HOW CAN I AVOID PRO TOOLS?

[monkey man]

PT HD|1: $88,888.00 before rebate!!

What's it after rebate?

$250k

Do I get all the plugs I'll ever need for this measly sum?

I imagine one would still have to shell(!) out for Waves, Sony Oxford etc., no?
Geeesh...

EDIT: I rolled my eyes as politely as I could, FWIW.

[Phil O]

.

Wow. i just want to point out that even after 13 PAGES of posts, we've managed to keep this touchy discussion totally nice and civilized...

It does, however, bother me that the original poster didn't get any good suggestions besides "just say no." Although it's a valid tactic (the one I use, sort of) and a reasonable response, I think he was looking for a more technical solution to his dilemma. Instead we have a DP-PT war. Ah, thy joy of on-line communication.

ps. I have a studio that I built in my home. I DON'T have any staff (my wife answers the phone sometimes, does that count?). I DO have a waiting room/lounge. I DON'T have PT. I DO have a refrigerator and TV in the waiting area. I DON'T have lap dancers. I DO have a glass window. I DO have an engineering degree. My clients DO consider it a pro facility. It's mine. It's my living.

Phil

[TheHopiWay]

Sweetwater needs to check there own site. The link goes to an HD 2 system they sell for about 11k.

[jstaczek]

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...

This is the problem: when people get together to compare their tools, their lack of knowledge gets in the way of really making it worthwhile. Jason, there are several ways of doing #1 in DP, and PT copied one of them. That's yet another way to do it! Learn your MIDI! (all in the tips sheet, by the way)

I stand corrected, Shooshie. Thank you very much for pointing out what has been in front of my uneducated eyes all this time. While the exercise may not have been worthwhile for you, I did learn about a feature hiding under the "Smooth" menu. But I'm deeply sorry that my lack of knowledge has reflected poorly on Digital Performer. MOTU, and Unicornation, I apologize for my ignorance and pledge not to publicly compare tools until I have perfect knowledge of everything I use. You can bet this has taught me a valuable lesson and that I'm going to "Learn my MIDI!".

#2 is strictly a matter of opinion, not a hard fact. Maybe PT's is not that bad; I really don't know.

Don't worry about that. There's always more time to "Learn your MIDI!".

If you prefer the MIDI in PT over that in DP, you're simply not a MIDI person. That's cool, but be careful about ripping into what you don't know about. In DP forums you're going to find a lot of people who know MIDI like the path to the refrigerator.

I think it's cool that you're cool with me being simply not a MIDI person. Labels can be awfully burdensome, so thanks for accepting me as I am!

And thanks for reminding me about ripping into things I don't know about. I don't know what came over me when I was typing! Once again, I have to apologize to MOTU and Unicornation. I'm really glad this forum has someone like you to help make sure people like me don't wreck it for everyone by making a public display of their own ignorance.

How many more times am I going to have to learn the lesson: "If you don't have anything nice to say about DP..."?! I could kick myself!

[blue]

It does, however, bother me that the original poster didn't get any good suggestions besides "just say no." Although it's a valid tactic (the one I use, sort of) and a reasonable response, I think he was looking for a more technical solution to his dilemma. Instead we have a DP-PT war.

This bugs me too. He seemed to be looking more for a "how" than a "why."

[bongo_x]

It does, however, bother me that the original poster didn't get any good suggestions besides "just say no." Although it's a valid tactic (the one I use, sort of) and a reasonable response, I think he was looking for a more technical solution to his dilemma. Instead we have a DP-PT war.

This bugs me too. He seemed to be looking more for a "how" than a "why."

ah, the internet. you get what you pay for.

bb

[James Steele]

Well then, if that's the case, I'll be expectin' a Porshe.

Goodnes. You ARE a pro!

Heheh... Frodo... there's a letter missing.

Reminds me, many years ago when I was a kid I was an avid PorsChe enthusiast. My mom bought me some cool button-up, black shirt for Christmas that had the Porsche coat of arms embroidered over the left breast or something. It was made in India I think. I'm not sure how many of these shirts made their way to the U.S., but *mine* said "PORCHE" clear as day. After I convinced her it was wrong, she took it back to the store and then the manager didn't believe her until he got out the yellow pages and looked up a dealership. Yup. Porsche!

Which reminds me of a particularly bad joke: A homeowner hires a day laborer, brings him to his house and hands him a can of red paint and says "Here... go around back and paint the porch." An hour later, the laborer knocks on he door. "Finished already?" says the homeowner. "Yes," replies the day laborer. "Oh... and by the way, that's not a porch, it's a BMW."

[James Steele]

ah, the internet. you get what you pay for.

That's pretty much the official UnicorNation guarantee!

[blue]

I'm finding this thread, which started out interesting, to be more and more pointless as I catch up on it (I'm out of town on dialup), and more people are chiming in with the PT is God routine.

Actually it seems most are going the other way, saying that PT blows. Equally pointless, wouldn't you think?

[FMiguelez]

It does, however, bother me that the original poster didn't get any good suggestions besides "just say no." Although it's a valid tactic (the one I use, sort of) and a reasonable response, I think he was looking for a more technical solution to his dilemma. Instead we have a DP-PT war.

This bugs me too. He seemed to be looking more for a "how" than a "why."

I see what you guys mean, but I just think there are not too many alternatives. As it was pointed out by Shooshie in the 1st reply: just say no. That's it. What else can you do if they ask for PT and you don't have it? You either, buy it, or you try to convince (and proove to) the clients that anything that can be done in PT can be done in DP.
But you better have the importing/exporting thing beween apps totally mastered (as in knowledege) everytime, with zero room for mistakes... Good luck doing that.
And then the plug-in issue...

It would be great if the clients are willing to stay in DP all the way. And I just don't see why they wouldn't.

Other than that i don't see you can do much about it. That's probably why the discussion quickly turned into a moderate app war.

[blue]

It would be great if the clients are willing to stay in DP all the way. And I just don't see why they wouldn't.

Isn't that similar to the argument "It has to be ProTools from start to finish?" The problem only arises when you are forced to use tools you don't own and/or don't know how to use. But that's something you have to decide for yourself. Are you willing to possibly lose business because you refuse to use something that a majority of users, in a given context, are using? It goes both ways.

I've been in many situations where PT sessions are expected upon delivery. Anything less would be considered unprofessional. Not because my tools are unprofessional, but because the people on the other end (in this case dub stage engineers) would have extra work to do in an already crunched period of time. It's just not a cool thing to do, and your reputation will suffer.

The solution? Buy ProTools, in whatever flavor you need. The comparative merits of PT and DP are simply academic at this point. The purpose is to deliver with as little fuss as possible. I've been in situations where we had build PT sessions in version 6 and the dub stage was still working with version 5. What did we do? We saved them as v5 sessions, an unbelievable pain in the ass as it turns out. Mainly because we didn't really know v5 and the way it handled stereo tracks. It was a learning experience, and an annoying one because the whole time I was thinking: "Why can't they just upgrade?" But what can I do, tell the Sony studios dub stage to upgrade? I had to bend. That's just part of the deal.

There are plenty of situations where both parties can and should bend to accommodate each other. I work with people across platforms all the time and it's not a big deal at all. But, in a situation where you are essentially a contractor delivering goods to a dub stage mixer with little time on his hands, you had better give him what he wants or risk losing work.

[James Steele]

So here's an LE question then. If you get an mBox so you have a Pro Tools "dongle"... can you elect to have the main stereo output route to the internal Mac audio out, which in turn could be directed to the main stereo pair on a MOTU HD192?

The gist of the question is, can you use the mBox as a dongle but use other stereo outs so you're not chewing USB bandwidth if you don't want to be?

[FMiguelez]

It would be great if the clients are willing to stay in DP all the way. And I just don't see why they wouldn't.

Isn't that similar to the argument "It has to be ProTools from start to finish?" The problem only arises when you are forced to use tools you don't own and/or don't know how to use. But that's something you have to decide for yourself. Are you willing to possibly lose business because you refuse to use something that a majority of users, in a given context, are using? It goes both ways.

Agreed. But what I menat by that is that if they stay in DP all the way, all the export/import issues are just gone. The original poster could be upfront about the hassle of doing that with his clients. He could tell them something like (if he really wants to avoid PT, as he stated) "I'll be more than happy to work with you. I use DP. If you want to use PT there can be issues. I would charge you an extra fee if you want to do that".
This way, his clients would know what to expect in advance, and be encouraged to do the whole thing from start to finish in DP, with him, just to avoid possible hassles later.
Besides, this would be an incentive for the clients (who accept) to stay with him for the WHOLE project, not only for tracking, or mixing. They'd be kind of "stuck" with him. But nice kind of stuck, that is.

Personally, for the kind of work I do, I've never been asked to deliver in PT, thankfully. If I did, my assistant has his PT LE, and he'd help me with that.

Hmmmm. On second thought, what I just said might bite me in the butt rather soon. I'm doing this jingle where they want surround sound... and I don't have sorround mixing capabilities. I'll have to go to a "big/Pro" studio. I think I can already guess how they'll want me to take the music for mixing there... PT

Ok. BITTEN in the butt. Or is it beaten?

[Akai96]

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...

This is the problem: when people get together to compare their tools, their lack of knowledge gets in the way of really making it worthwhile. Jason, there are several ways of doing #1 in DP, and PT copied one of them. That's yet another way to do it! Learn your MIDI! (all in the tips sheet, by the way)

I stand corrected, Shooshie. Thank you very much for pointing out what has been in front of my uneducated eyes all this time. While the exercise may not have been worthwhile for you, I did learn about a feature hiding under the "Smooth" menu. But I'm deeply sorry that my lack of knowledge has reflected poorly on Digital Performer. MOTU, and Unicornation, I apologize for my ignorance and pledge not to publicly compare tools until I have perfect knowledge of everything I use. You can bet this has taught me a valuable lesson and that I'm going to "Learn my MIDI!".

#2 is strictly a matter of opinion, not a hard fact. Maybe PT's is not that bad; I really don't know.

Don't worry about that. There's always more time to "Learn your MIDI!".

If you prefer the MIDI in PT over that in DP, you're simply not a MIDI person. That's cool, but be careful about ripping into what you don't know about. In DP forums you're going to find a lot of people who know MIDI like the path to the refrigerator.

I think it's cool that you're cool with me being simply not a MIDI person. Labels can be awfully burdensome, so thanks for accepting me as I am!

And thanks for reminding me about ripping into things I don't know about. I don't know what came over me when I was typing! Once again, I have to apologize to MOTU and Unicornation. I'm really glad this forum has someone like you to help make sure people like me don't wreck it for everyone by making a public display of their own ignorance.

How many more times am I going to have to learn the lesson: "If you don't have anything nice to say about DP..."?! I could kick myself!

your being to hard on yourself man.

[bongo_x]

So here's an LE question then. If you get an mBox so you have a Pro Tools "dongle"... can you elect to have the main stereo output route to the internal Mac audio out, which in turn could be directed to the main stereo pair on a MOTU HD192?

The gist of the question is, can you use the mBox as a dongle but use other stereo outs so you're not chewing USB bandwidth if you don't want to be?

not that I know of. the whole thing is a PITA. why can't they just have a freakin' dongle if that's what they want do?

someone mentioned pro tools free, which is really old and outdated, but many forget that was a poor substitute to what they had before that, an extension that let you run pro tools natively. at least you could edit on a notebook on the plane with it. it's not that it's not possible, it's that they don't want you to.

digi has a long history of this. when I bought my first system it wouldn't scrub. not that it couldn't. if you looked at the actual card it was exactly the same card as the high end systems, except they had disabled certain functions (through software I think). they later issued a release and enable scrubbing. jackasses.

bb