anybody recently move ONTO Pro Tools?

While I won't slam Protools as a product because, as you all know, I think it's awesome, for the most part I agree their customer service and business practices leave much to be desired. But I'm not looking back to the years of NuBus, I mean in computer years, NuBus is the dark ages.

For those who don't know - here's the real beef. There are a lot of Protools TDM Mix+ owners using OS9 and PT 5 who have been for many years. In or around 2001, the Protools HD hardware upgrade became attractive because it had 2-3 times more DSP power than Mix+. It also had up to 24/192 recording. The catch is you have to replace all your plugin software. Even more maddening is now that OS X has come out with a decent iteration, namely Panther, you have to upgrade to Protools version 6 and dump your plugins once again for new versions.

Now I can't blame Digidesign for being forced to move to OS X - that's just the progression of the Macintosh. It was a shock to me to learn that all Macs after the G4 quicksilver model are incapable of running OS 9. Clearly Apple has drawn a line in the sand and said, "we want everyone to move forward to OS X."

What would've been nice was if owners of recent copies of Waves, for example, got free or cheap upgrades to OS X. Instead, these companies have made it expensive.

Eventually, I too will move to Protools 6 on OS X - actually I have 2 drives going now with a version of each but am still mostly using OS9 running PT 5.3.1 - mostly because I can't afford to upgrade.

Another note is this - it's well known Mix+ users keep their systems because internet crackers broke the copy protection of the bulk of the plugin's used for that system. When Protools HD came along they introduced I-Lok and the internet underground for the most part hasn't caught up.

My feeling is, for $15K, Digidesign better provide me with a host of great plugins. I feel they've only made marginal improvements in this offering. Recently they bought the bombfactory plugins and offer them as part of their package. They need to do the same with Waves and maybe Autotune. They also need to include a kickbutt sampler. While we're at it, they should include a great cd burning program like what masterlist used to be. If they did these things I'd be even more loyal than I already am.

My wish for a DAW is to have an integrated product that is reliable and has most of the tools I need to do the job. Nuff said.