Not Impressed with protools...?

[Lennybird]

Okay, so we decided we needed a better interface than the TC Electronic Konnekt 6, and decided to all pitch in for a Digi 003 rack+ factory. I am very happy with the interface's performance.

Protools on the other hand...

Upgraded to Protools 8 with their offer and right off of the start, we've had problems. Not a huge fan of the layout, it seems very inefficient compared to what we were using before: Cubase LE4.

Essentially, the only reason we're using Protools is for, well, Reason. Cubase LE4 does not support ReWiring Reason in slave mode. For a $100 upgrade, though, I can get Cubase 4 home essentials which is a considerate step up with ReWire support.

Am I not giving Protools a chance or am I right in my belief that Cubase, as far as music production is concerned, is way more efficient and runs more smoothly?

I'm also running ProTools on Windows XP, which I think Steinberg spent a little more time getting Cubase to work with Windows than ProTools did. Cubase hasn't crashed on me yet. ProTools, the industry standard, has.

 

[DAB]

Haven't used Cubase in a long time but have used Pro Tools since version 5.0. I get around in Pro Tools 8 (HD2 Accel rig with 192 I/O if it matters) like nobody's business so it doesn't seem like a bad UI to me but after all a user interface is a personal like or dislike so from your perspective you are correct.

It seems to me that if Cubase was way better than Pro Tools and given how long Cubase has been out it would have surpassed Pro Tools as the DAW of choice by now. Hasn't come close to doing that. Not even on the same planet as Pro Tools with regard to the percentage of professionals who use one or the other.

Not to beat a dead horse but Cubase isn't even the 2nd or 3rd most popular DAW (Logic, Nuendo, Digital Performer).

Cubase is a good tool don't get me wrong but you were asking for info regarding which is better.

Pro Tools 8 is still a tad buggy. You probably have to give it 1 or 2 CS updates before it is stable.

BTW...I don't know if you have used the Elastic Audio capability in Pro Tools 8 but it is AWESOME.

Use whatever tool you personally enjoy and are productive with. The rest doesn't matter.

Cheers....Dave

 

[studiodunn]

well, lets face it, efficiency is 90% a function of familiarity.

Protools is THE industry standard for a reason. I like cubase and some of the other programs, but I need to be compatible with other studios.

.......like Dave said though, use what you like and enjoy the experience.

 

[marcher5877]

ProTools isnt made to be impressive, its made to be transparent.

 

[Lennybird]

Haven't used Cubase in a long time but have used Pro Tools since version 5.0. I get around in Pro Tools 8 (HD2 Accel rig with 192 I/O if it matters) like nobody's business so it doesn't seem like a bad UI to me but after all a user interface is a personal like or dislike so from your perspective you are correct.

It seems to me that if Cubase was way better than Pro Tools and given how long Cubase has been out it would have surpassed Pro Tools as the DAW of choice by now. Hasn't come close to doing that. Not even on the same planet as Pro Tools with regard to the percentage of professionals who use one or the other.

Not to beat a dead horse but Cubase isn't even the 2nd or 3rd most popular DAW (Logic, Nuendo, Digital Performer).

Cubase is a good tool don't get me wrong but you were asking for info regarding which is better.

Pro Tools 8 is still a tad buggy. You probably have to give it 1 or 2 CS updates before it is stable.

BTW...I don't know if you have used the Elastic Audio capability in Pro Tools 8 but it is AWESOME.

Use whatever tool you personally enjoy and are productive with. The rest doesn't matter.

Cheers....Dave

Yeah, the industry standard is definitely a give in. Though, I can see that now that all the big studios are using it, it would be hard to make a mass-conversion to ANY other better one (if there indeed was a better DAW), because like you said, it's huge being able to fluently send files back and fourth.

Does Pro Tools HD have a far different software package than LE? There may be a larger gap than I previously thought between LE and HD software... Nonetheless we can't afford an HD rig for a long time.

Plus Pro Tools is specifically designed to be a general DAW - working not only with music, but also with film, etc. Cubase's focus is only on music, that much is definitely apparent. Maybe that's why Steinberg's other package, Nuendo is more popular, as it's more of a general DAW capable of a little more flexibility than Cubase.

But yes, i definitely feel... Dirty to say the least jumping backwards back to Cubase 4. It's just we aren't making the same amount of progress. Simple things in Cubase are extremely inefficient within LE 8. Perhaps I need to give it a little more time or like studiodunn said, I'm just stubbornly familiar with Cubase now.

And really, I should be running LE 8 on a Mac. It seems they just did a bad port to windows maybe.

I guess what I'm really saying is: when it comes to music production, what can you do in pro tools LE that you Can't do in Cubase? If the difference is minimum, then the choice in my case is obvious. Plus I'm not dropping pro tools out altogether, I'll still have it installed and ready to roll if required.

Thanks for the input

 

[GregoryL]

Have you taken the time to set up song templates for yourself in PT? Once I did this, I found my workflow was much more smooth.

 

[loudboy]

This is my big one, and for me, it's a dealbreaker: I can't deal with the way it handles crossfades, when you're editing.

If someone could explain the logic behind generating a new clip, which then has to ALSO be selected, to continue editing, I'm all ears...

Also, I've never been able to get a handle on the need for the regions and all that. Just show me the clips,in a track, and let me manipulate them easily.

Every other DAW program is so much more elegant, in the way it handles editing/mgt. of files.

 

[loudboy]

Protools is THE industry standard for a reason.

If you're talking HD, I agree.

PTLE, OTOH, is a few generations behind all the other native DAW stuff.

Apples and oranges.

 

[studiodunn]

If you're talking HD, I agree.

PTLE, OTOH, is a few generations behind all the other native DAW stuff.

Apples and oranges.

I am talking file format. DAW equipment has no bearing on accepted file format in studios.

 

[Lennybird]

Have you taken the time to set up song templates for yourself in PT? Once I did this, I found my workflow was much more smooth.

Actually, just yesterday I kind of hit myself over the head for not doing that right off the bat. I created a quick template that is usually the way my songs start, so we will see if that helps at all.


Maybe if you guys could help me out with a few of the more annoying segments of Pro tools, then it wouldn't be so bad:

1.) When you're trimming a midi event, if the first note is just SLIGHTLY off and you're trimming to the first beat mark, it will delete the entire beginning note of that riff. Granted, I should quantize, but at the same time, I shouldn't have to.

2.) The grid doesn't contrast as nicely as it does in cubase with just black over white. Plus it's... I want to say skewed? I feel like I'm either zoomed out far too much or zoomed in. I feel Cubase's window was far more... Expansive and open. Not so crowded.

3.) I was running a compressor and the Sans-Amp plugin (temporarily) twice over at the same time. This was giving me a hardware buffer overflow or similar error. I increased hardware buffer to 2048 and then it says my processor was interrupted, etc. This leaves me asking: is Pro Tools quad-core enabled? I have 4 gigs of RAM and a Q6600. If those aren't the problem, then it most certainly must be my 7200rpm 16mb cache harddrive, which averages around 50-70mb/s transfer rate and with only one spindel, can't buffer up enough. The only snatch is: I've had WAY more inserts going on at one time at a lower hardware buffer in Cubase and never ran into this problem. Lower latency too.

4.) Automation doesn't seem to be as fluent as it is in Cubase. Cubase has all the features, just a little more simplistic. For me, opening one less window or dropping one less tab down to select some option is a big deal.

5.) I hate having to actually create a track dedicated to being a click track. Really? They couldn't have integrated it into the transport window? A waste of space, even when in mini form. That personally shows me that they were making shortcuts with time in production than spending a little more time and making the window a little more clean, efficient and functional. Really annoys me. Not to mention, all the clicks provided are pretty terrible sounding (not a huge deal, just a pinch on the skin). But if I'm not mistaken, can't you hide tracks? I've spent about a month with Pro Tools now, so I'm only getting the basics. I'm just comparing my first month with pro tools to my first month with cubase - which was a lot more streamlined.

6.) The start-up time alone is a big turn-off for me. 5-10 seconds for Cubase to boot. About 1-2 minutes for Pro Tools.

7.) Bouncing tracks in real-time: really?


Those are some of the topics that frustrate me at the moment with Pro Tools. Fixing the issues with those would help alot. The fact that Pro Tools is the industry standard is the reason I'm going to try and stick with it for now, because to send in tracks to master or to a studio or anything of the sort, it's all about compatibility.

 

[Somniferous]

PT really does kinda shaft the windows side of things. The fact is most of the people running it are using macs, so they tend to focus more upon the mac side of things. PT does have some learning curve things, but it is a mighty powerful piece of software that can do a lot of stuff. PT 8 still has some bugs (like it not saving preferences sometimes), but I do like a lot of the new features (except the damn pot instead of the slider for pan).

 

[xcycle]

A couple of things come to mind...do you have approved hardware like Mobo, firewire card, video card etc? Digi has a list on their site.

I am running PTLE on a 2.8 P4 with 1 gig Ram Windows XP and have zero stability problems that are the software's fault. I can easily run 5 Waves RVerbs realtime with a bunch of other eq's and compressors. With your proccesser you shouldn't be having any issues.

By the way the HD isn't the problem, your Plugins don't run off of your HD, they use Ram and CPU cycles.

If you have ever seen someone who uses Protools a lot you would never complain that stuff takes too long... it is all about familiarity as an earlier poster said. You just have to practice. That said, some software just fits some brains better than others...I use Samplitude for my own stuff because it has auto plugin compensation and just feels right and PTLE for outside projects.

But the one thing that really chaffs my buns about PTLE is a lack of automatic Plug-in latency compensation. I use lots of plug ins and this missing feature that every other Sequencer has just makes me crazy.

Cheers
Eric

 

[moody07747]

You get used to ProTools after a while, just like any other program. I remember first seeing Avid a year ago and wondered why they didn't put any good looks into the interface...
Same goes for ProTools....cheap looking program.

I do feel ProTools and Avid are "slow" to work with though compared to other sequencers...HOWEVER, both are great to have around. I just got ProTools M-Powered 8 to use in my studio. I have been using Sonar Producer for two years but needed to learn ProTools for one of my college classes.

So yea, the looks may be different as are the ways things are done but they all do the same thing. I suggest using the sequencer you are most comfortable with.

 

[dobro man]

I would agree. If you like Cubase why change....

For most little guys just trying to get some decent recordings together, I dont see any reaaon to change.....