there is no doubt about it.. hands down, Pro Tools IS the most intuitive, elegant, streamlined, and powerful DAW.... i've tried them all, sticking with some for a few years at a time. i started in the mid 90's with Opcode Studio Vision, with Digidesign's Sound Designer II as my 2-track editor. from there i got Pro Tools 5.x with the old AudioMedia III card, and switched to Peak 3 as my 2-track editor.... but during that time i would still fire up Studio Vision for MIDI... PT just wasn't there yet... and to be honest i didn't even bother learning it very well as i was still recording on ADATS at the time.
after my illness, surgery, and recovery i had nothing to my name... i had to live a while with my family and was stuck for a few years with their PC... and i went through several DAWs, incl. Cubase, Cubase SX, Nuendo, Cakewalk, and Magix Samplitude, learning each very well and using each extensively during this time.
finally earned enough money doing guest solos and the odd mastering job with that PC to start to get back on my feet and purchase a new Mac G4 and Logic... but after a year or so i wanted to kill myself with Logic so i switched to Digital Performer... used that for a few years until i finally built myself back up to the point of getting enough serious work to justify the move to Pro Tools HD3 Accel. I had worked with PTHD a few times during the preceding years... an album i mixed at Suecof's place right after he first got his HD rig, and working with Andy at his place on The Clan Destined and the "Holocaust of Thought" track on Nevermore's TGE which i actually tracked on Andy's old PT Mix TDM system in his B-Room... and despite having never really learned it very well in the past with the small 5.x/AM3 rig i had, it was like coming home. i am absolutely fluent with this system and it was the easiest to learn of every DAW i've ever used.
In the last couple years, starting especially with 7.4, Pro Tools has closed the MIDI gap and, in my estimation, has leaped ahead of the pack in that regard. It is a very common phenomenon that a person having learned one complex system in fine detail, will feel that system must be superior to all others, simply by virtue of the fact that they know so well it's ins and outs... and don't recognize it's shortcomings as such, because they view the work-arounds that must be implemented to circumvent them as "normal" work-flow, and they haven't really worked much outside of that comfort zone. But anyone who's learned many or most of the world's DAW platforms to a more than just cursory "fooling around with it" level of facility, cannot but come to the same conclusion that i have. Pro Tools has the edge for multi-track recording, editing, and... with HD... mixing as well. period. full stop. endorama.
so let's us PT users get this thread going in the spirit of Ermz's request... to discuss, among PT users, what we like... shortcuts, work-flows, features, etc....
let's NOT have this turn into a thread where Reaper and Cubendo, et al users come to complain about digidesign or to rant about how awesome the DAW they use is. Make your own threads for that, suckahs!
