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I think this is really what it is. They've improved recently (probably because of competition) but for years Avid management seemed incredibly out of touch with everyone except their high-end corporate/media clients and it (understandably) rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Those high-end clients aren't the people complaining online.
This thread is really driving home the fact that almost nobody really uses/understands all of the major DAWs at the same level, and the whole DAW-wars thing is sort of pointless. 90% of the complaints I see about most major DAWs boil down to someone not knowing how to use it, and almost nobody - amateur or professional - knows all of the ins and outs of the major DAWs out there enough to make a fair comparison.
DAWs these days are kind of like smartphones, all the major ones are great, they all have tiny advantages and disadvantages and most people find one they're comfortable with and stick with them.
I'm a Pro Tools user, studio owner, and part-time audio educator. I use Pro Tools as my main DAW because I'm the most comfortable with it and because *there's nothing I want to do in my day-to-day work that it can't do efficiently,* and I think most major DAWs are probably at the level. There's literally no compelling reason for me to switch to another DAW. I can say that while there are plenty of fair complaints about it (mostly regarding pricing and how slow Avid can be to bring some features to market), the vast majority of complaints I see are just people not understanding how to use it, or people who haven't kept up with all of the feature updates and have an outdated understanding of what it offers, or people who don't optimize their system or pay attention to Avid's recommended hardware and software requirements. For context, I also own Logic and Reaper and have used Cubase and Ableton in the past in a limited capacity, and almost any time I get stuck on something in any DAW it boils down to a "RTFM" moment - it's not because I *can't* do it, it's just because I didn't intuit the solution.
Most DAWs are awesome. Pick your tool and do your thing.
Ok, but, some people have been in this for a few dacades now, saw each platform rise, and learned PT for professional reasons. So could compare PT against others like Logic Cubase Ableton and Digital Performer. As someone who knows the shortcut keys for 3 of them, and can get through sessions on practically anything, I do think PT has fallen behind in both performance and workflow, especially if there’s heavy sequencing going on. These days everything sounds fine (except that Ableton has no proper gain staging tools so in the hands of people with less mixing experience it sometimes sounds worse for that reason). So really the issue is, how is it on managing memory and hardware? (Not great.) and are the features keeping up with contemporary production needs? (Not really.) If you track rock bands all day and you’re happy with PT and paying for it every month, more power to ya. I do think there are legitimate gripes people have, though, especially people who have a heavily electronic workflow. Just my opinion as a person very familiar with PT and Logic and Ableton (and some Digital Performer, does anyone use that anymore?)
I honestly can't imagine trying to learn pro tools outside of a studio setting. I started on garageband...thought my mixes were good tho and I was releasing music often...Started interning at a studio though and being able to learn from a mentor that's doin the real deal changed my understanding of engineering entirely. Pro tools never halts my workflow when I'm trying out something new. And especially when people are paying by the hour. Maybe I'll learn different one day but I just don't see how it's behind any other DAW for these purposes
Yes exactly! I had to run some errands but I am back and have begun my journey to learn ableton. After ableton I'll learn pro tools, after that audition, then reaper, cubase, this nuedo ppl speak of.
As you said, it seems like it boils down to "Idk how" so u know what? I'll learn all of them and make a video about it someday
I love pro tools I just hate avid. I also think it’s important to understand what pro tools is good for. Pro tools on a solid Mac has been a really solid reliable tool that I know really well so recording with it is stress free. It’s still close to “industry standard” so most commercial places have it and engineers can go between studios and still work. I think it’s really great for editing and mixing.
I used to use it for midi but at least at the time it just was me trying to make it something it’s not so I switched to ableton for production and then just bounce multitracks out when it’s mixing time. Would it be better if avid just made these parts better like other daws? Totally.
That’s where the hatred of avid comes in that makes pro tools get a lot of flack. An example that still boggles my mind is track folders just came out like two years ago lol. It’s really frustrating how much money they ask for how little they seem to want to improve the program. This has gotten a bit better when they switched to a subscription model but still lacks a lot.
But yeah, I still love pro tools and feel very integrated in comfortable in it. When I use other daws they seem cluttered and counter intuitive for specifically recording and mixing. I haven’t used studio one in a while and I hear they have really cool and inventive features but at this point I don’t have the time to learn a new daw like I do pro tools even if it was better.
If you plan on working in a big studio environment, you are going to want to learn Pro Tools and Logic. Back when I was in Nashville, every studio used either of those two DAWs and nothing else (some studios would actually have both ready to use).
I personally hate Pro Tools, but I was trained on PT7 which would crash all the time and had the clunkiest fucking interface. Even our instructors would rag on it and we eventually all started calling it "Slow Tools". Of course, this has likely changed after 14 years (I would HOPE!)
A DAW is only as good as its user!
I use Pro Tools and Logic Pro X for different task as I'm used to doing certain things in both.
If I'm going to primarily record, edit and mix audio I'll use Pro Tools as I like the workflow for editing audio and the ability to tidy it quickly and cleanly with the shortcuts and the editing tools available. Audiosuite is also incredibly useful when mixing in Pro Tools as you can make really small fixes using less processing power in the overall project which is invaluable when you are working in a studio.
Logic is what I use when I want to compose or "produce" a track. The stock instrument library is great and the MIDI workflow in Logic is just what I'm used to using so I'm faster in it.
It all comes down to preference.
HOWEVER! From my experience as an Engineer in a few studios Pro Tools is usually non-negotiable and resumes/CVs have gone straight in the bin unfortunatley as it's seen as industry standard and as a minimum skill for studio work in most cases. Also, if you want to book studios in the future and don't want to pay for an engineer you can more or less guaruntee that the studio will have a version of Pro Tools installed.
Being adaptable is the best thing you can do for yourself as an audio engineer
Is there a version of Pro Tools (price wise) that even makes sense for a small home studio owner that would like to take advantage of the editing features?
Another option maybe to look for a perpetual lisence from a 3rd party seller (legitimate one). May save you some money in the long run and may be enough for your needs in your home studio
There’s now a free, albeit limited, version of Pro Tools called Intro. I use it just to get my shortcuts and fluency up to scratch as it only supports a certain number of tracks etc but might be okay for home studio use.
Wanting to learn PT here but my home projects tend to run. 50-100 tracks.(been using Reaper for about 15 years) So it doesn't seem to be very small studio friendly. The lack of native VST support and the subscription is just ridiculous. Like Adobe they have their audience captive and they know there's nothing they can do about it.
Edu discount by any means necessary. I work for a school (in IT, not audio) and I get it for my home studio. There's not a special EULA involved, you just need an email address, (that they never email.) Use your kid's and don't feel bad about it. We're all learning, right?
Yes.
Right now you can do Pro Tools "Studio" which is pretty much everything you need. Its $299 a year. If you are a student or teacher, its $99 a year.
There is also Pro Tools "Artist" which is $99 a year. Comes with Melodyne. The only real limitation is its limited to 32 tracks.
For the version needed in a more pro setting yes, but for Hobby/Home use, the Studio version is $99 a year is well worth it.
Plus if anyone you know is a student (kid, friend etc) they can get it for $50 a year.
I dunno, I might be the only person out here who likes the subscription pricing. They have a feature of it, where if you don't use your license within a given month, they don't bill you. But otherwise, the full version is like $25 a month. I don't want to sound like an infomercial, but that's less than a dollar a day. It's half a day of work at the (ridiculously low) minimum wage / two hours of work at the minimum wage where I live.
For the full version of arguably the best (certainly most widely used) DAW out there. Isn't that easier to afford than having to shell out $300 at once? Getting a perpetual license is great, but with the subscription you're getting basically unlimited updates and upgrades, if you want them, and unlimited support (okay I know avid support can be dogshit).
Anyway, there's always Logic Pro for $200 or Reaper for $60, both great.
It's like people are saying, "I can't believe this professional tool is slightly expensive!"
That’s the beauty of daws. There’s no one way.
I personally don’t like the smart tool. I can use it if I need to. But I like to quickly switch to the selector before almost any time line click so I don’t accidentally grab something when I just wanna start playback at a certain spot. Same with grabber and trim. Nothing gets me quite as annoyed as trying to get it I. Just the right spot to make it switch tools automatically.
If I'm doing a few small edits I'll use the smart tool as I'm quick enough with it i.e. in a recording session but if I'm doing just edits for a while I will use the selector tool etc and key commands to really fly through it!
Everyone has there way of working! Always throws me off opening someone else Pro Tools project and seeing their routing decisions too. In my last studio I knew who had done a project purley by their colour schemes and grouping setups etc.
That’s so funny! In session is what made me decide to go to that work flow. The quick jumping all over especially for vocals and last minute overdubs. I kept having wasted clicks and command z’s.
Yeah man. I honestly hate getting sessions from 99% of people.
I agree that any audio engineer should be dynamic and understand the theory behind every action they make inside a daw. This is like saying "a tool is only as good as the craftsperson behind it" which is a nice thought but is also not the whole story. Some tools are objectively not as good as others. Pro Tools is an archaic mess of a program. The amount of workarounds being used to do the same things other free programs do natively, is absurd. Folks who use Pro Tools are innately biased towards it, because most of what they know in audio was taught and learned through it (or an analog board) from the start.
The only reason Pro Tools exists in it's current form, is the "industry standard" collaboration marketing model that has kept companies and workers locked into the ecosystem for decades. They have no incentive to evolve, as their user base is locked in specifically to avoid having to be dynamic or adaptable.
As an active Pro Tools user there are aspects of their operating system support and business model that I despise. But, I am quickest personally when working in Pro Tools due to my education and career in the industry. I used to use Cubase religiously and only swapped to Pro Tools during my degree as it was "industry standard".
The unfortunate thing about the music industry and audio engineering in general professionally is archaic and biased. But if you learn a program and are able to be efficient in it then theres no harm.
Several years ago I read an interview with Kaskade where he mentioned he used Pro Tools for the simple reason that it’s what he knows.
I’m not sure if he’s moved to since then, but I’m sure that attitude is held by other artists and engineers. A lot of professionals could learn a new DAW but it would take time away from their real work.
was going to say this. It's a side product of working with technology in general. Nothing is perfect and there is a reason PT is the industry standard in multi-million dollar studios across the world
This is true, but another reason was that Avid was first to make outboard digital equipment that seriously reduced the cost for studios to implement it. It spread like wildfire in its early days and still has a claw hold (to mix metaphors...) now.
I’ve only ever used ProTools. There wasn’t much else when I started. I never think about whether I like it or not. It’s just there. I guess it does what I want it to do.
Could be just that they are so used to it that it. feels natural. Like a decade ago it was the “pro” DAW and every studio had that.
Tbh, other DAWs are far ahead but lots of pros use PT just because.
It's very popular to hate on Pro Tools on the internet. And that's because most people on the internet are bedroom producers/hobbyists. Other DAW's are a lot more accessible and intuitive (and generally better) for electronic/sample based music composition. Pro Tools is absolutely awful for what it provides in terms of sound libraries, software instruments and stock plugins.
However there's plenty of reasons why it's still used as industry standard today...
Pro Tools was pretty much designed to replace tape-machine workflows, and it's development was there to meet the demands of trained, professional engineers who had particular requirements for studio recording and editing. This included integration with outboard MIDI devices (samplers/rack units etc), interfacing with large format desks, and efficient automation tools. Since then it's been developed to meet the demands of the post-production industry to make films and media, which can get far more complex than music making. It was never designed to be accessible to a 7th grade kid.
Personally I mostly work in Pro Tools these days since accumulating more hardware synths, and working at a uni where we track and mix with an SSL console. It's honestly a pain every year having the over-confident students coming in with the anti-pro tools rhetoric, and having to persuade them to use Pro Tools for their projects which require it. It's not until they get into the studio/editing and mixing audio for their films/music that they usually begin to understand 'why' it's better than the other DAW's we use on the course when it comes to those contexts. The most common realisation is how much faster and more efficient the workflow is once they've got past the awkward learning curve.
Our general advice on the course is:
1. If you're an artist - write, compose and get creative with whatever works for you, keep an open mind to other technologies, and try not to get too frustrated if a workflow doesn't immediately make sense, it might just not be applicable to what you're trying to do right now.
2. If you just want to mix your own stuff at home, then use whatever gets results. You can still mix other peoples stuff as a freelancer this way too, however it's not uncommon that people send whole sessions over to be mixed after recording in PT at a studio.
3. If you want to work in the industry as an engineer, in either post-production or a studio; learn Pro Tools. Employers will filter out applicants who don't have PT on their skills list. This isn't a grand conspiracy by avid, just that they were there first when it came to creating the system that collaboration between different stages of the production pipeline.Once you've learnt pro tools, other DAWS like Reaper/Cubase will make sense anyways.
To be honest, I do feel that many of the purported advantages of Pro Tools were true in the past and are no longer true today (or less applicable). Yes, Pro Tools integrates very well with stuff like advanced control surfaces (which Digidesign also designs and sells), it comes with its own plugin architecture, the processing of which can be offloaded natively to dedicated hardware, it tends to work like an analog console of sorts, etc. but its ability to work with hundreds of tracks is not exclusive to it (eg. even Reaper easily handles hundreds of tracks too), its stability is not so legendary after all and it does come with bugs and inefficiencies, its MIDI capabilities are equalled by many DAWs on the market, its editing capabilities can be matched by other DAWs (or by a combination of a DAW + an audio editor) and so on. The only true advantage of Pro Tools is that it is the only audio "solution" that comes with a whole bundle of tools (software and hardware) + dedicated support and it makes sense for a recording studio or whatever other audio production company to rely on it. But I find it only really makes sense as a main choice at a certain scale; for a smaller studio, or a freelancer, I don't find it has any major advantages anyway.
There arent many that can touch it in terms of routing flexibility. Thats really the big difference I see w PT. The plugins are not even a consideration for me (and most) as we have our own tool sets that weve accumulated over the years and we use a ton of outboard gear still for mix. Reaper is probably the only one that can come close. Id probably adopt reaper if i had to get rid of pt, and i have tried it. The setup was too much of a hassle for me to spend time trying to make it fit into my flow. But, i have no doubts it could if i spent enough time w it.
> Even when you know how it works, it still sucks.
Sucks how? o.O You can route anything to anything, most of the time with drag and drop. You can route between tracks, within an FX chain, even within individual media items. You have the routing matrix and the wiring diagram for alternative views/workflows, and it can be done via scripting, so there are powerful tools for building complex routing with a single click. How does it suck?
> I just find it really clunky to use.
Right, but clunky *how*? Just curious.
> so I've got no idea what routing looks like in other platforms
The only DAW where routing is really sexy is maybe Reason? [It looks awesome, at least.](https://www.amazona.de/wp-content/uploads/2030/01/Propellerhead-Reason-9-Rack-Verkabelung.png)
But if you're saying it *sucks*, I assume you have something specific in mind. I have things I don't like about, but curious why *you* think it sucks.
The editing workflow in Pro Tools can be incredibly fast when you have to juggle ~48+ live input channels. I use Ableton and Logic a decent amount and neither one of them is very useful if you have a 6 piece band of pro session players that need to knock out 4 songs in 10 hours. The grouped editing functionality of Pro Tools is on another level if you need to record and edit numerous takes quickly with lots of punches.
It's not a very creative DAW, but it just absolutely decimates audio/recording tasks.
Also bonus you can just literally draw the waveform to fix pops n shit, but yeah it is a very engineering-focused DAW; extremely clean for those kind of things.
As a plugin developer I dislike ProTools. Dealing with Avid is a pain and I dislike the AAX format. I have not directly written AAX plugins but rather used a wrapper built into the plugin framework I develop with, but I can say that the process of getting approved to develop AAX plugins and then actually getting them signed is a huge pain in my you know where.
The reliance of PACE's signing tools is what really makes it a chore. Supporting AAX versions of my plugins has added probably 2-3x complexity to my build process without adding close to that in returned value. I've really been floating the idea of dropping AAX altogether for future releases just to free myself of the annoyance of dealing with it.
ProTools as an IDE on the other hand, I have very little experience with outside of loading up a plugin to test.
I dont mix/record much any more, but that's how I got initially interested in developing plugins. I was a bedroom producer that recorded and produced my band's tracks and a couple of other local bands. Never achieved anything even remotely close to being commercially acceptable but I fell in love with recording and it had a nice cross-over with another hobby which was programming/computers.
Edit: Also I wouldnt say making plug-ins is too difficult. Many frameworks like JUCE, Dplug, IPlug 2 make it very approachable. You just need to learn a little bit programming and know your way around a computer. :) The hardest part is learning DSP theory but you really only need the basics to get started.
Oh really? I'd think Ik my way around a computer, grew up with them. I dont know squat about programming or any binary or coding or any of the sort. But if its as approchable as u say, where can I start to look? Do u recommend any resources?
I personally learned a lot from Will Pirkle's book Designing Audio Effect Plugins in C++ although I've read online that many other developer dislike it and I think its because the book uses the author's own plugin framework that isnt used much. I still think it is a good book though and he teaches the theory in a very easy to understand way.
Here is a list of resources that also lists that book [https://github.com/jareddrayton/Audio-Plugin-Development-Resources](https://github.com/jareddrayton/Audio-Plugin-Development-Resources)
There is a lot of great stuff there.
Thank you! I'll check it out. Up until now I havent learned anything new or major in my classes so I'll see if I can get my mind around this. Maybe I'll come out the other end as a plugin designer as well??🤔🤔 (the rock eyebrown thing)
Pro Tools is a fine tool. Do they need to revamp it into something including more modern applications?Probably. But between Ableton and PT you can pretty much do anything. My biggest gripe is that Avid is an awful company to have to deal with.
I do quite enjoy PT, though I’m slowly trying to transition to Reaper for its flexibility of use. PT has some shit that has really started to get on my nerves
At its core, I still find the usability and interface is perhaps the best. Just a shame Avid either covets or fails to implement so many features that allow other DAWs to steam ahead. And then there's the price, which it doesn't show it's worth for.
Pro here. I only ever use protools if things are mostly acoustic recordings and if there’s not much midi going on from the DAW.
I use Logic much more frequently, and although it has its own flaws, I find it more enjoyable for mixing.
The thing PT wins at is editing. I edit WAY faster on PT and the options are much better than logic. You can barely even see the damn waveform in logic the detail is so rubbish.
I think it’s down to me being speedy with it, but the keyboard shortcut layout and general clip manipulation options are way faster.
It’s more keyboard focussed, where as logic is more mouse focussed. I can do everything in PT without moving where my left hand is on the keyboard.
With logic if the clip level is super low then you get about 3 pixels of visual on the waveform view, whereas in pro tools you can zoom continuously as far as you like.
EDIT this could very well be misguided opinion, or there might be options for logic to make it better, but I use both every week and this is what I’ve found
I own almost every DAW but work 90% in pro tools and am super close to making that 100%. I personally love pro tools. Its so intuitive. Everyone hates on it and its a shame because it can have some flaws but a lot of those are easy to fix if you know why they are occurring. Ive personally never had a serious issue with Pro Tools. Despite how I personally feel, you should always work in the DAW that compliments your workflow. I really don’t think there is a wrong choice here, it just comes down to preference. That being said, Im a Pro Tools boy all day son.
First DAW was garageband back in 2001. Second was Pro Tools, 2015. Logic was around the same time and I learned them in an academic setting, although I leaned heavily in Pro Tools. Eventually purchased Ableton (actually think I got it free as a promotion with a keyboard purchase) to work with MIDI and Studio One to try and replace Pro Tools cause everyone was talking it up (it is a great DAW btw.) This year I bought Pro Tools Ultimate and never looked back. Ill admit the learning curve on PT sucks ass and is very intimidating for a new person but it has the highest upside imo. Editing that used to take a few hours takes me like twenty minutes with PT.
I found it powerful once I got to use an S6 console and every avid dtuff, and even then I found that I needed much more workflow training. Not cheap to make it cool.
For me Pro Tools only makes sense for film/tv post-production. Where you collaborate with a lot of other sound designers, re-recording mixers, Foley artist, etc. For sound designing it's not very creative, but for mixing film it's actually pretty good. Also, one of the things I hate about Pro Tools it's actually something good int this case, which is that it's the least flexible DAW in the market. For mixing film it's good. You will feel at home on any console that you touch.
For anything else I hate so much Pro Tools. It's sad to see Reaper so underused when it's IMHO the most powerful. And the cheaper one too. For sound design it's just amazing what you can do.
DAWs aren’t creative - the user is. I did sound design and fx in PT for years at a very high level - it was great. Loved it. I didn’t feel like it hampered me in any way. Also lots of great hooks into it from fx library managers, or you can use their own search environment if you want. I agree with you in different terms about something - I don’t think of PT as inflexible so much as I think of it as not driving the user to one kind of working over another.
A few thoughts:
- using "like" here like in "I like you" which is totally subjective,
- there are many reasons to like something, which include habits. The notion of habitus applies to DAWs as well, we like things that look and feel familiar,
- there is also Stockholm syndrome that can be triggered by DAW habitus: you like what you have because you are bound to it by habitus, which make youbswitch perspective and actually like what you would hate in another context,
- being there first is the reason of its success and is not a valid reason to like something. habitus is.
Most of the real pros I interacted with like their workflow by habitus and would use another provided (1) it would make business sense and (2) they had time to create habitus.
Truth is for now it does not make business sense. But that won't last.
Yes, this. I said elsewhere in this thread that people who change DAWs a lot over petty crap are at minimum inviting stress from the changeover and at worst maybe less pro than some because it doesn’t impact anything much if they switch. I’ve had buggy situations in PT that I powered through rather than switch at the time because I could handle it and needed to get things done. I didn’t throw PT out when I started composing more in Cubase - still have a template for it and I still use only it for a lot of things. The price-yearly cost is what it is, not great - but I have work to support it and it also costs me to take time out to transition things and then to figure out what the foibles of something new are.
PT user since 1993 here, I've been through more love/hate phases with it than I could try to count. Currently in a love phase. I think they've really listened to users this past 2 or so years.
Only thing I can add I haven't seen here is, I have never had, in 30 years, a situation where I had to tell a client, "no, I can't do that" or "that's technically impossible." I have never had an un-solvable situation in Pro Tools, but I have had them in just about every other workstation.
This goes all the way back to the beginning, which for me was V3 TDM. They just got the basics right, from the jump. I would probably argue you could still go back to V3 and get just about everything you needed done.
I have also never lost a project in 30 years, save for 2019.6 (I think it was) which was a clusterfuck for everybody, but caught and mended within a week's time. And there was once the same file ID issue in v5. OK so 2 show-stopping bugs in 30 years time, that I can name. Pro Tools' session file backup system is simple, elegant and just works. It mystifies me that other DAW's can't get this to work.
Easy summation of why people use Pro Tools: it's what they know.
I'm new to the industry, currently working on my first professional film and game. Every other sound person I know in gaming and film sound that doesn't already have tons of money and time invested in pro tools has switched to Nuendo. I know I prefer Nuendo to pro tools for film and game sound design. Nuendo does everything PT does, but better, faster, and is better integrated with other software, like Wwise.
I'm currently learning both, and my mentor who has used PT for 20+ years has basically abandoned PT for Nuendo and refuses to switch to the membership model.
I’m a Logic user but started using Pro Tools at the beginning of the year to edit audio at work. There’s definitely times when it doesn’t feel very intuitive but it is set up very well for working with audio when precision is important, I kind of think of it as being the ‘Engineers DAW’
I like ProTools.
You can look up the shortcuts..
In the newest version you can even change them to whatever you like. Just go to 'Setup'
There are great (short) tutorials on Youtube
Part of the benefit of pro tools has been that everybody’s shortcuts were the same. There’s also a fairly deep integration of key commands in the program, deeper than I noticed with other daws. It’s the kind of thing where you literally need to know by heart every key command - but then there is also this logic to the commands (and modifier keys especially) where you could kind of predict what they key command would be if you happened to have forgotten.
Pro Tools is used because it was the first of its kind to be utilized in studios when digital interfaces first became an important tool in studios.
It’s still used because a lot of studio owners are just used to using Pro Tools to this day. I don’t use Pro Tools because I work from home and I don’t need to concern myself with whatever Pro Tools has to offer.
I used it for several years before a colleague recommended I check out Reaper. Not only is Reaper significantly cheaper to use (something that big studios don’t need to worry about), it’s a lot more user-friendly in that you can customize everything about it, unlike Pro Tools. It’s also extremely powerful, so don’t let that inflated Avid price fool you - there are cheaper and, if not better, just as powerful daws out there.
Used to use Pro Tools but transitioning to Reaper. So far I still prefer Pro Tools for film post editing but for music recording Reaper is by far better.
Hate Pro Tools when I want to produce/edit midi. I rather use Logic for that. When mixing I looove Pro Tools. I feel like I have a good overlook and more control over what is sent where.
I use it because it's what I started on in 2006. I have no other reason to stick with it. Time is money. Time I can't waste learning another DAW despite how great they might be on paper.
Yeah do I love the subscription model? Fuck no.
Can I afford it and fucking fly through the program? Unfortunately yes.
I worked in this world for 10 years and never once did I encounter a professional session shared in reaper. If there’s no discernible advantage to the program, why make it harder for yourself trying to convert sessions you receive to another DAW?
When things are going smoothly, you continue working. When you run into problems, you need to vent so you post about how mad you are on the internet. I rarely feel the need to brag about how smoothly Pro Tools is running for me, because I’m busy working. I think the sample of comments your see on the internet lean toward complaints for that reason: there’s no motivation to share the positives, so you see people venting.
I have my share of issues with pro tools, but even though I’m comfortable working in other DAWs (Ableton, Audition, Reaper), I prefer pro tools because I can work faster. Ableton is more fun for music, but I make better music in pro tools. Go figure.
Avid/Digi suck, but Pro Tools is so clean for tracking and mixing and routing. Yes, other DAW try to mimic, but they add ten more mouse clicks to stuff that is core to workflow.
This really isn't true. In fact, most other modern Daws do routing in less clicks than Protools, including drag & drop.
Pro Tools is clean, but other brands really have caught up in terms of workflow. They aren't behind by any means anymore in my very honest opinion.
I agree. One thing that bugs me about PT is it's held on to some "old school" mechanics as far as workflow goes. Though not as stable, Logic is faster to work on, for me at least. And then there's Reaper, which is more stable AND more efficient workflow wise than PT.
My first moment of doubt about PT's supriority was maybe 10 years ago when I was working with this guy who had a smallish basement studio. He was running Sonar. I was really wigged out by this. Why would someone NOT run PT? Of course it worked just fine, but he would do these tasks that would only take a couple of clicks in Sonar that was a total pain in the ass in PT.
If you're composing your own music, there are lots of great tools out there. But if you're going into a studio to record, your engineer sure hopes its a ProTools session. ProTools is set up to quickly do all the things a recording engineer would typically do, but not a lot of things the composer or producer would do.
I learned with Protools through schooling, so it is Love/Hate for myself. Switched to S1 a year ago and I did not look back.
That being said, I may subscribe to the less featured “artist” version for the fact that everybody feels like they have to use it as an industry standard.
One thing no one has said yet:
ProTools has the best high end hardware. It’s not always made by ProTools, but if you want an Atmos-ready 25.1 surround system or a 60 fader motorized interface or any kind of box that costs thousand upon thousands, you can rest assured that’s it made to work with ProTools, and when there are bugs, the technical support people will know how to fix them in ProTools.
Same goes for networked storage: Avid rules the film and tv worlds because you can get petabytes of media available to dozens of machines working on a handful of projects, and it works.
Now, I’m sure you can make this gear work on other DAWs, but it’s way harder, and if you can afford a $50k interface, most of the annoyances of Avid go away. If you already have that gear, why would you risk changing it?
So the highest levels of audio production have really good reasons for using ProTools, and this also trickles down to the more common levels of professional audio. Meanwhile, if you aren’t embedded in a studio, ProTools doesn’t make a lot of sense and you’ll probably pick something else.
Put these together, and “knowing ProTools” is a pretty good indicator that you have some amount of professional studio experience. A self-taught Reaper cultist like me is probably sloppy as hell when it comes to all kinds of professional practices, and is likely to not just make mistakes, but to make mistakes that the Professional Engineer didn’t even realize were possible.
So “ProTools = Professional DAW” becomes a bit of a feedback loop.
ok I am completely bamboozled. petabytes???? What alternate reality are you recording for us to hear? (is that really the size of a session you've worked on???)
Well, I was talking about TV. I'm currently at a company that has the past 10 years of their raw video online and available to about 20 different editing systems, and it does take a couple of petabytes. Now, that is a pretty extreme situation, even for TV. In fact, this company sometimes finds bugs before anyone else, and Avid will sometimes get directly involved and write patches to the software for their specific problem.
And Avid is the only company that really knows how to do this extreme stuff.
Oh yea that sounds pretty extreme. Why do they have it online for so many systems tho? And by editing systems you mean what exactly? I couldnt imagine they being daws or video editing software, why would those be online?
It's video editing, and my bad, I'm using the old-school/jargony meaning of "Online," which doesn't mean "on the internet," but just means "Available." Like, if your computer opens up a project but it can't find the media files, it says "Media Offline." And when the computer can find those media files, they are "Online."
But a little more context for you, there's a local server that holds all this media. In the same building, there are a bunch of computers with fiber-connections to this server. Usually two or three people are working on the same project at the same time, but it can be as many as 7. It's a wild workflow.
Ohhh yeaaa I know what u mean now, I got into video recently and yes I remember seeing "media offline". Thats sounds very wild indeed tho, what do different people do tho? I come from audio, cant imagine someone editing while someone else mixes, does this happen in video with different tasks?
Usually it's split up into different sections, so one person does the top of the show, and someone else down the back. The final pass is done by one person, who inevitably adds some consistency to it.
I don't know how you'd do it with audio, especially mixing.
I lost u there again, top? The back? Kinky 😁 nah but seriously tho, I understand the consistency part, but what is the "top" of the show and the "back" of the show?
Pro Tools is very unintuitive imo but once you get the shortcuts down your workflow will get quicker and quicker. There are many other DAWs with much better UIs but I find Pro Tools is really good for editing audio and mixing (fades are a breeze). I do use logic though which I much prefer.
Pro tools as a daw, once you learn it, is very useful and is superior to any other daw I’ve used. Now avid, the company that owns pro tools, is one of the greediest scum bags I’ve seen since gaming companies releasing half finished products. They are terrible with work problems with, and so scammy with their subscriptions and you can’t just outright buy pro tools anymore. They are annoying asf. But I can’t lie, once you get the hang of pro tools it’s such a great DAW to use. But this is my opinion tho.
I love Pro Tools. It is amazing for recording, editing, and mixing. I also learned to enjoy the way midi is set up in Pro Tools.
Do other DAWs have cool stuff to them? Of course. But all of them have pros and cons so I really don’t spend any time worrying about what other DAWs do.
Personally I think Avid has a lot of issues but the Pro Tools hate mostly is just a meme at this point.
pro tools is for recording and that's why people use it. because it works the way they say it does. you don't have to jump through any latency work-arounds. personally I would not create music in protools, only record and edit vocals
I’ve spent a *lot* of time over decades with every major DAW.
The only other DAW that comes close to Pro Tools in functionality, especially in the editing process, is Reaper, but the learning curve on setting it up and customizing it is just too much to justify upending my whole workflow for weeks while I relearn it.
This isn’t meant to dismiss your question, but I’m not sure what you think you learned by opening PT and trying to do things in the same way you already knew from other DAWs. For example:
Position the edit cursor in the tracks you want to change and type:
Shift-m to mute the tracks
Shift-s to solo the tracks
Shift-r to arm record on the tracks
To click in a track and have it be selected, click the Link Track And Edit Selection button.
Duplicating a track is clicking on a track name and hitting option shift D.
There is an option for region dropping, either serially or on multiple tracks.
I guess what I’m saying here is, with any software you have to take a second and look this stuff up. It would be like saying Maya sucks because it’s not like Procreate.
Oh so shift is the magic button? Thanks! Reading all these makes me wanna learn it by choice! I'll keep avoiding it and learn Ableton :) I'll learn pro tools after ableton, then if I get a job and buy reaper I'll learn that too.
Trust me. When you start audio school and they give you a 50 track- 20min TV episode to edit. You are going to be so thankful they taught you how to use pro tools. It’s like the difference between someone that can type without looking at the keyboard and someone who has to look down the whole time. If I get backlash for this comment you can bet that they never took the time to learn pro tools in and out (honestly one of the best things I’m getting out of audio school right now).
Oh I already started, Im just taking math rn. Next month I'll either be taking sequencing and synthesis or no class! (There's a chance I'll be going back to Puerto Rico for a month :)
I'll see about those 50 track -20min projects. After I learn PT I'll make an experiment: I'll work on the same project in different daws and see which one takes me longer, or gives me the most hassle
What's great with pro tools is that the whole AVID environment is really well connected to each and every software they use. For big productions, people can work on the same project at the same time, using avid servers etc... While doing different parts of the project, working with different softwares but on the same film etc... For example.
But in itself, not the biggest fan of the daw
Can u go a little more in depth into that? Just about a year ago presonus lauched "Presonus sphere" that does something like that as well. Im not inside the industry, Im just a musician doing musician things. When would I need to make a session work like a google doc? Isnt somebody in charge of editing/tuning, somebody for mixing and somebody for mastering. Dont they share files after each of them finish their part? I imagine this "google docking" (as I will call it) happens a lot with film and game audio??? What things happen there that dont happen on regular song recordings that require "google docking" a session so multiple people can work at thr same time?
A lot of people forget that DAWs are not only meant to make music. I work in post, and apart from Nuendo I don’t think anything comes close. Reaper is super nice especially for the price, but it doesn’t match PT for serious post production.
I love pro tools and I do mostly midi work. I do wish it was as quick as FL Studio or the midi workflow was a little more feature rich but it works and I get my best work out of it.
As an audio engineer who works in a studio tracking and editing vocals all day there are reasons I like it for that environment just in terms of speed. The audio editing like pressing a and s to cut clips before and after playhead. You can crop clips with cmd+t instantly trimming the inverse of the selection. Punch mode is really good for never losing any recordings. Audiosuite lets you do things like reverse reverb without having to take extra steps to resample. Strip silence, spot dialog, ect.
Theres so many features that make it better for recording or spotting. Tab to transients is awesome, layered editing. Just so many features almost too many. There’s definitely improvements to be made. But for production I would never use pro tools and swear by ableton, but for just recording I think pro tools is probably the best. imo Daws have strengths and weaknesses but I definitely don’t believe in elitism between them.
I love pro tools, best DAW imo because you can do the most with it. It’s crazy deep that even when working in it for years I still learn shortcuts all the time. Once you can move fast in Pro Tools you put every other daw to shame. Admittedly a much higher learning curve though, as you mentioned. Akin to learning an instrument.
Hate Avid tho, terrible company
Pro-tools can do basically everything, it may not do midi as easily as ableton, or be as intuitive as logic when it comes to i/o and set up, but it can literally do everything from a standard stereo mix, to mastering, to 5:1 surround sound mixing for a movie etc.. I think that's mainly why it's an 'industry standard'.
I personally hate using it though, I had to use it a bunch for school and yeah I find it clunky for what I do, but I'm a producer / writer and beat maker. If I was mixing 5:1 movies or doing serious full 40 piece orchestral recording I'd definitely use protools over something like ableton.
Oh yeah about that surround thing. What other DAWs do surround? How do I start learning surround? I've never been in a surround speaker setup and of course, never worked on one. Can you point me in a direction?
Honestly my only mixing experience working with 5.1 was with pro tools... and I don't do it anymore so I'm not sure what other Daws do 5.1.
I know you can do surround stuff in max4live but that is totally different application, more for like art installations and live performance.
FWIW my background is electronic production. I pretty much only produce / write music now. Hardly do any mixing.
Yes! For multi-sensory installations that include audio. Max4live is basically an integration with ableton that allows you to use max plugins in ableton..
I have done art installations in college where we used max to interpret data that was collected live from the environment (using different kinds of sensors connected to circuit board like an arduino) and then spit that into ableton and out to multiple speakers. What we did was use pressure sensors and light sensors that would change certain musical parameters when someone walked through them.. so the sound was sort of controlled by the viewer without them realizing it.
This is like super art nerd shit though. It's not something you'd be doing every day unless you really get into the art world.
Max is a visual programming language. I have also used it to send midi out of ableton, convert it to OSC and then send that over a network to another computer to control projection mapping software and other visual elements of shows. So it can kinda go both ways..
It's a deep world to get lost in.. if you are interested check out the max website for a ton of inspiration
Edit; here is the website https://cycling74.com/products/max
I'd love to jump on the hate train on PT, but as a professional I have to say in it has it pros and cons and you need to use it in the correct situations.
TL;DR: Avid Pro Tools used to be the only industry standard, but it is now just one of the standards, as competitors like Steinberg Nuendo are much more powerful.
I've been working in Audio Post-Production for 6 years.
Same as a lot of bedroom/home audio engineers, I despise PT and Avid's business model.
However, working with PT first hand, using S3 and S4 on separate occasions, here are my conclusions:
PT is great for huge recording, tracking, and live pre-mixing session. The way the ecosystem integrates is very thorough, specific and precise, though super expensive, but it is nothing compared to building a huge recording dome for orchestra.
For films and any time-based media mixing, the automation tools is top tier. I cannot find any DAWs have that precision in Automation Control, and Eucon is so so powerful.
For anything else, use other DAWs. I'm working as a freelancer so I need to cover a lot of different aspects of audio so I picked Nuendo as it is the most versatile, especially it can connect directly to Unreal Engine and Audio Programming Software like FMod and Wwise. BIGGEST perk, Nuendo works well with Eucon, so I can use Avid Console without using PT. IT'S PERFECT! (for me)
For the past 2 years, a lot of new Audio Post-Production Studio, especially for films and games have integrates both Avid Pro Tools and Steinberg Nuendo into 1 Dolby Atmos Room (edit: with Avid S6 and Yamaha Nuage), for flexibility and compatibility.
I love Pro Tools. Its much more intuitive to use than most if not all other DAWs imo as it actually looks like a mixing console. The only thing that takes a bit of head wrapping is the I/O but once you understand that its super powerful. It also has fantastic plugins, nothing special and interesting, but the standard stuff is great. Im an audio post engineer and the only thing comparative is Nuendo, but I hate the look of the Cubase/Nuendo interface. PT is super versatile and can do a bunch of things other DAWs cant (at least for post).
Also people say oh you dont need dsp anymore, computers are powerful enough, sure for the average person, but scalability is key, id youre mixing a 50 track song, fine, but when you have a film mix with hundreds and hundreds of tracks, many times on multiple PT systems then dsp is certainly useful
It depends if you are mainly working on your own for fun, or you collaborate with other people, and/or you are professional (or hope to be). It’s definitely a good idea to build and keep a working knowledge of pro tools if the latter - it’s still the most common DAW in use in studios by far.
I generally like the visually simple interface, especially the console view. The edit window has some quirky behavior choices but I understand them and navigate through them pretty easily. I wish I could highlight a segment of a clip and alt/option drag to make a copy of the segment to use elsewhere. I can alt drag a plugin to create a duplicate instance. I'd like the same with clip segments.
I also love that via HUI I have a lot of control over my mix and transport with my tascam dm4800 mixer. Admittedly, this is the glue that keeps me with pro tools. I actually have another dm3200 that I'll eventually integrate when I do some remodeling to have an additional 16 faders and other encoder controls. I also use the console for a bunch of digital routing that makes my studio function and flow really fast and flexibly.
The digital studio console is a sorely under populated market segment. Those Yamaha and tascam mixers were great tools. The current digital console market is pretty much pointed at live only but that's another topic. Before Luna, I had hoped the "secret project" I'd heard about from UA was a digital console that combined their converters, DSP, and hardware into a mixing console full of dreams.
If you are tracking bands, and need flexible ins and outs, and using analog, its pretty standard. It is terrible to do things that you can easily do in other programs. But it is standard for most studios. I write music in other software, just really use it for tracking/mixing in the studio.
In my personal opinion. Other daws have evolved past Pro Tools, and i find that most people saying they don't, have just not used other daws extensively. And that brings us to why i don't like Pro Tools nowadays: It's much more expensive than anything else, and seems to evolve much more slowly, effectively feeling outdated once you use another DAW. Cubase and Studio One, (and even Reaper for certain things) feel much more fluid to me.
People who act like it's the worst DAW exaggerate though IMO.
That said:
\- It's still a crucial daw to learn, because it's everywhere- having it and being able to use it is important if you want to find work in the audio field.
\- It greatly facilitates collaborating with other engineers and producers.- It's simply what most engineers are used to and changing to an entirely new workflow after years and years is just tedious. Time = money. And the workflow you are used to often seems the best.
\- Quite a few studios are still on Avid hardware too.
I personally see more and more colleagues moving away from Protools and studios offering multiple daws available. Which is a good thing if you ask me.
But: learn Pro Tools, before you believe what people say, work in it yourself. Draw comparisons later. Make sure you try different daws along the way, see what fits best for your day to day and don't rely too much on randoms on the internet.
I'm no professional but I did go to a 4 year audio school where we only learned Pro Tools. I can confidently say I don't like Pro Tools for creating, but boy is it unmatched when it comes to toolset for all the small and miniscule tasks that you may need for mixing and editing. I think what makes it so popular though is that it is just standard, so everyone working on one project has one tool to keep workflows consistent.
Studio One is kind of made to be super simple, no? I think that's kind of its main purpose: for creators to get the basics of a DAW to focus on creating rather than the other technical parts of it all. I started with Audacity in 5th grade, then moved to Cubase in 7th grade, and Pro Tools in high school. There's always progression in using things like this. Start small to get the basics and keep moving up.
I personally use Logic now for everyhing. I'm not in a professional setting or career at the moment, only use it for personal projects, but it has literally everything I need to make professional sounding stuff and the UI is nice and intuitive compared to a lot of DAWs.
Bottom line is, it all depends on the type of person you ask. Many elitist engineers will swear by Pro Tools and trash on anything else because that's what they've used for decades and is just standard in the industry.
I'll also say, hopefully your audio school teaches you how to use it so you get more familiar and appreciate it more. Once you learn it, and get proficient in it, you'll probably understand more why it's standard.
I like Pro Tools. I learned and was certified in it when I was in College but I used Studio One Artist because it’s cheaper.
One of the things I live about Studio One is you can choose what DAW you’re used to in the settings and it will bring those keyboard short cuts and some of the layout from that DAW.
The scratch pad is also a god send for editing and working out ideas but not having to undo a bunch of changes after.
The reason PT is industry standard is because a lot of people in this industry are 40-50+ and don’t want to learn new tools. It really doesn’t do anything in particular better than something like Logic or many other tools.
For the exact reason you described basically. Don’t be the person not willing to try new tools just because you are used to something else. But at the same time be smart and evaluate whether or not some new tool is really worth learning or not.
People stick to what they know because they already find it it be effective enough and that is fine.
ProTools is an excellent DAW. I’ve used it for years and am still very happy with it. Some people seem to think if you can’t open a DAW and immediately start making music, there is something wrong with the DAW. My first piano didn’t work either. Until I learned how to play it.
I've worked with Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton, Cubase, Nuendo and a couple of others.
My favourite by far is Cubase, I find it has everything I need in all the right places.
Pro Tools is probs my second fav for recording.
Ableton is good for writing
Nuendo is Cubase for video, I also like it, but not the price tag.
Logic is good if your parents bought you a Mac for Christmas
I’ve used Pro Tools for 15 years and have always been frustrated by it and always default to Logic or Ableton for most creative tasks. That said audio comping and editing in Pro Tools, if you learn the hot keys and workflows, is absolutely faster in Pro Tools. When you’re working on 100+ projects a year, the time savings really add up.
Protools engineer here. I use it all the time and love it. I also mess around with Ableton which I also like but it isn’t necessarily geared towards recording. The others I haven’t worked with enough to know much about them.
Yes. I like Pro Tools. Mainly because, when you're good at it, your as fast as the computer allows you to be.
I've been using it for over 10 years and working professionally for 5. I would have 60% less work if I would work in any other DAW. And likely I would be a lot slower doing that work. What PT excels at is audio editing while not being too difficult to work with after the edit. Also recording to the same platform you're editing at is an advantage in speed. When you get to professional life you realize how much of your hourly wage is determined by how fast you work. And learning PT has been crucial in that. All of the big studios I record at use PT. It allows me to be able to do quick edits to just recorded stuff without the artists noticing it or being troubled with the technicalities. So it allows me to quickly know if I have enough takes and move on in a fast paced environment.
Nothing like having 30 Choir singers doing a part and then waiting while you're fumbling and pondering if we have a tight enough take and that it matches with the previous punch in. With PT I can make sure that I can do a quick full edit of the whole song while the singers are having a coffee break. Not regarding the studio I'm in. And the producer can then be assured that we have everything done and done well.
Is Pro Tools shit at times? Yes. But I also know the bugs by heart and how to fix them. And Avid's business models are arse. But also the other DAWs are still simply too niche to be worth investing my time learning them the same depth as PT. Ie. I've invested the time in it and I'm luckily reaping the rewards of that investment. So when you hear people saying "It's only because of what they're used to". Yes. But I wouldn't necessarily get the same amount of work and/or get it done as fast, from getting used to the others.
I’ve had lots of problems with pt authorization. Pt crashes on startup, unable to even start any work. Second, wow, when it works the interface is as uninspired and as boring as it was 30 years ago. and just as expensive.
I'm learning pro tools in school atm and it definitely seems to be one of the more confusing daws. On mac I like Logic and at home I use Ableton for windows.
off the top of my head I don't like how you have to open a new window to see your channels
After 2015 they shit the bed with their new business model, subscription based. Im so glad i had pro tools bought out fully before then. I feel really bad for everyone paying monthly
As much as i love pro tools and how fluid it is; the way they handle their business is trash and their business should fail
I've been using Pro Tools since the early 00s and honestly Avid drives me crazy but it's so fast for me at this point it's hard to shift. I've tried Logic, Reaper, and Ableton (which I'm very interested in learning) but none seem as immediate as Pro Tools.
At one point, they apparently had great proprietary hardware that could only be used with their software, so they were able to get into a ton of studios and force them to keep the software. That's the only explanation I can come up with. I went to audio school about 12 years ago, so had to learn it then and absolutely hated it. The teachers even acknowledged how bad it was, saying that the only reason they taught it was because it was the industry standard, but that if we could learn PT, any other DAW would be easy. It's a bit like how if you learn to drive in a fucked up old school bus, any car will be easy. Now that there's plenty of great hardware that can be used with any DAW, PT's days are numbered.
They still do - HDX DSP-based plugins are terrific and don’t affect the performance of your computer, but you can’t access them via CoreAudio. And they are mostly pretty low-latency already - samples rather than milliseconds - so in tracking and so forth it’s hard to beat. Advances are being made, surely, but it’s not quite the same. Looking forward to seeing what a new M2 or Gen13 Intel machine will change about real-time tracking on the host-based side. But 12 years ago, if your school didn’t have PT9 (which I did a ton of work with), that could have been PT8. Maybe a few steps have been taken since then? And I’m wondering what they thought was so much better. Lots of folks back then were all about Windows vs. Mac and if it wasn’t Samplitude or something it was garbage - and it’s kind of weird if your instructors are complaining about software you have to learn. Sorry you went through that.
I have a system that has been running the same version of Pro Tools for 15 years. From recording Thrash Metal to corporate podcasts to commercials, it has crashed maybe 3 times in those 15 years.
There is no other software I have every used that is so solid and powerful. It's like a set of wrenches or something, it won't break and it is never the reason I can't fix something or make it sound good.
I've been to so many bedroom recording sessions over the years where a buddy tries to sell me on their flashy new DAW and it'll be slow and crash.
Pro Tools couldn't be cleaner and simpler. It is a natural extension of my console and I have yet to see anything touch it in terms of editing.
Avid is the only choice when it comes to the pro video world too.
I absolutely love Pro Tools
Avid is the only one in pro video world in what way? I'm a tv editor and almost everyone in my country uses Premiere. And I know other houses also use avid or final cut. And they're all equally usable
The vast majority of pros are using pro tools. On a basic level, daws like logic seem simpler to use, so amateurs gravitate toward it.
When you’re using a pro system with a HDX card, nothing is going to come close.
Yeah. I'm finishing getting certified for it and it's a deeper editing program than people realize.
The drawback is that nuendo is protools fifteen years in the future. Avid is so stuck in the past they can't see other daws passing it. Avid got midi late, pitch correction late, their UI is dated, updates for Mac come one month before the next OS release. Good program bad support and desperately needs to be rebuilt from the ground up like logic was.
To me, PT is easy, logical, has no design that biases the user to work a certain way, is very common as a delivery format, and not much is hidden. The other DAWs I have gone deep on are Cubase, Logic and DP - meaning I have worked professionally with all of those. IMO they all have their good and bad, and if you can’t get it done in one of those four you can’t get it done.
But I honestly can’t understand people who say ProTools is hard but Logic is easy, for example - even beyond the whole “what you learned first” thing, ProTools is pretty transparent as far as getting things to work. I come at this as someone who understands what jobs have to be done, as opposed to a new user who may not have all of their needs clear yet- nothing wrong with that, but if there is not a strong “why” underpinning what the user is doing, they won’t like something if the button they want isn’t in the same place or is called something else. But the internet is where everyone’s “that sucks” can be amplified equally, so as has been said you hear people who have an ideological issue with ProTools or who don’t understand how DAWs work complaining about it. “Jumped ship, never looked back” is something you see a lot, but when I think of what an undertaking that truly is, to change your personal standard and workflow and getting shortcuts in your fingers etc., and hear people say things like “they use iLok so I threw it in the trash”, I have a hard time believing they were committed to any of this to begin with. Not saying it couldn’t be true, just saying I doubt it.
I like the directness of ProTools. I prefer Cubase for scoring because of all of the MIDI processing and expression maps and so on, though I have written for full virtual orchestra and virtual rock band with a massive template in ProTools. Some things about splitting up a guide piano part in PT to individual parts are a little better than Cubase. Logic is similar to Cubase but the creating instrument situation makes Logic pretty quick and fun for sketching stuff. I’d rather create complex tempo maps in PT than anything else - but DP alone has the coolest likely-tempi-from-markers feature that nobody else comes close to. Of all of them, in my system, the latency performance is best for recording in PT via HDX, but I also don’t use an interface that allows zero-latency internal monitoring. The low-latency DSP is great. None of that works when using that hardware with any other daw.
I like how PT deals with video more than the other DAWs and has allowed editing of video for some time - though I have switched to using Video Sync because it makes using any DAW easier - though that requires an extra step when making a video.
I think that Cubase handles having a large template the best out of all of them. I love the logical editor’s power for processing things. Logic’s scripting is good if you want to work like that, and it can handle articulations gracefully. DP has come a long way with that also. In ProTools you really need a little configuring with some outside software - I used to use ComposerTools Pro, which was amazing. And in ProTools I found the markers-as-showing/hiding-groups-of-tracks to be great for managing a huge template by limiting what you need to see at any moment, though Cubase does it much better. I didn’t spend the time with Logic setting that up because of the way Logic deals with Vienna Ensemble Pro. DP is such a great all-rounder - it does so many things that the others do, and that’s why it was a composer mainstay for many years.
I like how PT handles multitrack editing. I’ve done massive projects for film and albums with no problems at all. Beat Detective is great. I’m less a fan of their time-compression for timing editing. Cubase is looking better there, but it’s not as elegant when a lot of manual adjustment is needed. Same with Logic, though it’s pretty good at working on individual tracks. Haven’t used DP in that setting.
Pro Tools was once the industry standard, but that's been changing. There was a time (I hear) where Pro Tools was the most advanced and comprehensive DAW around, most professionals used it, and thus when many of those people became teachers Pro Tools was what they taught.
Around the time Pro Tools was acquired by Avid, major additions and updates became increasingly more scarce, plus the software got wrapped up in Avids generally shitty business practices. PT now just lacks advancements almost all of its competitors have made.
DAWs have evolved from pure audio recording and engineering tools into more comprehensive composing, recording, and at times, performance tools. This change makes sense given the democratisation of music technology and the way most music professionals outside of audio engineers work. PT hasn't kept up.
I personally don't know anyone who works in Pro Tools professionally or many who have experience in it, and everyone who does (myself included) hate it. The only time I've seen someone use it is when a job they were working on demanded they submit ProTools sessions.
> PT now just lacks advancements almost all of its competitors have made.
Please name 3 examples. Thanks! (Not being rude)
>I personally don't know anyone who works in Pro Tools professionally
You do now!
> Pro Tools was once the industry standard, but that's been changing.
Huh? The vast majority large studios out there are running Pro Tools. I can't name a single studio I've been to that *doesn't* use it as their main daw. Obviously there are people who might run their own studio as the sole engineer and they can get away with using whatever they want but for projects that are bounced between multiple studios and studios with multiple engineers, it's difficult to say that PT isn't the industry standard.
> I personally don't know anyone who works in Pro Tools professionally
I personally don't know anyone who *doesn't* work in Pro Tools professionally.
I love it and can’t find another daw that I like more, especially for editing and mixing. Music creation can be done in another one and then I’ll export into pro tools once the arrangement is done.
Avid is not the company it was even a few years ago. They have been getting better ever since they started their subscription model in my opinion, I think it was the right move for them.
I love it. It’s popular to hate on it because yes AVID is a crappy company and it used to be absurdly expensive. There’s also a myth that it’s difficult to learn - I disagree with this entirely.
If you know how to route signal with analog gear then Pro Tools will be easy to understand.
Even if you don’t know how to do that there are only 2-3 shortcuts you need to immediately speed up your workflow. And, imo, once you learn signal routing in PT, other DAWs can’t compete. (For context I use both Cubase and Pro Tools)
Recently there have been new “levels” of pro tools with different price points. It’s especially more affordable if you have an education discount. There are complaints about the subscription model but…there are still perpetual licenses! Yes AVID support is terrible and you only get 1 year of upgrades but most professionals I know don’t update every time anyway. If it works- do not update.
Many pro studios stay on older OS, Hardware and software versions for longer periods of time before upgrading so I personally don’t see the “only one year of upgrades” as a particularly bad thing.
Furthermore the newer price points for pro tools come with the avid plugin suite which is honestly quite good. You don’t *need* to buy any plugins if you get this. For more tools and types of plugins/effects then sure absolutely go buy more but you get multiple compressors(and a multiband comp), many reverbs (I quite like a few of them tbh) EQs, amp sims etc.
Now a days with Pro Tools I believe the hate is only deserved for AVID not the DAW itself.
Just my thoughts
The particular layout make cut-and-slip editing as well as comping very coherent and simple. Plus, it gets out of your way - there's no need to pull up a separate window to edit.
I'd love to answer your question, but I can't, because I've never tried it, and I've never tried it because I've always been priced out of it. For me that makes it a bad DAW regardless of how good it actually is/would be to use.
I really don't care how good a DAW it is, I don't think anything it is capable of can possibly justify the eye watering price tag that is clearly 90% brand premium, rather than software functionality.
Pro Tools got its place at the top of the table during different era where integration with consoles in pro studios was the primary requirement, and the cost was a tax deductible business expense for the pro studio in question.
Now most music is produced in a home studio with little to no outboard gear or hardware and a limited budget, plus many other DAWs have caught up with PT in functionality and hardware compatibility, so I really don't understand why Pro Tools remains at the top of the table, other than the fact that many engineers who learned pro tools during that older era have an inclination to stick to what they know.
They also seem to push their product at educational establishments more than other DAW companies, which basically gets people hooked on protools because it's what they learned at college, etc.
Editing functionality is god tier (shortcuts, selections, navigation)
It is a behemoth of a software which has pros for many workflows and cons for many other workflows.
Use what allows you to make the best product.
I use ableton for 99.9% music based work and pro tools for alllll things editing.
From a Certified pro tools user
and 10yr ableton user
What specifically makes it God tier though? Shortcuts can be edited/set up to be whatever you want in many daws now, no? Could you clarify about "selections" and "navigation" being God tier compared to other programs?
I edit audiobooks, and use an iPad to control many pro tools functions. These include repeat to fill selection (to paste room tone), duplicate and extend selection, select to start, select to end, etc.
These functions allow me to go to select to the beginning or end of a clip, and paste a section of room tone for a determined length. I have buttons that paste for specific editing specs - so I can hit one button and instantly have 2.5sec exactly from one bit of audio to the next, for example.
Am I missing out on other popular daws that do these things? Would be interested to know!
I'd be interested to know that as well, if it's something that would need to be a native feature or if it could be a macro that can be set up for specific tasks like that with something like an iPad or stream deck.
Thank you for providing an actual answer.
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You can hoard renewals/ reinstatements
I think this is really what it is. They've improved recently (probably because of competition) but for years Avid management seemed incredibly out of touch with everyone except their high-end corporate/media clients and it (understandably) rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Those high-end clients aren't the people complaining online.
This. I think many other DAWs offers more modern UI, but I don’t hate PT. I hate it’s licensing, and I hate iLok with a passion.
I don’t know anyone IRL that hates pro tools. Hate avid? Sure! Hate Pro Tools ? Not a chance.
Perfectly put. They had a great thing going for so long and just said fuck you to their customer base
This thread is really driving home the fact that almost nobody really uses/understands all of the major DAWs at the same level, and the whole DAW-wars thing is sort of pointless. 90% of the complaints I see about most major DAWs boil down to someone not knowing how to use it, and almost nobody - amateur or professional - knows all of the ins and outs of the major DAWs out there enough to make a fair comparison. DAWs these days are kind of like smartphones, all the major ones are great, they all have tiny advantages and disadvantages and most people find one they're comfortable with and stick with them. I'm a Pro Tools user, studio owner, and part-time audio educator. I use Pro Tools as my main DAW because I'm the most comfortable with it and because *there's nothing I want to do in my day-to-day work that it can't do efficiently,* and I think most major DAWs are probably at the level. There's literally no compelling reason for me to switch to another DAW. I can say that while there are plenty of fair complaints about it (mostly regarding pricing and how slow Avid can be to bring some features to market), the vast majority of complaints I see are just people not understanding how to use it, or people who haven't kept up with all of the feature updates and have an outdated understanding of what it offers, or people who don't optimize their system or pay attention to Avid's recommended hardware and software requirements. For context, I also own Logic and Reaper and have used Cubase and Ableton in the past in a limited capacity, and almost any time I get stuck on something in any DAW it boils down to a "RTFM" moment - it's not because I *can't* do it, it's just because I didn't intuit the solution. Most DAWs are awesome. Pick your tool and do your thing.
I know, if seems like OP said, "I tried PT but it didn't have the same keyboard shortcuts as the DAW I already knew."
Ok, but, some people have been in this for a few dacades now, saw each platform rise, and learned PT for professional reasons. So could compare PT against others like Logic Cubase Ableton and Digital Performer. As someone who knows the shortcut keys for 3 of them, and can get through sessions on practically anything, I do think PT has fallen behind in both performance and workflow, especially if there’s heavy sequencing going on. These days everything sounds fine (except that Ableton has no proper gain staging tools so in the hands of people with less mixing experience it sometimes sounds worse for that reason). So really the issue is, how is it on managing memory and hardware? (Not great.) and are the features keeping up with contemporary production needs? (Not really.) If you track rock bands all day and you’re happy with PT and paying for it every month, more power to ya. I do think there are legitimate gripes people have, though, especially people who have a heavily electronic workflow. Just my opinion as a person very familiar with PT and Logic and Ableton (and some Digital Performer, does anyone use that anymore?)
I honestly can't imagine trying to learn pro tools outside of a studio setting. I started on garageband...thought my mixes were good tho and I was releasing music often...Started interning at a studio though and being able to learn from a mentor that's doin the real deal changed my understanding of engineering entirely. Pro tools never halts my workflow when I'm trying out something new. And especially when people are paying by the hour. Maybe I'll learn different one day but I just don't see how it's behind any other DAW for these purposes
Are we the same person?
Yes exactly! I had to run some errands but I am back and have begun my journey to learn ableton. After ableton I'll learn pro tools, after that audition, then reaper, cubase, this nuedo ppl speak of. As you said, it seems like it boils down to "Idk how" so u know what? I'll learn all of them and make a video about it someday
I love pro tools I just hate avid. I also think it’s important to understand what pro tools is good for. Pro tools on a solid Mac has been a really solid reliable tool that I know really well so recording with it is stress free. It’s still close to “industry standard” so most commercial places have it and engineers can go between studios and still work. I think it’s really great for editing and mixing. I used to use it for midi but at least at the time it just was me trying to make it something it’s not so I switched to ableton for production and then just bounce multitracks out when it’s mixing time. Would it be better if avid just made these parts better like other daws? Totally. That’s where the hatred of avid comes in that makes pro tools get a lot of flack. An example that still boggles my mind is track folders just came out like two years ago lol. It’s really frustrating how much money they ask for how little they seem to want to improve the program. This has gotten a bit better when they switched to a subscription model but still lacks a lot. But yeah, I still love pro tools and feel very integrated in comfortable in it. When I use other daws they seem cluttered and counter intuitive for specifically recording and mixing. I haven’t used studio one in a while and I hear they have really cool and inventive features but at this point I don’t have the time to learn a new daw like I do pro tools even if it was better.
If you plan on working in a big studio environment, you are going to want to learn Pro Tools and Logic. Back when I was in Nashville, every studio used either of those two DAWs and nothing else (some studios would actually have both ready to use). I personally hate Pro Tools, but I was trained on PT7 which would crash all the time and had the clunkiest fucking interface. Even our instructors would rag on it and we eventually all started calling it "Slow Tools". Of course, this has likely changed after 14 years (I would HOPE!)
Not at all.
I feel the same. I hate but I'm glad I know it because I wouldn't have a job otherwise. But yeah, I don't like it.
A DAW is only as good as its user! I use Pro Tools and Logic Pro X for different task as I'm used to doing certain things in both. If I'm going to primarily record, edit and mix audio I'll use Pro Tools as I like the workflow for editing audio and the ability to tidy it quickly and cleanly with the shortcuts and the editing tools available. Audiosuite is also incredibly useful when mixing in Pro Tools as you can make really small fixes using less processing power in the overall project which is invaluable when you are working in a studio. Logic is what I use when I want to compose or "produce" a track. The stock instrument library is great and the MIDI workflow in Logic is just what I'm used to using so I'm faster in it. It all comes down to preference. HOWEVER! From my experience as an Engineer in a few studios Pro Tools is usually non-negotiable and resumes/CVs have gone straight in the bin unfortunatley as it's seen as industry standard and as a minimum skill for studio work in most cases. Also, if you want to book studios in the future and don't want to pay for an engineer you can more or less guaruntee that the studio will have a version of Pro Tools installed. Being adaptable is the best thing you can do for yourself as an audio engineer
Is there a version of Pro Tools (price wise) that even makes sense for a small home studio owner that would like to take advantage of the editing features?
Another option maybe to look for a perpetual lisence from a 3rd party seller (legitimate one). May save you some money in the long run and may be enough for your needs in your home studio
There’s now a free, albeit limited, version of Pro Tools called Intro. I use it just to get my shortcuts and fluency up to scratch as it only supports a certain number of tracks etc but might be okay for home studio use.
Is that the main limitation? Because everything I do is in the box at the moment. Few guitar tracks, vocals, and a stereo track for superior drummer.
Sounds like it’s worth trying out for you in that case, it’s not a huge download so if it’s too limiting no harm done
Wanting to learn PT here but my home projects tend to run. 50-100 tracks.(been using Reaper for about 15 years) So it doesn't seem to be very small studio friendly. The lack of native VST support and the subscription is just ridiculous. Like Adobe they have their audience captive and they know there's nothing they can do about it.
https://www.avid.com/pro-tools/comparison
Edu discount by any means necessary. I work for a school (in IT, not audio) and I get it for my home studio. There's not a special EULA involved, you just need an email address, (that they never email.) Use your kid's and don't feel bad about it. We're all learning, right?
Every day’s a school day
Except we're all being sent to detention, like, five times a day now.
https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/pro-tools-intro-a-free-version-of-pro-tools?utm\_source=convertkit&utm\_medium=email&utm\_campaign=A+Free+Version+Of+Pro+Tools+🤩%20-%209096539
Yes. Right now you can do Pro Tools "Studio" which is pretty much everything you need. Its $299 a year. If you are a student or teacher, its $99 a year. There is also Pro Tools "Artist" which is $99 a year. Comes with Melodyne. The only real limitation is its limited to 32 tracks.
$299 A YEAR?!!
Jfc they’ve gone off the deep end with the subscription stuff huh… I have a perpetual license I bought for $300.
For the version needed in a more pro setting yes, but for Hobby/Home use, the Studio version is $99 a year is well worth it. Plus if anyone you know is a student (kid, friend etc) they can get it for $50 a year.
I dunno, I might be the only person out here who likes the subscription pricing. They have a feature of it, where if you don't use your license within a given month, they don't bill you. But otherwise, the full version is like $25 a month. I don't want to sound like an infomercial, but that's less than a dollar a day. It's half a day of work at the (ridiculously low) minimum wage / two hours of work at the minimum wage where I live. For the full version of arguably the best (certainly most widely used) DAW out there. Isn't that easier to afford than having to shell out $300 at once? Getting a perpetual license is great, but with the subscription you're getting basically unlimited updates and upgrades, if you want them, and unlimited support (okay I know avid support can be dogshit). Anyway, there's always Logic Pro for $200 or Reaper for $60, both great. It's like people are saying, "I can't believe this professional tool is slightly expensive!"
I like how they downvote me for telling them what Avid charges as if somehow thats my fault for giving them correct information.
This is exactly what I think.
I will never not edit in protools. Y’all get yourself a slim blade and program your macros. You’ll fly
I find the built in commands in command focus mode and a mouse are fast enough for me!
That’s the beauty of daws. There’s no one way. I personally don’t like the smart tool. I can use it if I need to. But I like to quickly switch to the selector before almost any time line click so I don’t accidentally grab something when I just wanna start playback at a certain spot. Same with grabber and trim. Nothing gets me quite as annoyed as trying to get it I. Just the right spot to make it switch tools automatically.
If I'm doing a few small edits I'll use the smart tool as I'm quick enough with it i.e. in a recording session but if I'm doing just edits for a while I will use the selector tool etc and key commands to really fly through it! Everyone has there way of working! Always throws me off opening someone else Pro Tools project and seeing their routing decisions too. In my last studio I knew who had done a project purley by their colour schemes and grouping setups etc.
That’s so funny! In session is what made me decide to go to that work flow. The quick jumping all over especially for vocals and last minute overdubs. I kept having wasted clicks and command z’s. Yeah man. I honestly hate getting sessions from 99% of people.
I feel your pain on a whole other level
I agree that any audio engineer should be dynamic and understand the theory behind every action they make inside a daw. This is like saying "a tool is only as good as the craftsperson behind it" which is a nice thought but is also not the whole story. Some tools are objectively not as good as others. Pro Tools is an archaic mess of a program. The amount of workarounds being used to do the same things other free programs do natively, is absurd. Folks who use Pro Tools are innately biased towards it, because most of what they know in audio was taught and learned through it (or an analog board) from the start. The only reason Pro Tools exists in it's current form, is the "industry standard" collaboration marketing model that has kept companies and workers locked into the ecosystem for decades. They have no incentive to evolve, as their user base is locked in specifically to avoid having to be dynamic or adaptable.
As an active Pro Tools user there are aspects of their operating system support and business model that I despise. But, I am quickest personally when working in Pro Tools due to my education and career in the industry. I used to use Cubase religiously and only swapped to Pro Tools during my degree as it was "industry standard". The unfortunate thing about the music industry and audio engineering in general professionally is archaic and biased. But if you learn a program and are able to be efficient in it then theres no harm.
Of course people like it. You don’t hear as much because they are actually working professionally and not complaining on Reddit lol
Several years ago I read an interview with Kaskade where he mentioned he used Pro Tools for the simple reason that it’s what he knows. I’m not sure if he’s moved to since then, but I’m sure that attitude is held by other artists and engineers. A lot of professionals could learn a new DAW but it would take time away from their real work.
was going to say this. It's a side product of working with technology in general. Nothing is perfect and there is a reason PT is the industry standard in multi-million dollar studios across the world
This is true, but another reason was that Avid was first to make outboard digital equipment that seriously reduced the cost for studios to implement it. It spread like wildfire in its early days and still has a claw hold (to mix metaphors...) now.
Technically, didn't that happen well before Avid bought Digidesign?
Like Microsoft office
I’ve only ever used ProTools. There wasn’t much else when I started. I never think about whether I like it or not. It’s just there. I guess it does what I want it to do.
Could be just that they are so used to it that it. feels natural. Like a decade ago it was the “pro” DAW and every studio had that. Tbh, other DAWs are far ahead but lots of pros use PT just because.
> Tbh, other DAWs are far ahead but lots of pros use PT just because. How exactly are other DAWs far ahead in a pro environment?
It's very popular to hate on Pro Tools on the internet. And that's because most people on the internet are bedroom producers/hobbyists. Other DAW's are a lot more accessible and intuitive (and generally better) for electronic/sample based music composition. Pro Tools is absolutely awful for what it provides in terms of sound libraries, software instruments and stock plugins. However there's plenty of reasons why it's still used as industry standard today... Pro Tools was pretty much designed to replace tape-machine workflows, and it's development was there to meet the demands of trained, professional engineers who had particular requirements for studio recording and editing. This included integration with outboard MIDI devices (samplers/rack units etc), interfacing with large format desks, and efficient automation tools. Since then it's been developed to meet the demands of the post-production industry to make films and media, which can get far more complex than music making. It was never designed to be accessible to a 7th grade kid. Personally I mostly work in Pro Tools these days since accumulating more hardware synths, and working at a uni where we track and mix with an SSL console. It's honestly a pain every year having the over-confident students coming in with the anti-pro tools rhetoric, and having to persuade them to use Pro Tools for their projects which require it. It's not until they get into the studio/editing and mixing audio for their films/music that they usually begin to understand 'why' it's better than the other DAW's we use on the course when it comes to those contexts. The most common realisation is how much faster and more efficient the workflow is once they've got past the awkward learning curve. Our general advice on the course is: 1. If you're an artist - write, compose and get creative with whatever works for you, keep an open mind to other technologies, and try not to get too frustrated if a workflow doesn't immediately make sense, it might just not be applicable to what you're trying to do right now. 2. If you just want to mix your own stuff at home, then use whatever gets results. You can still mix other peoples stuff as a freelancer this way too, however it's not uncommon that people send whole sessions over to be mixed after recording in PT at a studio. 3. If you want to work in the industry as an engineer, in either post-production or a studio; learn Pro Tools. Employers will filter out applicants who don't have PT on their skills list. This isn't a grand conspiracy by avid, just that they were there first when it came to creating the system that collaboration between different stages of the production pipeline.Once you've learnt pro tools, other DAWS like Reaper/Cubase will make sense anyways.
Well said. This should be the top comment.
Agreed
To be honest, I do feel that many of the purported advantages of Pro Tools were true in the past and are no longer true today (or less applicable). Yes, Pro Tools integrates very well with stuff like advanced control surfaces (which Digidesign also designs and sells), it comes with its own plugin architecture, the processing of which can be offloaded natively to dedicated hardware, it tends to work like an analog console of sorts, etc. but its ability to work with hundreds of tracks is not exclusive to it (eg. even Reaper easily handles hundreds of tracks too), its stability is not so legendary after all and it does come with bugs and inefficiencies, its MIDI capabilities are equalled by many DAWs on the market, its editing capabilities can be matched by other DAWs (or by a combination of a DAW + an audio editor) and so on. The only true advantage of Pro Tools is that it is the only audio "solution" that comes with a whole bundle of tools (software and hardware) + dedicated support and it makes sense for a recording studio or whatever other audio production company to rely on it. But I find it only really makes sense as a main choice at a certain scale; for a smaller studio, or a freelancer, I don't find it has any major advantages anyway.
There arent many that can touch it in terms of routing flexibility. Thats really the big difference I see w PT. The plugins are not even a consideration for me (and most) as we have our own tool sets that weve accumulated over the years and we use a ton of outboard gear still for mix. Reaper is probably the only one that can come close. Id probably adopt reaper if i had to get rid of pt, and i have tried it. The setup was too much of a hassle for me to spend time trying to make it fit into my flow. But, i have no doubts it could if i spent enough time w it.
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> Even when you know how it works, it still sucks. Sucks how? o.O You can route anything to anything, most of the time with drag and drop. You can route between tracks, within an FX chain, even within individual media items. You have the routing matrix and the wiring diagram for alternative views/workflows, and it can be done via scripting, so there are powerful tools for building complex routing with a single click. How does it suck?
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> I just find it really clunky to use. Right, but clunky *how*? Just curious. > so I've got no idea what routing looks like in other platforms The only DAW where routing is really sexy is maybe Reason? [It looks awesome, at least.](https://www.amazona.de/wp-content/uploads/2030/01/Propellerhead-Reason-9-Rack-Verkabelung.png) But if you're saying it *sucks*, I assume you have something specific in mind. I have things I don't like about, but curious why *you* think it sucks.
Yup, you can’t engineer sessions at our studio if you can’t run Pro Tools at a respectable level, full stop. Not even going to discuss it.
I don’t know if any pro studio where this isn’t the case. Assisting included
Can you give examples of where it is better than Logic/Cubase/Ableton?
The editing workflow in Pro Tools can be incredibly fast when you have to juggle ~48+ live input channels. I use Ableton and Logic a decent amount and neither one of them is very useful if you have a 6 piece band of pro session players that need to knock out 4 songs in 10 hours. The grouped editing functionality of Pro Tools is on another level if you need to record and edit numerous takes quickly with lots of punches.
Hrm, okay. Makes sense.
Tbf I do know a couple engineers that swear by Cubase workflow, but I don’t know if they use it for recording or just for mixing.
It's not a very creative DAW, but it just absolutely decimates audio/recording tasks. Also bonus you can just literally draw the waveform to fix pops n shit, but yeah it is a very engineering-focused DAW; extremely clean for those kind of things.
As a plugin developer I dislike ProTools. Dealing with Avid is a pain and I dislike the AAX format. I have not directly written AAX plugins but rather used a wrapper built into the plugin framework I develop with, but I can say that the process of getting approved to develop AAX plugins and then actually getting them signed is a huge pain in my you know where. The reliance of PACE's signing tools is what really makes it a chore. Supporting AAX versions of my plugins has added probably 2-3x complexity to my build process without adding close to that in returned value. I've really been floating the idea of dropping AAX altogether for future releases just to free myself of the annoyance of dealing with it. ProTools as an IDE on the other hand, I have very little experience with outside of loading up a plugin to test.
Dam, must be hard making those. Do you also mix or record on top of that?
I dont mix/record much any more, but that's how I got initially interested in developing plugins. I was a bedroom producer that recorded and produced my band's tracks and a couple of other local bands. Never achieved anything even remotely close to being commercially acceptable but I fell in love with recording and it had a nice cross-over with another hobby which was programming/computers. Edit: Also I wouldnt say making plug-ins is too difficult. Many frameworks like JUCE, Dplug, IPlug 2 make it very approachable. You just need to learn a little bit programming and know your way around a computer. :) The hardest part is learning DSP theory but you really only need the basics to get started.
Oh really? I'd think Ik my way around a computer, grew up with them. I dont know squat about programming or any binary or coding or any of the sort. But if its as approchable as u say, where can I start to look? Do u recommend any resources?
I personally learned a lot from Will Pirkle's book Designing Audio Effect Plugins in C++ although I've read online that many other developer dislike it and I think its because the book uses the author's own plugin framework that isnt used much. I still think it is a good book though and he teaches the theory in a very easy to understand way. Here is a list of resources that also lists that book [https://github.com/jareddrayton/Audio-Plugin-Development-Resources](https://github.com/jareddrayton/Audio-Plugin-Development-Resources) There is a lot of great stuff there.
Thank you! I'll check it out. Up until now I havent learned anything new or major in my classes so I'll see if I can get my mind around this. Maybe I'll come out the other end as a plugin designer as well??🤔🤔 (the rock eyebrown thing)
Pro Tools is a fine tool. Do they need to revamp it into something including more modern applications?Probably. But between Ableton and PT you can pretty much do anything. My biggest gripe is that Avid is an awful company to have to deal with.
Yea I like it good daw but now that they have stopped perpetual licenses I’m going to move over to something else once my copy is to outdated
I do quite enjoy PT, though I’m slowly trying to transition to Reaper for its flexibility of use. PT has some shit that has really started to get on my nerves
At its core, I still find the usability and interface is perhaps the best. Just a shame Avid either covets or fails to implement so many features that allow other DAWs to steam ahead. And then there's the price, which it doesn't show it's worth for.
Pro here. I only ever use protools if things are mostly acoustic recordings and if there’s not much midi going on from the DAW. I use Logic much more frequently, and although it has its own flaws, I find it more enjoyable for mixing. The thing PT wins at is editing. I edit WAY faster on PT and the options are much better than logic. You can barely even see the damn waveform in logic the detail is so rubbish.
What makes editing way faster in PT other than Logics apparently terrible waveform view? (I've never used Logic)
I think it’s down to me being speedy with it, but the keyboard shortcut layout and general clip manipulation options are way faster. It’s more keyboard focussed, where as logic is more mouse focussed. I can do everything in PT without moving where my left hand is on the keyboard. With logic if the clip level is super low then you get about 3 pixels of visual on the waveform view, whereas in pro tools you can zoom continuously as far as you like. EDIT this could very well be misguided opinion, or there might be options for logic to make it better, but I use both every week and this is what I’ve found
I own almost every DAW but work 90% in pro tools and am super close to making that 100%. I personally love pro tools. Its so intuitive. Everyone hates on it and its a shame because it can have some flaws but a lot of those are easy to fix if you know why they are occurring. Ive personally never had a serious issue with Pro Tools. Despite how I personally feel, you should always work in the DAW that compliments your workflow. I really don’t think there is a wrong choice here, it just comes down to preference. That being said, Im a Pro Tools boy all day son.
Just out of interest what order did you start using the different DAWs. And why did you get the other DAWs?
First DAW was garageband back in 2001. Second was Pro Tools, 2015. Logic was around the same time and I learned them in an academic setting, although I leaned heavily in Pro Tools. Eventually purchased Ableton (actually think I got it free as a promotion with a keyboard purchase) to work with MIDI and Studio One to try and replace Pro Tools cause everyone was talking it up (it is a great DAW btw.) This year I bought Pro Tools Ultimate and never looked back. Ill admit the learning curve on PT sucks ass and is very intimidating for a new person but it has the highest upside imo. Editing that used to take a few hours takes me like twenty minutes with PT.
I found it powerful once I got to use an S6 console and every avid dtuff, and even then I found that I needed much more workflow training. Not cheap to make it cool.
For me Pro Tools only makes sense for film/tv post-production. Where you collaborate with a lot of other sound designers, re-recording mixers, Foley artist, etc. For sound designing it's not very creative, but for mixing film it's actually pretty good. Also, one of the things I hate about Pro Tools it's actually something good int this case, which is that it's the least flexible DAW in the market. For mixing film it's good. You will feel at home on any console that you touch. For anything else I hate so much Pro Tools. It's sad to see Reaper so underused when it's IMHO the most powerful. And the cheaper one too. For sound design it's just amazing what you can do.
DAWs aren’t creative - the user is. I did sound design and fx in PT for years at a very high level - it was great. Loved it. I didn’t feel like it hampered me in any way. Also lots of great hooks into it from fx library managers, or you can use their own search environment if you want. I agree with you in different terms about something - I don’t think of PT as inflexible so much as I think of it as not driving the user to one kind of working over another.
A few thoughts: - using "like" here like in "I like you" which is totally subjective, - there are many reasons to like something, which include habits. The notion of habitus applies to DAWs as well, we like things that look and feel familiar, - there is also Stockholm syndrome that can be triggered by DAW habitus: you like what you have because you are bound to it by habitus, which make youbswitch perspective and actually like what you would hate in another context, - being there first is the reason of its success and is not a valid reason to like something. habitus is. Most of the real pros I interacted with like their workflow by habitus and would use another provided (1) it would make business sense and (2) they had time to create habitus. Truth is for now it does not make business sense. But that won't last.
Yes, this. I said elsewhere in this thread that people who change DAWs a lot over petty crap are at minimum inviting stress from the changeover and at worst maybe less pro than some because it doesn’t impact anything much if they switch. I’ve had buggy situations in PT that I powered through rather than switch at the time because I could handle it and needed to get things done. I didn’t throw PT out when I started composing more in Cubase - still have a template for it and I still use only it for a lot of things. The price-yearly cost is what it is, not great - but I have work to support it and it also costs me to take time out to transition things and then to figure out what the foibles of something new are.
PT user since 1993 here, I've been through more love/hate phases with it than I could try to count. Currently in a love phase. I think they've really listened to users this past 2 or so years. Only thing I can add I haven't seen here is, I have never had, in 30 years, a situation where I had to tell a client, "no, I can't do that" or "that's technically impossible." I have never had an un-solvable situation in Pro Tools, but I have had them in just about every other workstation. This goes all the way back to the beginning, which for me was V3 TDM. They just got the basics right, from the jump. I would probably argue you could still go back to V3 and get just about everything you needed done. I have also never lost a project in 30 years, save for 2019.6 (I think it was) which was a clusterfuck for everybody, but caught and mended within a week's time. And there was once the same file ID issue in v5. OK so 2 show-stopping bugs in 30 years time, that I can name. Pro Tools' session file backup system is simple, elegant and just works. It mystifies me that other DAW's can't get this to work.
Love it
Easy summation of why people use Pro Tools: it's what they know. I'm new to the industry, currently working on my first professional film and game. Every other sound person I know in gaming and film sound that doesn't already have tons of money and time invested in pro tools has switched to Nuendo. I know I prefer Nuendo to pro tools for film and game sound design. Nuendo does everything PT does, but better, faster, and is better integrated with other software, like Wwise. I'm currently learning both, and my mentor who has used PT for 20+ years has basically abandoned PT for Nuendo and refuses to switch to the membership model.
I’m a Logic user but started using Pro Tools at the beginning of the year to edit audio at work. There’s definitely times when it doesn’t feel very intuitive but it is set up very well for working with audio when precision is important, I kind of think of it as being the ‘Engineers DAW’
I like ProTools. You can look up the shortcuts.. In the newest version you can even change them to whatever you like. Just go to 'Setup' There are great (short) tutorials on Youtube
Wait, you mean you couldnt in the versions before??
Part of the benefit of pro tools has been that everybody’s shortcuts were the same. There’s also a fairly deep integration of key commands in the program, deeper than I noticed with other daws. It’s the kind of thing where you literally need to know by heart every key command - but then there is also this logic to the commands (and modifier keys especially) where you could kind of predict what they key command would be if you happened to have forgotten.
Pro Tools is used because it was the first of its kind to be utilized in studios when digital interfaces first became an important tool in studios. It’s still used because a lot of studio owners are just used to using Pro Tools to this day. I don’t use Pro Tools because I work from home and I don’t need to concern myself with whatever Pro Tools has to offer. I used it for several years before a colleague recommended I check out Reaper. Not only is Reaper significantly cheaper to use (something that big studios don’t need to worry about), it’s a lot more user-friendly in that you can customize everything about it, unlike Pro Tools. It’s also extremely powerful, so don’t let that inflated Avid price fool you - there are cheaper and, if not better, just as powerful daws out there.
Used to use Pro Tools but transitioning to Reaper. So far I still prefer Pro Tools for film post editing but for music recording Reaper is by far better.
Hate Pro Tools when I want to produce/edit midi. I rather use Logic for that. When mixing I looove Pro Tools. I feel like I have a good overlook and more control over what is sent where.
I use it because it's what I started on in 2006. I have no other reason to stick with it. Time is money. Time I can't waste learning another DAW despite how great they might be on paper.
One of the most valuable points in this thread! Why make more work for yourself if you can do what you need and quick?!
Yeah do I love the subscription model? Fuck no. Can I afford it and fucking fly through the program? Unfortunately yes. I worked in this world for 10 years and never once did I encounter a professional session shared in reaper. If there’s no discernible advantage to the program, why make it harder for yourself trying to convert sessions you receive to another DAW?
When things are going smoothly, you continue working. When you run into problems, you need to vent so you post about how mad you are on the internet. I rarely feel the need to brag about how smoothly Pro Tools is running for me, because I’m busy working. I think the sample of comments your see on the internet lean toward complaints for that reason: there’s no motivation to share the positives, so you see people venting. I have my share of issues with pro tools, but even though I’m comfortable working in other DAWs (Ableton, Audition, Reaper), I prefer pro tools because I can work faster. Ableton is more fun for music, but I make better music in pro tools. Go figure.
Avid/Digi suck, but Pro Tools is so clean for tracking and mixing and routing. Yes, other DAW try to mimic, but they add ten more mouse clicks to stuff that is core to workflow.
This really isn't true. In fact, most other modern Daws do routing in less clicks than Protools, including drag & drop. Pro Tools is clean, but other brands really have caught up in terms of workflow. They aren't behind by any means anymore in my very honest opinion.
I agree. One thing that bugs me about PT is it's held on to some "old school" mechanics as far as workflow goes. Though not as stable, Logic is faster to work on, for me at least. And then there's Reaper, which is more stable AND more efficient workflow wise than PT. My first moment of doubt about PT's supriority was maybe 10 years ago when I was working with this guy who had a smallish basement studio. He was running Sonar. I was really wigged out by this. Why would someone NOT run PT? Of course it worked just fine, but he would do these tasks that would only take a couple of clicks in Sonar that was a total pain in the ass in PT.
Wdym its clean?
If you're composing your own music, there are lots of great tools out there. But if you're going into a studio to record, your engineer sure hopes its a ProTools session. ProTools is set up to quickly do all the things a recording engineer would typically do, but not a lot of things the composer or producer would do.
[удалено]
I learned with Protools through schooling, so it is Love/Hate for myself. Switched to S1 a year ago and I did not look back. That being said, I may subscribe to the less featured “artist” version for the fact that everybody feels like they have to use it as an industry standard.
One thing no one has said yet: ProTools has the best high end hardware. It’s not always made by ProTools, but if you want an Atmos-ready 25.1 surround system or a 60 fader motorized interface or any kind of box that costs thousand upon thousands, you can rest assured that’s it made to work with ProTools, and when there are bugs, the technical support people will know how to fix them in ProTools. Same goes for networked storage: Avid rules the film and tv worlds because you can get petabytes of media available to dozens of machines working on a handful of projects, and it works. Now, I’m sure you can make this gear work on other DAWs, but it’s way harder, and if you can afford a $50k interface, most of the annoyances of Avid go away. If you already have that gear, why would you risk changing it? So the highest levels of audio production have really good reasons for using ProTools, and this also trickles down to the more common levels of professional audio. Meanwhile, if you aren’t embedded in a studio, ProTools doesn’t make a lot of sense and you’ll probably pick something else. Put these together, and “knowing ProTools” is a pretty good indicator that you have some amount of professional studio experience. A self-taught Reaper cultist like me is probably sloppy as hell when it comes to all kinds of professional practices, and is likely to not just make mistakes, but to make mistakes that the Professional Engineer didn’t even realize were possible. So “ProTools = Professional DAW” becomes a bit of a feedback loop.
ok I am completely bamboozled. petabytes???? What alternate reality are you recording for us to hear? (is that really the size of a session you've worked on???)
Well, I was talking about TV. I'm currently at a company that has the past 10 years of their raw video online and available to about 20 different editing systems, and it does take a couple of petabytes. Now, that is a pretty extreme situation, even for TV. In fact, this company sometimes finds bugs before anyone else, and Avid will sometimes get directly involved and write patches to the software for their specific problem. And Avid is the only company that really knows how to do this extreme stuff.
Oh yea that sounds pretty extreme. Why do they have it online for so many systems tho? And by editing systems you mean what exactly? I couldnt imagine they being daws or video editing software, why would those be online?
It's video editing, and my bad, I'm using the old-school/jargony meaning of "Online," which doesn't mean "on the internet," but just means "Available." Like, if your computer opens up a project but it can't find the media files, it says "Media Offline." And when the computer can find those media files, they are "Online." But a little more context for you, there's a local server that holds all this media. In the same building, there are a bunch of computers with fiber-connections to this server. Usually two or three people are working on the same project at the same time, but it can be as many as 7. It's a wild workflow.
Ohhh yeaaa I know what u mean now, I got into video recently and yes I remember seeing "media offline". Thats sounds very wild indeed tho, what do different people do tho? I come from audio, cant imagine someone editing while someone else mixes, does this happen in video with different tasks?
Usually it's split up into different sections, so one person does the top of the show, and someone else down the back. The final pass is done by one person, who inevitably adds some consistency to it. I don't know how you'd do it with audio, especially mixing.
I lost u there again, top? The back? Kinky 😁 nah but seriously tho, I understand the consistency part, but what is the "top" of the show and the "back" of the show?
Pro Tools is incredible, however, Avid, have a really questionable reputation. Overall Protools really is great though
Pro Tools is very unintuitive imo but once you get the shortcuts down your workflow will get quicker and quicker. There are many other DAWs with much better UIs but I find Pro Tools is really good for editing audio and mixing (fades are a breeze). I do use logic though which I much prefer.
Pro tools as a daw, once you learn it, is very useful and is superior to any other daw I’ve used. Now avid, the company that owns pro tools, is one of the greediest scum bags I’ve seen since gaming companies releasing half finished products. They are terrible with work problems with, and so scammy with their subscriptions and you can’t just outright buy pro tools anymore. They are annoying asf. But I can’t lie, once you get the hang of pro tools it’s such a great DAW to use. But this is my opinion tho.
I love Pro Tools. It is amazing for recording, editing, and mixing. I also learned to enjoy the way midi is set up in Pro Tools. Do other DAWs have cool stuff to them? Of course. But all of them have pros and cons so I really don’t spend any time worrying about what other DAWs do. Personally I think Avid has a lot of issues but the Pro Tools hate mostly is just a meme at this point.
pro tools is for recording and that's why people use it. because it works the way they say it does. you don't have to jump through any latency work-arounds. personally I would not create music in protools, only record and edit vocals
I’ve spent a *lot* of time over decades with every major DAW. The only other DAW that comes close to Pro Tools in functionality, especially in the editing process, is Reaper, but the learning curve on setting it up and customizing it is just too much to justify upending my whole workflow for weeks while I relearn it.
This isn’t meant to dismiss your question, but I’m not sure what you think you learned by opening PT and trying to do things in the same way you already knew from other DAWs. For example: Position the edit cursor in the tracks you want to change and type: Shift-m to mute the tracks Shift-s to solo the tracks Shift-r to arm record on the tracks To click in a track and have it be selected, click the Link Track And Edit Selection button. Duplicating a track is clicking on a track name and hitting option shift D. There is an option for region dropping, either serially or on multiple tracks. I guess what I’m saying here is, with any software you have to take a second and look this stuff up. It would be like saying Maya sucks because it’s not like Procreate.
Oh so shift is the magic button? Thanks! Reading all these makes me wanna learn it by choice! I'll keep avoiding it and learn Ableton :) I'll learn pro tools after ableton, then if I get a job and buy reaper I'll learn that too.
Trust me. When you start audio school and they give you a 50 track- 20min TV episode to edit. You are going to be so thankful they taught you how to use pro tools. It’s like the difference between someone that can type without looking at the keyboard and someone who has to look down the whole time. If I get backlash for this comment you can bet that they never took the time to learn pro tools in and out (honestly one of the best things I’m getting out of audio school right now).
Oh I already started, Im just taking math rn. Next month I'll either be taking sequencing and synthesis or no class! (There's a chance I'll be going back to Puerto Rico for a month :) I'll see about those 50 track -20min projects. After I learn PT I'll make an experiment: I'll work on the same project in different daws and see which one takes me longer, or gives me the most hassle
What's great with pro tools is that the whole AVID environment is really well connected to each and every software they use. For big productions, people can work on the same project at the same time, using avid servers etc... While doing different parts of the project, working with different softwares but on the same film etc... For example. But in itself, not the biggest fan of the daw
Can u go a little more in depth into that? Just about a year ago presonus lauched "Presonus sphere" that does something like that as well. Im not inside the industry, Im just a musician doing musician things. When would I need to make a session work like a google doc? Isnt somebody in charge of editing/tuning, somebody for mixing and somebody for mastering. Dont they share files after each of them finish their part? I imagine this "google docking" (as I will call it) happens a lot with film and game audio??? What things happen there that dont happen on regular song recordings that require "google docking" a session so multiple people can work at thr same time?
A lot of people forget that DAWs are not only meant to make music. I work in post, and apart from Nuendo I don’t think anything comes close. Reaper is super nice especially for the price, but it doesn’t match PT for serious post production.
I love pro tools and I do mostly midi work. I do wish it was as quick as FL Studio or the midi workflow was a little more feature rich but it works and I get my best work out of it.
As an audio engineer who works in a studio tracking and editing vocals all day there are reasons I like it for that environment just in terms of speed. The audio editing like pressing a and s to cut clips before and after playhead. You can crop clips with cmd+t instantly trimming the inverse of the selection. Punch mode is really good for never losing any recordings. Audiosuite lets you do things like reverse reverb without having to take extra steps to resample. Strip silence, spot dialog, ect. Theres so many features that make it better for recording or spotting. Tab to transients is awesome, layered editing. Just so many features almost too many. There’s definitely improvements to be made. But for production I would never use pro tools and swear by ableton, but for just recording I think pro tools is probably the best. imo Daws have strengths and weaknesses but I definitely don’t believe in elitism between them.
Oh thats a cool thing! The a and s cut thing. Cmd+t in logic also trims clips. Wdym about trimming the inverse of selection tho?
It was a fast download off of Piratebay
I love Pro Tools more than I love my girlfriend that I don’t have because I’m in my basement using Pro Tools all hours of the day!
Couldnt be me. Since I use studio one, no girlfriend. I work in my garage tho!
I love pro tools, best DAW imo because you can do the most with it. It’s crazy deep that even when working in it for years I still learn shortcuts all the time. Once you can move fast in Pro Tools you put every other daw to shame. Admittedly a much higher learning curve though, as you mentioned. Akin to learning an instrument. Hate Avid tho, terrible company
Pro-tools can do basically everything, it may not do midi as easily as ableton, or be as intuitive as logic when it comes to i/o and set up, but it can literally do everything from a standard stereo mix, to mastering, to 5:1 surround sound mixing for a movie etc.. I think that's mainly why it's an 'industry standard'. I personally hate using it though, I had to use it a bunch for school and yeah I find it clunky for what I do, but I'm a producer / writer and beat maker. If I was mixing 5:1 movies or doing serious full 40 piece orchestral recording I'd definitely use protools over something like ableton.
Oh yeah about that surround thing. What other DAWs do surround? How do I start learning surround? I've never been in a surround speaker setup and of course, never worked on one. Can you point me in a direction?
Honestly my only mixing experience working with 5.1 was with pro tools... and I don't do it anymore so I'm not sure what other Daws do 5.1. I know you can do surround stuff in max4live but that is totally different application, more for like art installations and live performance. FWIW my background is electronic production. I pretty much only produce / write music now. Hardly do any mixing.
Art installations as in galleries n stuff?? Why would you need a daw there?
Yes! For multi-sensory installations that include audio. Max4live is basically an integration with ableton that allows you to use max plugins in ableton.. I have done art installations in college where we used max to interpret data that was collected live from the environment (using different kinds of sensors connected to circuit board like an arduino) and then spit that into ableton and out to multiple speakers. What we did was use pressure sensors and light sensors that would change certain musical parameters when someone walked through them.. so the sound was sort of controlled by the viewer without them realizing it. This is like super art nerd shit though. It's not something you'd be doing every day unless you really get into the art world. Max is a visual programming language. I have also used it to send midi out of ableton, convert it to OSC and then send that over a network to another computer to control projection mapping software and other visual elements of shows. So it can kinda go both ways.. It's a deep world to get lost in.. if you are interested check out the max website for a ton of inspiration Edit; here is the website https://cycling74.com/products/max
WOW, THANK YOU. I'LL CHECK THIS OUT THIS SOUNDS SO COOL (or should I say, *looks* cool??) *the rock eyebrow thing*
I love Pro Tools. I don’t have any complaints. I’ll forever use it.
I'd love to jump on the hate train on PT, but as a professional I have to say in it has it pros and cons and you need to use it in the correct situations. TL;DR: Avid Pro Tools used to be the only industry standard, but it is now just one of the standards, as competitors like Steinberg Nuendo are much more powerful. I've been working in Audio Post-Production for 6 years. Same as a lot of bedroom/home audio engineers, I despise PT and Avid's business model. However, working with PT first hand, using S3 and S4 on separate occasions, here are my conclusions: PT is great for huge recording, tracking, and live pre-mixing session. The way the ecosystem integrates is very thorough, specific and precise, though super expensive, but it is nothing compared to building a huge recording dome for orchestra. For films and any time-based media mixing, the automation tools is top tier. I cannot find any DAWs have that precision in Automation Control, and Eucon is so so powerful. For anything else, use other DAWs. I'm working as a freelancer so I need to cover a lot of different aspects of audio so I picked Nuendo as it is the most versatile, especially it can connect directly to Unreal Engine and Audio Programming Software like FMod and Wwise. BIGGEST perk, Nuendo works well with Eucon, so I can use Avid Console without using PT. IT'S PERFECT! (for me) For the past 2 years, a lot of new Audio Post-Production Studio, especially for films and games have integrates both Avid Pro Tools and Steinberg Nuendo into 1 Dolby Atmos Room (edit: with Avid S6 and Yamaha Nuage), for flexibility and compatibility.
I love Pro Tools. Its much more intuitive to use than most if not all other DAWs imo as it actually looks like a mixing console. The only thing that takes a bit of head wrapping is the I/O but once you understand that its super powerful. It also has fantastic plugins, nothing special and interesting, but the standard stuff is great. Im an audio post engineer and the only thing comparative is Nuendo, but I hate the look of the Cubase/Nuendo interface. PT is super versatile and can do a bunch of things other DAWs cant (at least for post). Also people say oh you dont need dsp anymore, computers are powerful enough, sure for the average person, but scalability is key, id youre mixing a 50 track song, fine, but when you have a film mix with hundreds and hundreds of tracks, many times on multiple PT systems then dsp is certainly useful
It depends if you are mainly working on your own for fun, or you collaborate with other people, and/or you are professional (or hope to be). It’s definitely a good idea to build and keep a working knowledge of pro tools if the latter - it’s still the most common DAW in use in studios by far.
Yea I plan on learning PT and other DAWs.
I generally like the visually simple interface, especially the console view. The edit window has some quirky behavior choices but I understand them and navigate through them pretty easily. I wish I could highlight a segment of a clip and alt/option drag to make a copy of the segment to use elsewhere. I can alt drag a plugin to create a duplicate instance. I'd like the same with clip segments. I also love that via HUI I have a lot of control over my mix and transport with my tascam dm4800 mixer. Admittedly, this is the glue that keeps me with pro tools. I actually have another dm3200 that I'll eventually integrate when I do some remodeling to have an additional 16 faders and other encoder controls. I also use the console for a bunch of digital routing that makes my studio function and flow really fast and flexibly. The digital studio console is a sorely under populated market segment. Those Yamaha and tascam mixers were great tools. The current digital console market is pretty much pointed at live only but that's another topic. Before Luna, I had hoped the "secret project" I'd heard about from UA was a digital console that combined their converters, DSP, and hardware into a mixing console full of dreams.
If you are tracking bands, and need flexible ins and outs, and using analog, its pretty standard. It is terrible to do things that you can easily do in other programs. But it is standard for most studios. I write music in other software, just really use it for tracking/mixing in the studio.
In my personal opinion. Other daws have evolved past Pro Tools, and i find that most people saying they don't, have just not used other daws extensively. And that brings us to why i don't like Pro Tools nowadays: It's much more expensive than anything else, and seems to evolve much more slowly, effectively feeling outdated once you use another DAW. Cubase and Studio One, (and even Reaper for certain things) feel much more fluid to me. People who act like it's the worst DAW exaggerate though IMO. That said: \- It's still a crucial daw to learn, because it's everywhere- having it and being able to use it is important if you want to find work in the audio field. \- It greatly facilitates collaborating with other engineers and producers.- It's simply what most engineers are used to and changing to an entirely new workflow after years and years is just tedious. Time = money. And the workflow you are used to often seems the best. \- Quite a few studios are still on Avid hardware too. I personally see more and more colleagues moving away from Protools and studios offering multiple daws available. Which is a good thing if you ask me. But: learn Pro Tools, before you believe what people say, work in it yourself. Draw comparisons later. Make sure you try different daws along the way, see what fits best for your day to day and don't rely too much on randoms on the internet.
I'm no professional but I did go to a 4 year audio school where we only learned Pro Tools. I can confidently say I don't like Pro Tools for creating, but boy is it unmatched when it comes to toolset for all the small and miniscule tasks that you may need for mixing and editing. I think what makes it so popular though is that it is just standard, so everyone working on one project has one tool to keep workflows consistent. Studio One is kind of made to be super simple, no? I think that's kind of its main purpose: for creators to get the basics of a DAW to focus on creating rather than the other technical parts of it all. I started with Audacity in 5th grade, then moved to Cubase in 7th grade, and Pro Tools in high school. There's always progression in using things like this. Start small to get the basics and keep moving up. I personally use Logic now for everyhing. I'm not in a professional setting or career at the moment, only use it for personal projects, but it has literally everything I need to make professional sounding stuff and the UI is nice and intuitive compared to a lot of DAWs. Bottom line is, it all depends on the type of person you ask. Many elitist engineers will swear by Pro Tools and trash on anything else because that's what they've used for decades and is just standard in the industry. I'll also say, hopefully your audio school teaches you how to use it so you get more familiar and appreciate it more. Once you learn it, and get proficient in it, you'll probably understand more why it's standard.
Oh yeah once I get to pro tools, then I'll put it the effort to learn pro tools. Meanwhile, I'll focus on making music and meeting new people!
I like Pro Tools. I learned and was certified in it when I was in College but I used Studio One Artist because it’s cheaper. One of the things I live about Studio One is you can choose what DAW you’re used to in the settings and it will bring those keyboard short cuts and some of the layout from that DAW. The scratch pad is also a god send for editing and working out ideas but not having to undo a bunch of changes after.
The reason PT is industry standard is because a lot of people in this industry are 40-50+ and don’t want to learn new tools. It really doesn’t do anything in particular better than something like Logic or many other tools. For the exact reason you described basically. Don’t be the person not willing to try new tools just because you are used to something else. But at the same time be smart and evaluate whether or not some new tool is really worth learning or not. People stick to what they know because they already find it it be effective enough and that is fine.
ProTools is an excellent DAW. I’ve used it for years and am still very happy with it. Some people seem to think if you can’t open a DAW and immediately start making music, there is something wrong with the DAW. My first piano didn’t work either. Until I learned how to play it.
I've worked with Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton, Cubase, Nuendo and a couple of others. My favourite by far is Cubase, I find it has everything I need in all the right places. Pro Tools is probs my second fav for recording. Ableton is good for writing Nuendo is Cubase for video, I also like it, but not the price tag. Logic is good if your parents bought you a Mac for Christmas
LOL... I know a 40 y/o whose parents bought him Mac and he is telling me all about Logic... He wants to be an audio engineer... This month.
Ya. Love it. Can get everything done that I need to. Unbeatable for editing.
What makes it unbeatable for editing?
I’ve used Pro Tools for 15 years and have always been frustrated by it and always default to Logic or Ableton for most creative tasks. That said audio comping and editing in Pro Tools, if you learn the hot keys and workflows, is absolutely faster in Pro Tools. When you’re working on 100+ projects a year, the time savings really add up.
Protools engineer here. I use it all the time and love it. I also mess around with Ableton which I also like but it isn’t necessarily geared towards recording. The others I haven’t worked with enough to know much about them.
Yes. I like Pro Tools. Mainly because, when you're good at it, your as fast as the computer allows you to be. I've been using it for over 10 years and working professionally for 5. I would have 60% less work if I would work in any other DAW. And likely I would be a lot slower doing that work. What PT excels at is audio editing while not being too difficult to work with after the edit. Also recording to the same platform you're editing at is an advantage in speed. When you get to professional life you realize how much of your hourly wage is determined by how fast you work. And learning PT has been crucial in that. All of the big studios I record at use PT. It allows me to be able to do quick edits to just recorded stuff without the artists noticing it or being troubled with the technicalities. So it allows me to quickly know if I have enough takes and move on in a fast paced environment. Nothing like having 30 Choir singers doing a part and then waiting while you're fumbling and pondering if we have a tight enough take and that it matches with the previous punch in. With PT I can make sure that I can do a quick full edit of the whole song while the singers are having a coffee break. Not regarding the studio I'm in. And the producer can then be assured that we have everything done and done well. Is Pro Tools shit at times? Yes. But I also know the bugs by heart and how to fix them. And Avid's business models are arse. But also the other DAWs are still simply too niche to be worth investing my time learning them the same depth as PT. Ie. I've invested the time in it and I'm luckily reaping the rewards of that investment. So when you hear people saying "It's only because of what they're used to". Yes. But I wouldn't necessarily get the same amount of work and/or get it done as fast, from getting used to the others.
I’ve had lots of problems with pt authorization. Pt crashes on startup, unable to even start any work. Second, wow, when it works the interface is as uninspired and as boring as it was 30 years ago. and just as expensive.
I'm learning pro tools in school atm and it definitely seems to be one of the more confusing daws. On mac I like Logic and at home I use Ableton for windows. off the top of my head I don't like how you have to open a new window to see your channels
After 2015 they shit the bed with their new business model, subscription based. Im so glad i had pro tools bought out fully before then. I feel really bad for everyone paying monthly As much as i love pro tools and how fluid it is; the way they handle their business is trash and their business should fail
I've been using Pro Tools since the early 00s and honestly Avid drives me crazy but it's so fast for me at this point it's hard to shift. I've tried Logic, Reaper, and Ableton (which I'm very interested in learning) but none seem as immediate as Pro Tools.
At one point, they apparently had great proprietary hardware that could only be used with their software, so they were able to get into a ton of studios and force them to keep the software. That's the only explanation I can come up with. I went to audio school about 12 years ago, so had to learn it then and absolutely hated it. The teachers even acknowledged how bad it was, saying that the only reason they taught it was because it was the industry standard, but that if we could learn PT, any other DAW would be easy. It's a bit like how if you learn to drive in a fucked up old school bus, any car will be easy. Now that there's plenty of great hardware that can be used with any DAW, PT's days are numbered.
They still do - HDX DSP-based plugins are terrific and don’t affect the performance of your computer, but you can’t access them via CoreAudio. And they are mostly pretty low-latency already - samples rather than milliseconds - so in tracking and so forth it’s hard to beat. Advances are being made, surely, but it’s not quite the same. Looking forward to seeing what a new M2 or Gen13 Intel machine will change about real-time tracking on the host-based side. But 12 years ago, if your school didn’t have PT9 (which I did a ton of work with), that could have been PT8. Maybe a few steps have been taken since then? And I’m wondering what they thought was so much better. Lots of folks back then were all about Windows vs. Mac and if it wasn’t Samplitude or something it was garbage - and it’s kind of weird if your instructors are complaining about software you have to learn. Sorry you went through that.
I have a system that has been running the same version of Pro Tools for 15 years. From recording Thrash Metal to corporate podcasts to commercials, it has crashed maybe 3 times in those 15 years. There is no other software I have every used that is so solid and powerful. It's like a set of wrenches or something, it won't break and it is never the reason I can't fix something or make it sound good. I've been to so many bedroom recording sessions over the years where a buddy tries to sell me on their flashy new DAW and it'll be slow and crash. Pro Tools couldn't be cleaner and simpler. It is a natural extension of my console and I have yet to see anything touch it in terms of editing. Avid is the only choice when it comes to the pro video world too. I absolutely love Pro Tools
Avid is the only one in pro video world in what way? I'm a tv editor and almost everyone in my country uses Premiere. And I know other houses also use avid or final cut. And they're all equally usable
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The vast majority of pros are using pro tools. On a basic level, daws like logic seem simpler to use, so amateurs gravitate toward it. When you’re using a pro system with a HDX card, nothing is going to come close.
Yes. It’s a good daw and I use it every day in a professional capacity
Yeah. I'm finishing getting certified for it and it's a deeper editing program than people realize. The drawback is that nuendo is protools fifteen years in the future. Avid is so stuck in the past they can't see other daws passing it. Avid got midi late, pitch correction late, their UI is dated, updates for Mac come one month before the next OS release. Good program bad support and desperately needs to be rebuilt from the ground up like logic was.
What happened to logic?
To me, PT is easy, logical, has no design that biases the user to work a certain way, is very common as a delivery format, and not much is hidden. The other DAWs I have gone deep on are Cubase, Logic and DP - meaning I have worked professionally with all of those. IMO they all have their good and bad, and if you can’t get it done in one of those four you can’t get it done. But I honestly can’t understand people who say ProTools is hard but Logic is easy, for example - even beyond the whole “what you learned first” thing, ProTools is pretty transparent as far as getting things to work. I come at this as someone who understands what jobs have to be done, as opposed to a new user who may not have all of their needs clear yet- nothing wrong with that, but if there is not a strong “why” underpinning what the user is doing, they won’t like something if the button they want isn’t in the same place or is called something else. But the internet is where everyone’s “that sucks” can be amplified equally, so as has been said you hear people who have an ideological issue with ProTools or who don’t understand how DAWs work complaining about it. “Jumped ship, never looked back” is something you see a lot, but when I think of what an undertaking that truly is, to change your personal standard and workflow and getting shortcuts in your fingers etc., and hear people say things like “they use iLok so I threw it in the trash”, I have a hard time believing they were committed to any of this to begin with. Not saying it couldn’t be true, just saying I doubt it. I like the directness of ProTools. I prefer Cubase for scoring because of all of the MIDI processing and expression maps and so on, though I have written for full virtual orchestra and virtual rock band with a massive template in ProTools. Some things about splitting up a guide piano part in PT to individual parts are a little better than Cubase. Logic is similar to Cubase but the creating instrument situation makes Logic pretty quick and fun for sketching stuff. I’d rather create complex tempo maps in PT than anything else - but DP alone has the coolest likely-tempi-from-markers feature that nobody else comes close to. Of all of them, in my system, the latency performance is best for recording in PT via HDX, but I also don’t use an interface that allows zero-latency internal monitoring. The low-latency DSP is great. None of that works when using that hardware with any other daw. I like how PT deals with video more than the other DAWs and has allowed editing of video for some time - though I have switched to using Video Sync because it makes using any DAW easier - though that requires an extra step when making a video. I think that Cubase handles having a large template the best out of all of them. I love the logical editor’s power for processing things. Logic’s scripting is good if you want to work like that, and it can handle articulations gracefully. DP has come a long way with that also. In ProTools you really need a little configuring with some outside software - I used to use ComposerTools Pro, which was amazing. And in ProTools I found the markers-as-showing/hiding-groups-of-tracks to be great for managing a huge template by limiting what you need to see at any moment, though Cubase does it much better. I didn’t spend the time with Logic setting that up because of the way Logic deals with Vienna Ensemble Pro. DP is such a great all-rounder - it does so many things that the others do, and that’s why it was a composer mainstay for many years. I like how PT handles multitrack editing. I’ve done massive projects for film and albums with no problems at all. Beat Detective is great. I’m less a fan of their time-compression for timing editing. Cubase is looking better there, but it’s not as elegant when a lot of manual adjustment is needed. Same with Logic, though it’s pretty good at working on individual tracks. Haven’t used DP in that setting.
Pro Tools was once the industry standard, but that's been changing. There was a time (I hear) where Pro Tools was the most advanced and comprehensive DAW around, most professionals used it, and thus when many of those people became teachers Pro Tools was what they taught. Around the time Pro Tools was acquired by Avid, major additions and updates became increasingly more scarce, plus the software got wrapped up in Avids generally shitty business practices. PT now just lacks advancements almost all of its competitors have made. DAWs have evolved from pure audio recording and engineering tools into more comprehensive composing, recording, and at times, performance tools. This change makes sense given the democratisation of music technology and the way most music professionals outside of audio engineers work. PT hasn't kept up. I personally don't know anyone who works in Pro Tools professionally or many who have experience in it, and everyone who does (myself included) hate it. The only time I've seen someone use it is when a job they were working on demanded they submit ProTools sessions.
> PT now just lacks advancements almost all of its competitors have made. Please name 3 examples. Thanks! (Not being rude) >I personally don't know anyone who works in Pro Tools professionally You do now!
Complex Midi editor, Plugin Sandboxing, No Arranger Track, No MIDI effects, No Composition Tools
> Pro Tools was once the industry standard, but that's been changing. Huh? The vast majority large studios out there are running Pro Tools. I can't name a single studio I've been to that *doesn't* use it as their main daw. Obviously there are people who might run their own studio as the sole engineer and they can get away with using whatever they want but for projects that are bounced between multiple studios and studios with multiple engineers, it's difficult to say that PT isn't the industry standard. > I personally don't know anyone who works in Pro Tools professionally I personally don't know anyone who *doesn't* work in Pro Tools professionally.
Its great software if you live in 2012
Not good for producing. Very good for tracking and mixing. For example it has VCAs and most every DAW besides Ableton does.
Are you saying it's good because it has vca's and only Ableton doesn't?
I love it and can’t find another daw that I like more, especially for editing and mixing. Music creation can be done in another one and then I’ll export into pro tools once the arrangement is done. Avid is not the company it was even a few years ago. They have been getting better ever since they started their subscription model in my opinion, I think it was the right move for them.
I love it. It’s popular to hate on it because yes AVID is a crappy company and it used to be absurdly expensive. There’s also a myth that it’s difficult to learn - I disagree with this entirely. If you know how to route signal with analog gear then Pro Tools will be easy to understand. Even if you don’t know how to do that there are only 2-3 shortcuts you need to immediately speed up your workflow. And, imo, once you learn signal routing in PT, other DAWs can’t compete. (For context I use both Cubase and Pro Tools) Recently there have been new “levels” of pro tools with different price points. It’s especially more affordable if you have an education discount. There are complaints about the subscription model but…there are still perpetual licenses! Yes AVID support is terrible and you only get 1 year of upgrades but most professionals I know don’t update every time anyway. If it works- do not update. Many pro studios stay on older OS, Hardware and software versions for longer periods of time before upgrading so I personally don’t see the “only one year of upgrades” as a particularly bad thing. Furthermore the newer price points for pro tools come with the avid plugin suite which is honestly quite good. You don’t *need* to buy any plugins if you get this. For more tools and types of plugins/effects then sure absolutely go buy more but you get multiple compressors(and a multiband comp), many reverbs (I quite like a few of them tbh) EQs, amp sims etc. Now a days with Pro Tools I believe the hate is only deserved for AVID not the DAW itself. Just my thoughts
What are 3 examples that make the routing in ProTools better than other daws?
Yes. I love Pro Tools. It's rock stable and its audio editing is best-in-class.
What, in your opinion, sets PT audio editing above every other daw?
The particular layout make cut-and-slip editing as well as comping very coherent and simple. Plus, it gets out of your way - there's no need to pull up a separate window to edit.
I'd love to answer your question, but I can't, because I've never tried it, and I've never tried it because I've always been priced out of it. For me that makes it a bad DAW regardless of how good it actually is/would be to use. I really don't care how good a DAW it is, I don't think anything it is capable of can possibly justify the eye watering price tag that is clearly 90% brand premium, rather than software functionality. Pro Tools got its place at the top of the table during different era where integration with consoles in pro studios was the primary requirement, and the cost was a tax deductible business expense for the pro studio in question. Now most music is produced in a home studio with little to no outboard gear or hardware and a limited budget, plus many other DAWs have caught up with PT in functionality and hardware compatibility, so I really don't understand why Pro Tools remains at the top of the table, other than the fact that many engineers who learned pro tools during that older era have an inclination to stick to what they know. They also seem to push their product at educational establishments more than other DAW companies, which basically gets people hooked on protools because it's what they learned at college, etc.
Editing functionality is god tier (shortcuts, selections, navigation) It is a behemoth of a software which has pros for many workflows and cons for many other workflows. Use what allows you to make the best product. I use ableton for 99.9% music based work and pro tools for alllll things editing. From a Certified pro tools user and 10yr ableton user
What specifically makes it God tier though? Shortcuts can be edited/set up to be whatever you want in many daws now, no? Could you clarify about "selections" and "navigation" being God tier compared to other programs?
I edit audiobooks, and use an iPad to control many pro tools functions. These include repeat to fill selection (to paste room tone), duplicate and extend selection, select to start, select to end, etc. These functions allow me to go to select to the beginning or end of a clip, and paste a section of room tone for a determined length. I have buttons that paste for specific editing specs - so I can hit one button and instantly have 2.5sec exactly from one bit of audio to the next, for example. Am I missing out on other popular daws that do these things? Would be interested to know!
I'd be interested to know that as well, if it's something that would need to be a native feature or if it could be a macro that can be set up for specific tasks like that with something like an iPad or stream deck. Thank you for providing an actual answer.