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02-05-2009, 02:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-05-2009, 03:37 PM by Rambunkcious.)
After spending two weeks with Pro Tools 8, I went ahead and wrote up a brief review, summing up as much of the new features as possible. Hope all the PT users, and non PT users, find it helpful.
Pro Tools 8 Review
Coming soon, Deeper Shades Studios will be offering several free sample packs with original recordings of TR808 (already been posted in another thread) Obreheim Xpander, the OSC Oscar. Ill keep u all updated as to when they are ready.
Enjoy
Rambunkcious
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Hey Ram,
For the sake of conversation, I have a few questions about Pro Tools for you.
I've been developing my skills as a producer over the past 5 or so years and am comfortable working in Ableton, Reason, Logic and Cubase.
Lately I work in Reason and Live for composition, then transfer my stuff to logic for mixing and additional layering of sounds. I am using an Apogee Ensemble interface.
I've heard that Pro Tools has the best 'sound quality' and mixing tools out there. Was wondering if there's any truth to that, and if there's any benefit to me trying it out.
Was also wondering how this would work technically... I believe I can pick up a cheap M-Audio interface and then run it spdif into and out of the Apogee Ensemble -- this way I can use the apogee converters but still work in Pro Tools.
Thoughts?
Thanks.
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03-06-2009, 03:07 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-06-2009, 03:09 PM by Rambunkcious.)
Waylo,
Hi and sorry for the delayed reply. I believe for the most part that the Pro Tools is superior myth is nothing more than a myth these days, as both cubase (a personal favorite) and logic have similar editing capabilities to Pro Tools.
Back in the day when native processing wasnt as powerful as it is today, the argument could have been made that ProTools HD was a superior sounding system, due to the 24 bit fixed point processing that was calculated on the HD chips. However with today's computers, the native processing will match, if not exceed, the results of a Pro Tools HD system. If im not mistaken most if not all DAW running on a mac system will process up to 32 bits (though 24 bits is sufficient enough as it yields a 144 dynamic range)
In terms of sound quality it all depends on your A/D/A converters, and since you are running an apogee sound card I believe you will get superior results when recording external gear or monitoring, no matter which DAW you choose to work in.
The setup you described with the M-Audio card will work.
So in the end it all depends on the individuals workflow and degree of comfort they have with the tools they are using. Hope that helped, please let me know if I can answer any other questions.
Bunkcious
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I would clarify that it's not the 24bit fixed part that would make it sound better, in fact if anything that was PT's downfall and the cause of a lot of problems with mixing (and clipping). The advantage was mainly being able to incorporate external gear with no latency along with the plugins only available on PT/RTAS. The UAD and now the influx of more variety of Native stuff (like Soundtoys) has evened the playing field. But for a while PT was the preffered mixing platform in big studios and hence the better mixing plugins were made for it only.
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03-07-2009, 05:17 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-08-2009, 03:09 PM by Rambunkcious.)
As jess mentioned, and I had completely forgot about the plug ins and low latency were another addition to PT's reputation, as well as the marketing that placed a pro tools system in nearly 95% of the worlds major studios.
As for the 24 fixed point, I would have to agree that fixed point could be considered a downfall however HD systems were really using 24 bit double precision fixed point for both plug in processing as well as its mixer. However in the end as has been mentioned it is "fixed" point.
more information can be found at the link below
http://akmedia.digidesign.com/support/do..._26688.pdf
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The reason I say it was a downfall was due to being fixed it could also be clipped internally unlike float. I believe once they got to 48 it solved this issue but back before with single 24 it seems to have been a big part of the problem of 'digital' mixes. Even with Creamware Scope its 32bit integer and I always have to remember not to clip the mixer in that, unless I'm being naughty and do it on purpose.
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And according to the Digi site the mixbuss is 48 but some of the plugins still operate in 24 so can easily be clipped. Some also operate using double at 48 at which point from what I can tell they would not clip as some of that precision is used for headroom above 0.
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03-08-2009, 01:19 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-08-2009, 03:08 PM by Rambunkcious.)
I wonder why Digi utilized this method of double precision fixed point and not floating ?
Also what, if any advantages, either has over the other (Double precision fixed vs floating)?
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Ya to add to jess' comments about headroom above 0db in a PT HD system, your can allow your meters to hit red ever so slightly throughout your mix and still not clip (as long as it is slightly clipping so you dont want the whole track sitting above zero).
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Rambunkcious Wrote:I wonder why Digi utilized this method of double precision fixed point and not floating ?
Also what, if any advantages, either has over the other (Double precision fixed vs floating)?
I believe it's due to the TDM chips operating as integer. This is why LE does floating since it uses the CPU.
In theory there might be small advantages one way or another but properly designed and operated the end result won't be affected. From what I remember floating gives you less error on single tracks when making say a volume change, but when adding signals float has a higher error than integer.
At the end of the day the precision is already so high that these differences in error don't accumulate to anything perceivable.
The major difference that people would actually experience is as I described before in that integer will clip where as floating won't, but again I believe with double precision integer this gives headroom. In Scope's case it's 32 integer but it does clip and there is no headroom but perhaps Digis implementation of 48 is different.
