What is the most cost efficient way for me to get into ProTools HD?

[Hotstuff]

Hi,

Forget the HD, with your budget get the DIGI 003R and the Music Production Toolkit, 1 or 2 great pre´s and be on your way.
The 003r has 4 mike inputs plus 4 line inputs and with your octopre going in ADAT you can have 16 inputs and if you get something like a focusrite twin trak pro you get 2 more inputs through Spdif making a total of 18 I/O.
With the MPTK you get 64 mono or stereo channels in protools.

Hotstuff

 

[brianhood]

Hi,

Forget the HD, with your budget get the DIGI 003R and the Music Production Toolkit, 1 or 2 great pre´s and be on your way.
The 003r has 4 mike inputs plus 4 line inputs and with your octopre going in ADAT you can have 16 inputs and if you get something like a focusrite twin trak pro you get 2 more inputs through Spdif making a total of 18 I/O.
With the MPTK you get 64 mono or stereo channels in protools.

Hotstuff

keep in mind you only get 64 channels if you're using PT 8. There are some small problems with 8 that make it basically unusable for me, but i guess it works for the majority of people.

 

[AdamWathan]

Hi,

Forget the HD, with your budget get the DIGI 003R and the Music Production Toolkit, 1 or 2 great pre´s and be on your way.
The 003r has 4 mike inputs plus 4 line inputs and with your octopre going in ADAT you can have 16 inputs and if you get something like a focusrite twin trak pro you get 2 more inputs through Spdif making a total of 18 I/O.
With the MPTK you get 64 mono or stereo channels in protools.

Hotstuff

Thanks but I'm not really interested in going LE. It's either HD or stick with Reaper I think at this point, the limitations in LE/M-Powered don't make it worth the switch.

I can afford to setup a $10k HD rig but I can't justify it until this music thing is bringing in more than a couple hundred bucks on the side every month. Until then I think I'm going to have to cross my fingers hoping for some changes in Reaper's editing and just tough it out. Maybe pick up M-Powered to use with my Fast Track Pro just to learn ProTools on the side and have it for compatibility/editing purposes.

 

[TheDriller]

Adam, have you considered switching to Logic?
with the new Flex Audio feature in Logic 9, editing is a joy. and you get a selection of seriously bangin plugins.

 

[Metaltastic]

I do have to admit, Logic 9 looks pretty goddamn incredible

 

[The-Zeronaut]

Ugh I wish they would implement these basic fucking important features instead of fucking with "Project in a Project!" and other non-essential stuff that should not be a priority...

+4563456735727

i wish they integrate the fucking beat detective/elastic audio clone that has been in the
"elevated FR´s" since July http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=439

i think they focus too much in midi stuff (and things that you wont probably use in your entire life) and they forget about the basic features and workflow that makes a daw awesome.

 

[AdamWathan]

Logic means switching to Mac on top of switching DAWs :/ it still works out to be way cheaper but if I'm going to switch to anything it only makes sense to suck it up and switch to PT. I might not agree that it is the best at everything, but if I have to learn and become competent with any new DAW, that is the obvious choice from an industry stand point.

Switching to Logic still isn't the worst idea though, I wish there was a way I could give it a good spin before hand though just in case I find a million things I hate about that as well Logic probably is the closest thing to second best as far as the industry standard goes...

Any Logic users here able to compare the editing functionality to ProTools? How does Logic handle edit groups? Is that new sample replacement plugin in Logic 9 any good? What about drum editing, does Logic provide an easy way to detect transients in a selection, chop it up, quantize and auto crossfade?

 

[AdamWathan]

+4563456735727

i wish they integrate the fucking beat detective/elastic audio clone that has been in the
"elevated FR´s" since July http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=439

i think they focus too much in midi stuff (and things that you wont probably use in your entire life) and they forget about the basic features and workflow that makes a daw awesome.

Dynamic Split + Quantize Audio will pretty much already do exactly what Beat Detective does, and I think you can replicate elastic audio behavior with the built in time stretching as well, I've never tried it though.

It's seriously only a tiny amount of MASSIVE issues that are causing me grief :/

 

[TheDriller]

Any Logic users here able to compare the editing functionality to ProTools? How does Logic handle edit groups? Is that new sample replacement plugin in Logic 9 any good? What about drum editing, does Logic provide an easy way to detect transients in a selection, chop it up, quantize and auto crossfade?

Well, the grouping is track based, and there are a lot of options in the Group Edit window.

This image shows typical settings for a multi-track drum group, for Flex-Editing

and yeah, in Logic 9 the Flex Audio feature is awesome for editing drums, and it all in one integrated workflow.

 

[AdamWathan]

Hey TheDriller, you have MSN or anything? If you don't mind I wouldn't mind picking your brain a bit about Logic 9/the whole Mac thing if you have time!

 

[TheDriller]

Hey TheDriller, you have MSN or anything? If you don't mind I wouldn't mind picking your brain a bit about Logic 9/the whole Mac thing if you have time!

sure man, will PM you mah details

 

[The-Zeronaut]

Dynamic Split + Quantize Audio will pretty much already do exactly what Beat Detective does, and I think you can replicate elastic audio behavior with the built in time stretching as well, I've never tried it though.

It's seriously only a tiny amount of MASSIVE issues that are causing me grief :/

i know but i HATE that
clicking one region that is grouped does not select all grouped tracks for the same time selection

and that

when you tab to transient and split, you gotta click the new region after the split before you can tab to it

 

[PhilR]

Before considering moving to any form of PTHD it's probably worth reading this: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/406809-pro-tools-hd-really-weak.html

 

[Chris_P_Critter]

You know... For the longest time I thought Reaper was THE SHIT. But, the more involved with it I get, the more I look at PT and Cubase.

.....and I DON'T WANT TO LEARN 9,000 FUCKING MACROS OR INSTALL 3 FUCKING EXTENSIONS WRITTEN BY SOME OTHER FUCKING GUY TO DO ANYTHING! AND PLEASE PUT IN SOME FUCKING MOUSE TOOLS FOR FUCKS SAKE!

.....and I think I've just come to the decision that the program will never have the shit I want in it, unfortunately.

Sorry - starting to feel your pain a little bit. Either that, or these ridiculously strong drinks are starting to fuckup my mood!

Good luck on your HD quest dude.

 

[Metaltastic]

Before considering moving to any form of PTHD it's probably worth reading this: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/406809-pro-tools-hd-really-weak.html

Wait, holy fuck, what is that "voice count" nonsense, and how does using one fucking RTAS plugin on an aux track eat up 4 voices??? Sweetwater says 96 simultaneous audio tracks, which I thought didn't include aux tracks, that is incredibly lame...

EDIT: Read further, saw someone linked to a post explaining "PTHD Aux Bus System Usage", then promptly stopped caring when I saw the size of it Not like I'll be going to HD any time soon anyway!

 

[AdamWathan]

i know but i HATE that
clicking one region that is grouped does not select all grouped tracks for the same time selection

and that

when you tab to transient and split, you gotta click the new region after the split before you can tab to it

Yeah the grouping sucks, grouped items works fairly well but it's annoying to manually create those groups all the time. I'm not sure exactly what you mean but if you are talking about track groups, no, editing stuff in a track group is not carried across the other tracks. Track grouping only works for stuff like volume, panning, mute/solo, etc. Item grouping makes all your edits carry across all the grouped items though. Just a bitch that you can't set the whole track to be part of an edit group and that you have to do it item by item.

You can create a macro very easily to handle that tab to transient issue as well. It is annoying that you have to do it but at least Reaper is customizable enough to allow you to get around little things like that.

I still have a lot of love for Reaper overall, but it's fucking useless to me as a tracking/editing tool until they fix the goddamn slip editing and track grouping. Will always praise it as a mixing tool and for the general attitude of the developers and it's total lack of any bloat, but fuck me I wish they would collaborate with some big league engineers to get some of the features straight.

I am very seriously considering Logic at this point, really pissed off though that I just spent $1200 building a PC for Reaper only a couple months ago!!! Is an iMac totally out of the question for audio production? I imagine the limit to one hard drive is a big issue... $3500 for a Mac Pro + Logic really sucks.

 

[The-Zeronaut]

You know... For the longest time I thought Reaper was THE SHIT. But, the more involved with it I get, the more I look at PT and Cubase.

.....and I DON'T WANT TO LEARN 9,000 FUCKING MACROS OR INSTALL 3 FUCKING EXTENSIONS WRITTEN BY SOME OTHER FUCKING GUY TO DO ANYTHING! AND PLEASE PUT IN SOME FUCKING MOUSE TOOLS FOR FUCKS SAKE!

.....and I think I've just come to the decision that the program will never have the shit I want in it, unfortunately.

Sorry - starting to feel your pain a little bit. Either that, or these ridiculously strong drinks are starting to fuckup my mood!

Good luck on your HD quest dude.

i dont expect reaper to be a "really good daw" until reaper 5.0 at least...
when they run out of midi stuff that 95% of the people will never use
i hope they will start to add some really good stuff and enhance the workflow

 

[AdamWathan]

i dont expect reaper to be a "really good daw" until reaper 5.0 at least...
when they run out of midi stuff that 95% of the people will never use
i hope they will start to add some really good stuff and enhance the workflow

Ugh don't talk about Reaper ever getting really good, I don't want to switch and regret it in 18 months when Reaper is the best DAW ever

Nah I think a switch to Mac and Logic will keep me satisfied... Going to start a new thread for my Logic queries though...

 

[TheWinterSnow]

The huge problem with the basic HD setup is that the converters are equipped to only handle half of maximum supported channels per device, that means that a 16 channel only gets 8, in order to get more i/o you have to buy different modules which cost $3K a piece. Another great flexible option is to get an apogee ADA system and get their PT X-card(you could also pick up their Firewire card and you would be able to use PT and any other DAW of choice). That would be cheaper, more flexible, don't have to deal with proprietary garbage and sound better as the Apogee converters are claimed to be better than PT, which cost too much for "not the best" converters.

 

[Chris_P_Critter]

Logic is very good dude, everyone that I know who uses it is thoroughly satisfied.