Because Digidesign limits the hardware you can use from digidesign or m-audio, your choices for a moderately effective live recording studio at modern sample rates are very limited unless you want to spend $20 grand for an HD3 system.

Although CD’s are recorded at 16bit 44.1 the nyquist laws and most any decent mastering studio will tell you to record at a minimum of 24bit/96khz so that all those nice digital effects that do bit dropping and wave averaging have a higher quality signal to work with before dither. Don’t you think there is a reason they make interfaces going up to 192khz….most will agree 96k is the ideal minimum sampling rate to capture optimal data while keeping track size & count managable for modern computing systems.

protools le/mpowered is limited to 24/96 ah, but how to do it…read on.

If you want to record a band live in the studio you need at 4-8 mics for drums , 2-4 for guitar, maybee 2 for vocals one for analog keys, 1 for bass so 16 -18 simultaneous inputs are about right. You also need the ability to monitor the inputs with minimal latency.

If you go Protool LE you must use the 002/003 series which is only 8 preamps… yes you can expand via adat but there is only a single adat permitting your additional 8 channels at a max resolution of 48khz so even though the first 8 channel A/d’s can do 96k if you want to use all 16 inputs simultaniously your max sample rate will be 48k which won’t get you the quality.

If you go Protools M powered, and use any of their mbox series forget about more than 1 or 2 inputs…. so your going to have to move up to their new Profire 2626 or Profire Lightbridge.

The Profire 2626 has your first 8 channels covered for preamps & A/d up to 192khz (96k max in pro tools)…. but it only has 2 adat inputs which in Smux mode will allow 8 channel inputs @96k output from another A/d with smux out like a mackie 800r or Digimax FS or another Profire 2626 so this WILL allow you to get your maximum 16 simultaneous inputs@96 and possibly one more via spidf making 17.

The other option is the Profire Lightbridge which has 4adat inputs and will permit 16 channels of 24/96 in smux letting you choose your own preamps/ad and 1 more channel via smux so 17 if your lucky (the mixer matrix on mine won’t let me select the smux output option without causing other problems)

Oh, By the way the LE systems offer low latency monitoring…the Mpowered do not so if you want the drummer to hear himself better run him through a seperate mixer as the slightest latency by monitoring through the computer will throw the drummers time off since he’s dealing with fast transients.

OK so now that i’ve proven how expensive and difficult it is to setup a lousy project studio to record a live band…. next is the fact that to export to OMF is extra, if you want more than 32 tracks you need to drop anothr $500 on their DV toolkit for LE or Music Production Tool Kit for Mpowered…oh and you must use expensive RTAS plugins unless you buy a wrapper program….. and your system will only come with a limited amount of effects or instruments and almost no sound samples.

Oh, did I mention there is no auto latency compensation….so your gonna have to sync up your tracks manually….. Even though every other major software has it….and to top it all off if you mix for movies forget it, you can’t do dolby 5.1 in either LE or M powered.

Then there’s support… after your first 30 days your gonna pay what some ungodly fee like $6bucks a minute for telephonic support or you can attempt to navigate the Avid Website for support but navigating that mess is Gods personal mystery…. they have so many releases and so many hardware configs and so many updates that you need a degree to figure out how to navigate their website or upgrade your Ilok (the monstrosity of a security system dongel they use for mpowered products)…. Oh and if you ever want to buy a used system look out, a $25 registration transfer fee for most programs from digidesign and another $25 Ilok transfer fee to transfer a license to your dongle key.

Well if your still reading boys and girls I would say go buy if you have an apple buy LOGIC STUDIO for $500 bucks you get world class software, gigs of sound samples, free didgital instruments, tons of plugins and more band for your buck and no limit as to what hardware you can choose or be limited to 32 tracks.

And to Avid…if you actually read these blogs….. few people go straight to the top…the majority do it in stages as time/money permits. If you don’t create a smooth transition from home studio to project studio to high end studio and continue to have so many products that you lose focus and continue to create an ongoing nightmare, if you continue to deprecate your software then you deserve to lose your market share.

Happy Recording….

Ray Allin

To the pro tools religious followers….

I´ve been working with DAWS for more than 10 years and I know pretty well almost every major software and I´m positive about this : Pro tools is an arrogant piece of software. They called themselves “the Industry standard” but if you really know something about DAWS, you will see how the “intuitive Pro tools interface” is really OLD, no intuitive at all, and the WORST and most abrupt thing for me: the disabled OMF function. How can be restricted a function themselves created so many years ago? that is nothing else but an obscure intent to deny to the blinded pro tools users, a really obvious thing: THERE ARE MANY THINGS BETTER OUTSIDE PRO TOOLS WORLD.
Pro tools WAS great… yes, WAS, but the world has changed a lot since the the time Pro tool was almost the only “PRO” software on stage.
From my experience, I can say that NUENDO, CUBASE, DIGITAL PERFORMER, LOGIC, EVEN SONAR are really great options with a LOT OF MORE POSSIBILITIES, AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE REAL WORLD: the AFFORDABLE part.

You can fool yourself spending more than $1000 bucks buying a really LIMITED version of Pro Tools or you can be wise and RE-THINK about what you really NEED and what you´ll really GET with the “LE” VERSION of a company with the worst costumer service in the industry. (that is their true standard… ask your friends in “need” if you think I don´t like pro tools for free)

Final thought: the great sound resides in your knowledge about every step in your “sound chain”, your vision of what you want and, in your ears, finally. If you think the good sound is only the sub-product of a software, please think again about your career.

PEACE.

Richard

dave

Frank

Get what you need, like the man said. What do you want to do? Get what you have to get, and get on with making music (I think I’m quoting Marcus Miller here- whomever, it’s to the point!). Maybe ProTools is the answer if it fits your life and plans. Now that “Wizard” thing is a great idea…

…and this:

http://www.sibelius.com/home/index_flash.html

That’s a good point; I don’t know anything about post production work and I hadn’t thought of that.

That is a drag about limiting the external drives that it is compatible with…..

Right now I am wishing I had a DAW program that had notation built into it. I am in the middle of trying to right a worship song that I want to copyright and put out on the web with a lead sheet. My notation skills were never great and now they are completely gone. I can play the melody on a MIDI keyboard and export the MIDI file, then import it into Finale Notepad, but in my perfect world, whatever DAW software I use would have everything PT LE has, plus built in notation…….

bilco

Yeah, a regular thread would have been nice for this topic, but when you jump in on a blog, it’s courier font city… IF A POOR GUY WANTS TO YELL, HE’S REDUCED TO USING CAPS, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!

I’m glad you like Pro Tools. And that’s great to hear that Digidesign is listening. I personally went through communication-hell with them just this past month trying to get my LE 7.4 installed on Windows Vista Home Premium (Vista Home What? Vista Prairie Home Companion did you say?), though bless their hearts they did try to be helpful in their own way. (I try to be a patient man.) By the way, it really frosts me that with version 7.4, some genius at Pro Tools decided to eliminate support for FAT32 external drives, which Mac OS seems to be ok with. (They already nuked USB because “it’s too slow compared to Firewire”. Gimme a break.) This really paints us into a corner for cross-platform compatibility. But regarding communication, our instructor here at film school actually wrote some of their text books, and even he has expressed frustration in communicating with them on numerous occasions.

I think whoever made the statement about the “Beat Detective” thing may have gotten it confused with the multi-track version, which is a purchased option. You’re right about the single-track version being included. And it’s a very cool plugin, by the way.

As they say in Office Space, “I’m going to have to go ahead and sort of disagree with you” on high track counts being equated to overproduction. Hundreds of tracks get chalked up in post production, most of which you never hear at the same time, nor do you want to combine these unrelated track’s “regions” into single tracks for the sake of categorization, not to mention the fact that realtime plugins are track-specific, not region-specific (without getting into a lot of complicated plugin automation within a single track). Music track counts can get high for the same reason. I just did some voiceover stuff, and I maxed out my track voices in a heartbeat.