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I am sort of looking ahead/down the road a ways. i had never really considered a Pro Tools set up before but have been doing some reading on the LE (not what i would want) or a HD/TDM set up?

anyway i was thinking of the Accel 3 card, the 192 outboard, and one mixer (can't remmber which one but not a huge one) to go with my MAC G5 and all that comes with PT

anyway is pro tools sort of like BMW or mercedes? a nice car but you pay a lot for the name and because it is an industry standard?

How would that set up compare with a

Mac G5 (same one)
Cubase or nuendo 3
Apogee 800 AD/DA (vs. the 192, i think this is the Apogeei want)
WAVES platinum and UA studio etc

just curious

i have my outboard gear and mics for whatever i endup with

M5
747sp
T3000
AT4050
PODxt Pro

so can someone tell me which setup is better? and why?

the Cubase set up is much cheaper and i can use my 2480 as a control surface

thanks much

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KurtFoster Thu, 01/06/2005 - 17:08

Three words .... compatibilty compatibilty compatibility. That's what PT is all about, file compatibility with other studios.

If you are not interesed in transfering your files to another studios computer .. IMO, PT and Macs are overrated and over priced ...

You can get just as good performance from a PC based Cubase or Nuendo set up for one third the cash.... plus, once on the PT bandwagon ... hardware chioces are limited to Digidesign products and software upgrades while not absolutely necessary become very appealing, especially if you want to keep the cross studio compatibilty thing going for you ...

There's lots that has already been said about your question here at RO ... do a search on the topic, you will see many threads on the subject.

anonymous Mon, 01/10/2005 - 03:59

Kurt Foster wrote: Three words .... compatibility compatibilty compatibility. That's what PT is all about, file compatibility with other studios.

If you are not interested in transferring your files to another studios computer .. IMO, PT and Macs are overrated and over priced ....

I agree with Kurt...to a point. I've tried a number of DAW's. PT is all about compatibility at this point, yes. However if Apple does it right and develops Logic for the musician, by the musician....then we may have a new standard emerging that will surpass PT. PT TDM is a money pit. Even after the initial purchase you'll be paying tons of $'s on over inflated plug-in pricing.

With Logic there is a unique situation where the software is owned and manufactured by a company that you know isn't going out of business. That makes it as future-proof as you can expect. That also gives added hope that compatibility issues and bugs will be kept to a minimum on future releases as the testing rigors of Apple behind the scenes is fairly extensive. There is a lot of money behind it and it is already an excellent program. I've just changed from MOTU DP to Logic based on this as I had to make a decision when porting to OSX. The jury is out in my mind as to whether Apple will be a good thing as far as feature development...we will see. But intuition tells me it IS a good thing and a unique situation that makes it stand out amongst all other DAWs....so I put my money on this horse. I love DP but I've always had my concerns about the long term future for MOTU's software division. It's a smaller company and when I'm old and gray I want to spend my time playing and recording music not needing to worry about learning a completely new app.

There is also advantages and disadvantages to going with a single format DAW. The advantage I see, however is that the company is devoted to and spending it's full attention and resources to that one format. There is no concern that one format always is the red-headed stepchild in the development or debugging department. You can focus your beam of development more rapidly and efficiently...theoretically anyway.

PC, as a format, has also closed the gap....and Nuendo looks pretty damn good as well....and has the muscle of a company that appears solid behind it. Also an excellent program.

All this is just another wrinkle in the bed sheets.....I know you didn't ask about Logic or DP....just pointing out other considerations that I have learned to weigh in my decision making on DAW's (old Studio Vision user as well... :? )