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I think it comes down to a lot of people getting into music or not that great at it want to think they are getting the best and greatest they can find so that the studio can do a good job of polishing their turds
As my roommate reminds me EVERY time I buy a new piece of hardware/software:
"A lot of amazing things have been writtten/recorded on a lot worst stuff"
And he's right. 100% To me this thread is a no brainer. If DP cannot do what you need or you feel it is not living up to the task that YOU need, switch. Trying to get your size 14 foot into a size 6 shoe is gonna be painful. It might eventually work, but it's going to take a lot of effort and then at the end, you're gonna look worn out and a mess
DP does NOT fit everyone. Neither does ProTools, or a Tascam for that matter. Confidence, Resume and Skill is going to sell WHATEVER you use. If you're using ProTools just because you think everyone else is using it, then you are falling into the same name dropping confidence building exercise as the band asking for it.
If someone told me they mixed a record for Depeche Mode, I'd be working with them no matter WHAT DAW they used, because then end product is what I care about. (And I am familiar with all DM's work).
To own a thing does not mean you master a thing....
it was pretty awesome, almost completely functional, aside from the 8 track limit. i still have it on my pc laptop running Windows 98SE (best windows version ever imo.)
i don't always have access to my powerbook (i share it w/ my girlfriend) so when im on the road ill occasionally take the windoze laptop with me. ive used PT Free a number of times to record some demos in hotel rooms. it's fun.
anyway, i wish digi still made pt free. i actually had a little bit of respect for the company when they announced that 6 years ago.
What I was saying about Pro Tools LE is just my opinion and I see enough people here throwing theirs around so I'll say it. Yes, I'm sure good stuff is done on LE, absolutely! What I'm talking about is the hypocrisy of those who slam DP, and act high-and-mighty because they have Pro Tools and then I find they're running PT LE on an M-Box. (Yeah, and the 32 track limit... that's nice.)
My point is if someone is going to argue the *technological* superiority of Pro Tools over DP, to be credible, their argument should really be about the advantages of a TDM-based system over native. And yes, DP can run on TDM systems, but it's my understanding that DP's TDM support isn't as robust as Pro Tools (which seems only natural.)
James Steele wrote: What I'm talking about is the hypocrisy of those who slam DP, and act high-and-mighty because they have Pro Tools and then I find they're running PT LE on an M-Box. (Yeah, and the 32 track limit... that's nice.)
another reason why i love this board james, ain't none of them folks 'round these parts.
A few random comments, based on the past dozen or so posts.
Dongle.
Digidesign does indeed insist that you have one of their interfaces hooked up for PT to boot. This is a form of copy protection, and it is what they chose to do. How many copies of DP have you seen being run by people who never gave a dime to motu? I've seen it way more times than I can count. Can you say "limewire"? Worth noting, Digi makes a "mini" mbox now, for those who want to edit on the run.
Pro Studio definition.
A pro studio (to me) is a properly built room, with staff, which is tracking, mixing, or mastering projects that make it to mainstream media. A commercial lease, a shingle, a standing-wave free listening environment, a phonebook listing, the big glass wall, lounge, bagels, etc. You get the idea. A guy, sitting at home, with $10k worth of gear, is NOT a pro studio. A professional, perhaps, as the definition of a "pro" is indeed one who gets paid for their work. But that is not the definition of a "pro" studio. Anyway, that is my definition, and pretty much the definition of every engineer and producer that I personally know. That said, these studio are pretty much 100% PT. And not LE either.
LE vs. DP
PT started as a very expensive hardware-based system. The systems it originally ran on were primitive by today's standards. Over time that changed of course. LE is a reasonable attempt to port this over to a native system. Not everything works as well as it does in HD, or as well as it does in DP. But it is still PT, complete with many things that are unique to PT that don't exist in DP. There are pros and cons to this of course. Depending on which system you use, you can harp on this or that. But comparing them directly is pointless I think, as they are very different in what they are, and who their intended users are. What I can say is that HD users are very happy that LE exists, and accept it's limitations. They fully understand the heavy lifting that HD does, and are happy that they can open their sessions off site, on a powerbook if need be.
MIDI
Admittedly, I am not much of a MIDI guy, despite having been using it since it's inception. My favorite MIDI software of all time was Vision. It was super depressing for me (as it was for many) to switch to DP MIDI as Vision died away. I was very pleased to discover that two of Opcode's programmers moved to Digi, and that MIDI in PT is far more like Vision than DP it. So while I may be the only one alive to say this, I much prefer MIDI in PT to DP.
Both programs are capable of whatever the user is capable of. No doubt about that. The original poster's question regarded whether or not he could "avoid" PT. I maintain that if he stays "in house", and does not have aspirations of entering or interacting with the "pro studio" world, then yes he can. On the other hand, if he wants to or needs to interact with pro studios (see definition above), and or become an engineer working in such places, then no he can not. It would be like moving to France and not learning to speak French. It's a very easy decision really.
James Steele wrote:What I was saying about Pro Tools LE is just my opinion and I see enough people here throwing theirs around so I'll say it. Yes, I'm sure good stuff is done on LE, absolutely! What I'm talking about is the hypocrisy of those who slam DP, and act high-and-mighty because they have Pro Tools and then I find they're running PT LE on an M-Box. (Yeah, and the 32 track limit... that's nice.)
My point is if someone is going to argue the *technological* superiority of Pro Tools over DP, to be credible, their argument should really be about the advantages of a TDM-based system over native. And yes, DP can run on TDM systems, but it's my understanding that DP's TDM support isn't as robust as Pro Tools (which seems only natural.)
DP running under DAE can be a marvel to behold. But there always seem to be a few unresolved issues. Anyone who owns TDM hardware, also, by nature, owns PT software. If motu ironed-out DP-DAE, they could stand to make serious inroads in the pro-studio crowd. But it is not as reliable as it needs to be. If motu wanted to increase their market share among this crowd, they would make this a priority.
pcm wrote:
That said, these studio are pretty much 100% PT. And not LE either.
this is not true, it just isn't true. this is what drives me crazy, the misconception that 99.9% (or 100%) of pro studios run pthd. there are a good number of pro studios that don't run PTHD as their primary system. i could compile a list for you if you'd like, but it'd be kind of silly. The more people go around yakking about how PTHD is used in EVERY pro facility, the HARDER it is for folks who go against the grain, in PRO facilities to compete.
And i don't know where you come from, but here in the good ol us of a, competition is a good thing.
James Steele wrote:What I was saying about Pro Tools LE is just my opinion and I see enough people here throwing theirs around so I'll say it. Yes, I'm sure good stuff is done on LE, absolutely! What I'm talking about is the hypocrisy of those who slam DP, and act high-and-mighty because they have Pro Tools and then I find they're running PT LE on an M-Box. (Yeah, and the 32 track limit... that's nice.)
My point is if someone is going to argue the *technological* superiority of Pro Tools over DP, to be credible, their argument should really be about the advantages of a TDM-based system over native. And yes, DP can run on TDM systems, but it's my understanding that DP's TDM support isn't as robust as Pro Tools (which seems only natural.)
DP running under DAE can be a marvel to behold. But there always seem to be a few unresolved issues. Anyone who owns TDM hardware, also, by nature, owns PT software. If motu ironed-out DP-DAE, they could stand to make serious inroads in the pro-studio crowd. But it is not as reliable as it needs to be. If motu wanted to increase their market share among this crowd, they would make this a priority.
The one question here is that compatibility appears to be flowing in one direction: from other DAWs to PT (and not the other way around). This must be troublesome in some way for a company that has its own hardware and software and yet gets nudged all the time to make it's software more compatible with Digidesign's proprietary engine along side its own.
Clearly, there are users who would celebrate such improvements, but the mutual benefits for Digi and MOTU may be small as far as those companies' perspectives are concerned.
Then again, we're always hearing that it's "supposed to" work just fine like so many other non-DAE issues-- so I really don't know what's going on.
Seems like folks are getting pretty hung up on the defintion of "pro" in "pro studio". I happen to agree with pcm's description, not surprisingly because I run a place that fits his description. But I don't care if you call us "pro"--we don't use the term with clients.
What I do know is that Pro Tools is the way we remain compatible with other project and "larger" studios in and out of town. Clients start and finish projects under all kinds of conditions, but the majority of sessions that come in and out of our place are PT. If I send a client home with a DP session after tracking, they'll be back in a heartbeat to get a PT session when they hit another studio in town that's approximately equivalent to our place.
I'm a big DP fan, but we run PT for the same reason we run the 2" Studer machine. It's solid and it's compatible.
By the way, I also do a lot of sequencing in DP and PT and PT 7 is no slouch in the MIDI world. In fact there are some things it does much better than DP (or that DP doesn't do at all!). Two examples:
1) PT will do MIDI velocity crescendos/decrescendos on a range of selected notes. You can specify the shape of the curve, start/end velocity, scale, etc. I've wanted this in DP forever because it's EXTREMELY tedious to do manually.
2) You can treat MIDI exactly like audio and manipulate it by region. And by regions that YOU define, not by what the Tracks Overview defines. This is a huge editing speedup because you're not forced to constantly drag and shift-select ranges of notes to get everything you want. And these regions end up in the bin where they're just as handy to use as soundbites.
IMHO the only thing PT lacks for my MIDI needs at this point is a Graphic Editor that allows editing of multiple MIDI tracks in one view. Honestly, if it had that, I'd put DP away until the cues were finished then come back in to DP to generate film scoring events. And, I have to say, too, that PT's UI is MUCH, MUCH faster than DP. Navigating in DP feels like swimming in molasses after working in PT.
Anyway, back to topic at hand. If you want to avoid PT, avoid PT. If you want to avoid 2" tape, avoid 2" tape. Choose where you want to be in the community of studios and clients you wish to work in.
Respectfully,
Jason Staczek www.chromasound.net
Dual 2.5G G5, 6.5G RAM, DP 5.13, OS 10.4.11
MBP 17", 3G RAM, DP 5.13, OS 10.4.11
Pro Tools HD2 Accel, 828mkII, FastLane, Logic 8
jstaczek wrote: IMHO the only thing PT lacks for my MIDI needs at this point is a Graphic Editor that allows editing of multiple MIDI tracks in one view.
No Quickscribe/score view either I'm pretty sure. I could fire it up and check...
As for PT free, while that was a cool idea, what sucked was you couldn't keep it on a computer once you also had LE installed. (Anyone wanna me how that aids in copy-protection?) Otherwise, having both would have been a viable workaround for the portability issue.
I guess the debate is partly the definition of pro and pro studio.
if you make money at it, you're a pro. but when you say "pro studio" in my mind that means "studio for hire", not just the studio you work at.
a pro studio is something I rent and there is a guy there that helps me, not a guy there that has to engineer everything. in that case you are hiring yourself as an engineer and you have your own equipment as part of the deal. a pro studio is like a hotel, not a room in someone's house.
there are people that keep saying "I'm hired for my expertise, not my gear" or something like that. that's exactly what I'm saying, you are an engineer or composer for hire, not a studio for hire, whether a studio is included in the price or not. this does not diminish your skills, it's just a different issue.
I've never seen a pro studio that used DP as their main daw, though I'm sure someone does. someone can be using adats as their main machine and claim to be a pro studio. I've only worked in a couple dozen studios, in LA, atlanta and seattle, but that's my experience.
I think this is a strange thing to get all riled up about. I don't see how this diminishes DP or the work that anyone does in it. there are people making great records in live, but no one is going to run live as their main daw in a pro studio. what's one got to do with the other?
ever wonder why there are so many ssl's in big studios? not because they are the only good console or the best. it's mostly for consistency. I don't want to go in a studio at $1000-$2000 a day and learn a new console or "check it out". I'm there to do the best work I can, not spend a lot of time and a few thousand dollars of someone else's money seeing if I like something. so I sure as hell don't want to learn a new daw, or watch someone else do it. or have them spend time transferring it to another system.
there are many studio owners (I've seen a couple personally) who decided to try a new console because it was "better" and got burned because no one wants to take a chance, or spend that much time and money learning it. a daw is obviously many times more complicated. studios are trying to run a successful business and provide a service, not push an agenda.
to me, a opening a pro studio for hire with something other than pro tools is like opening hotel with waterbeds. you might love a waterbed, but that's not what most people are looking for and you're limiting your clientele. are you trying to have a successful business or prove to world how much better waterbeds are?
again, this has nothing to do with whether or not you have a waterbed at home, or how much better it suits your life. I'm also not going to have a spring mattress at home just because that's what the hotels have (I personally like pure latex).
if I was a studio guitarist I would have a strat and a les paul with me, not just show up with my prs and insist that it's better. unless your at a level where that is your thing and you get enough work that way. but for a guy starting out, better have the guitars everyone expects and get more work.
I just don't see the reason for being defensive about it.
this might not all make sense, but I'm tired of typing now.
No Quickscribe/score view either I'm pretty sure. I could fire it up and check..
Definitely no QS/score view in PT. But (IMHO!) I find QS to be very slow and extremely difficult to edit in. And it's not complete enough to use for my final output, so it sits unused.
It's interesting to see Sibelius 5 now coming out with features that make it bump up against DP. Supports Quicktime, supports plugins, etc. It's not an audio app, but it's coming on strong as a sequencer and not just a page layout app anymore. As Frodo and I mentioned in another thread, it has some great stuff for managing keyswitching and controlling new VIs that sequencers like DP, Logic and PT haven't started to address at all.
Way off topic!!! Woo hoo!!!
Jason Staczek www.chromasound.net
Dual 2.5G G5, 6.5G RAM, DP 5.13, OS 10.4.11
MBP 17", 3G RAM, DP 5.13, OS 10.4.11
Pro Tools HD2 Accel, 828mkII, FastLane, Logic 8
James Steele wrote:What I was saying about Pro Tools LE is just my opinion and I see enough people here throwing theirs around so I'll say it. Yes, I'm sure good stuff is done on LE, absolutely! What I'm talking about is the hypocrisy of those who slam DP, and act high-and-mighty because they have Pro Tools and then I find they're running PT LE on an M-Box. (Yeah, and the 32 track limit... that's nice.)
My point is if someone is going to argue the *technological* superiority of Pro Tools over DP, to be credible, their argument should really be about the advantages of a TDM-based system over native. And yes, DP can run on TDM systems, but it's my understanding that DP's TDM support isn't as robust as Pro Tools (which seems only natural.)
DP running under DAE can be a marvel to behold. But there always seem to be a few unresolved issues. Anyone who owns TDM hardware, also, by nature, owns PT software. If motu ironed-out DP-DAE, they could stand to make serious inroads in the pro-studio crowd. But it is not as reliable as it needs to be. If motu wanted to increase their market share among this crowd, they would make this a priority.
Frankly, I think there's still bad blood between MOTU and Digidesign. You have to sort of give MOTU credit as their original 2408 sort of broke Digidesign's stranglehold monopoly and the days of charging thousands for systems limited to 8 or 16 tracks, etc. As I have said repeatedly, I CANNOT PROVE ANY OF THIS NOR DO I HAVE ANY INFORMATION ABOUT IT, but my gut tells me that I doubt Digi is all that cooperative in helping MOTU get DP to run completely slick on TDM.
bongo_x wrote:...to me, a opening a pro studio for hire with something other than pro tools is like opening hotel with waterbeds. you might love a waterbed, but that's not what most people are looking for and you're limiting your clientele. are you trying to have a successful business or prove to world how much better waterbeds are?
Totally, totally agree with you. It's a common demoninator and if I were going to spend a lot of money (assuming I HAD a lot of money) and open a commercial studio that was for hire, I'd be a fool not to deck it out with a full on TDM HD Pro Tools system... because there are a lot of systems out there and why that's just what people would expect to see to know that I'm "pro" and I'm not in business to lose money.
(EDIT: Also as you pointed out studios are in the "pro" RENTAL business... that is they RENT time on systems, etc. and they need compatibility. If I was in the video camera RENTAL business, I'd be stocked to the gills with Sony. If I was actually in the *taping* business where I got paid to go out and produce footage, I might prefer an Ikegami or Panasonic.)
On the other hand, I don't think there is much room any more for more large "pro studios" as definied by by pcm and others. In fact, I think that very paradigm is shifting and it's going to be harder and harder for those places to make their monthly nut with the way things are going. Certainly, I would suspect that they have noticed this as more and more clients may come in and simply wish to track drums or do a few parts using their room, or bring in their own tracks to mix.
I think it would be safe to say that many fewer projects start and end, from first tracking session to mixdown, entirely within one of these facilities. Otherwise, compatibility wouldn't even be an issue. Hell, I might even pick up LE for giggles. I was a big fan of Studio Vision, especially for MIDI.
