Watch out for Waves...

[Larry Mal]

It’s because Pro Tools is still widely considered uniquely-capable of rapid, intense editing of audio files.

For MIDI and virtual instruments, it’s inferior to Logic. For loop-based workflows and running tracks for live shows, it’s inferior to Ableton Live.

But for precise, expedient, highly-flexible editing of large numbers of .wav audio files… even when tracks number in the hundreds or thousands (e.g. when mixing for film)… it’s still the best DAW (IMO) for that application.

It’s (lately) stable, well-engineered, and supported by virtually every major third party plug-in vendor. It’s got very good notation software integration (if you’re into that)

Perhaps most importantly: there are legions of professionals with tons of seat time who can play its hotkeys like virtuoso pianists.

You may dismiss this as “inertia,” but the ability to use such a deep and capable application at that level takes years to perfect (not entirely unlike playing an instrument at a very high level).

I’m a pretty functional Pro Tools user, but I’ve been in rooms with people whose speed flying around the app was quite literally stunning to me. When someone looks like they’re typing 95wpm and clips are just flying around the screen, you realize that developing that skillset is not quite the same as learning to use Microsoft Word.

I can understand being reluctant to start over with a different app that may not even be as powerful for my most-used task

Well, I did nod to that with my comment about Pro Tools "shining in post production environments", I didn't say that there were no situations in which Pro Tools was appropriate, I think it's good software. But I'll stick by "inertia" because I'd bet that if all these products came onto the market now and got a complete re-thinking, Pro Tool might not be as preferred as it is.

And in situations in which Pro Tools did get a re-thinking it didn't do well, Avid is positioning Pro Tools in increasingly narrowing specific niches of the market, you could argue that it is playing to its core competency, but then again there is nothing so good about the audio editing, nor the hotkeys, nor the support for third party plugins, nor the notation editor that kept Pro Tools from absolutely losing market share to its competitors.

I imagine this will continue. Pro Tools costs a lot, that higher tier subscription for "Flex" (stupid name) is $1200 a year. Avid promised that this would lead to a lot of development for Pro Tools, but I haven't actually seen much of that happening (I could have missed some), however I have seen Pro Tools' competitors add functionality that Pro Tools had but others didn't, like Logic adding VCA groups, which I think used to be reserved for the Pro Tools HD level.

So yeah, $1200 a year is a lot of money, certainly more than any of the competition. If Pro Tools was genuinely that much better, you would see their market share increasing, but you don't. It's not an aspirational purchase any more for a lot of DAW users, either. Sometimes, though, it is the best alternative- if I needed my DAW to handle more than one video track, for instance, Pro Tools would likely be the best choice (Flex has up to 64 tracks, Nuendo only offers 2, for instance).

Since Pro Tools is much more expensive than the competition, there's got to be something that justifies it. I know if I went to my boss and said that I needed the absolutely most expensive tool out there because I was used to using it, that's a pretty precarious place to be, they might just ask me why can't I learn to use a product that has all the functionality of the more expensive product in order to save the company money?

I actually am in that position sometimes (not with audio production software). Obviously, there's more to the Pro Tools world than just the software, but I feel I would absolutely not die on the hill of Pro Tools itself. I'd say no problem, get me Cubase, get me Nuendo, get me Digital Performer, get me Sequoia. When I'm in that situation I never say I can only use one tool, I might point to a feature set that makes one tool better, though.

So I'll stick with inertia. I would not want to be in a position where I was explaining to a boss that I could only get the job done on the most expensive solution out there and was incapable of learning other professional grade software that had the same functionality. At the same time, if I was my own boss I might stick with Pro Tools since I knew it so well and was fast with it, despite its expense in the face of other very credible alternatives that cost less, but if that's not inertia I don't know what is.

[øøøøøøø]

To the extent that Pro Tools is losing market share to its competitors (do we have data for this, or does it just seem like it is?), this may have more to do with shifts in music production and writing workflows (it's certainly not losing market share in film!)

For performance-based music production (e.g. "someone writes a song using a musical instrument, and then a band comes in and plays it, and we do some overdubs, and then we mix it") Pro Tools is still pretty close to optimal, in my view.

Obviously this isn't necessarily the most common way to produce music anymore, but it remains valid and isn't exactly rare. And Pro Tools excels there.

Pro Tools is not limited to this workflow, of course. It's just highly optimized for it. I'd prefer it to any other commercially-available DAW for productions that are predominantly performance-based (as opposed to loop-based or electronic).

It became fashionable to hate Pro Tools just as it became fashionable to hate SM57s, but I'm still quite happy to use both.

[Larry Mal]

To the extent that Pro Tools is losing market share to its competitors (do we have data for this, or does it just seem like it is?), this may have more to do with shifts in music production and writing workflows (it's certainly not losing market share in film!)

For performance-based music production (e.g. "someone writes a song using a musical instrument, and then a band comes in and plays it, and we do some overdubs, and then we mix it") Pro Tools is still pretty close to optimal, in my view.

Obviously this isn't necessarily the most common way to produce music anymore, but it remains valid and isn't exactly rare. And Pro Tools excels there.

Pro Tools is not limited to this workflow, of course. It's just highly optimized for it. I'd prefer it to any other commercially-available DAW for productions that are predominantly performance-based (as opposed to loop-based or electronic).

It became fashionable to hate Pro Tools just as it became fashionable to hate SM57s, but I'm still quite happy to use both.

Not sure how to answer the market share since there's no real sales figures I could point to, I think we would have to see how Avid has ceded a lot of the market to their competitors. At this point, you probably wouldn't say that Pro Tools and Cubase were competing for the same money at this point. But at one point they were. Regardless, I think our point is the same, as you say shifts in music production and writing workflows have left Pro Tools not necessary. For a very big part of the market, Pro Tools offers nothing, and increasingly less and less.

I mean, this is such a lucrative market that Cubase designers left Steinberg and created a direct competitor with the excellent Studio One under the auspices of Presonus, and the market has accommodated both of those DAWs, but Pro Tools could not compete.

Which is not the fault of Pro Tools, and I don't hate Pro Tools, either. I dislike Avid a lot and I think they don't know how to market Pro Tools, so they are pulling back and simply exploiting their user base at this point who might be so tied in to workflow and/or hardware that they have to stay.

Your definition of performance based music production has me scratching my head a little bit, since that is such barebones stuff for a DAW to do that I can't think of any DAW that can't easily do all of that. I mean, you can do that in Audacity, you can do that in Audition. I don't know what makes Pro Tools any more "optimal" for that stuff than anything else, I'm thinking of, what, pan laws or something?

I actually took a look at Pro Tools to see if I was off base about something, and I'm happy to see that Pro Tools has added a lot of plug ins that get it more or less caught up to its competitors, for instance I was not aware that Space (convolution reverb) was part of the Studio and Ultimate package (it isn't part of Artist).

But that's my point, all the DAWs have pretty much the same stuff now, some virtual instruments, some basic functionality like channel EQ, probably linear EQ, various reverbs and compressors. I just don't see what makes Pro Tool any more optimal there.

[øøøøøøø]

as you say shifts in music production and writing workflows have left Pro Tools not necessary.

I don't see where I ever said that. I certainly don't agree with the premise.

It's still by far the most common platform when I walk into recording studios; it's still what people expect when they walk into *my* commercial studio. It's still used for pretty much all film mixing.

It still seems to be the vastly-preferred DAW for almost all acoustic performance-based music, as well as popular genres that aren't primarily descended from loop-based or electronic traditions.

if you wan't to say it's "not necessary" for trap or drill, I'd concede that for sure. "Not necessary" for the segment of the home recording market that doesn't have professional aspirations? Maybe

But "not necessarily" more broadly? We're a long, long, long, long way from that.

[Larry Mal]

OK, well, don't let me put any words in your mouth.

What about Pro Tools makes it necessary? Why couldn't you get your work done in your studio without using Pro Tools?

Using your workflow that you outlined above, what makes it more "optimal" over its competitors?

[marqueemoon]

Now stuff just works and more people are just taking their own projects from start to finish.

There’s less concern about being able to hand over a session to “real” engineer, and if you do you can just give them stems.

I will never be a DAW wizard and don’t really want to be one.

[øøøøøøø]

OK, well, don't let me put any words in your mouth.

What about Pro Tools makes it necessary? Why couldn't you get your work done in your studio without using Pro Tools?

Using your workflow that you outlined above, what makes it more "optimal" over its competitors?

In the strictest sense, nothing is "necessary." People made records before computers even existed, much less any particular DAW. But there are certainly things about Pro Tools that makes it professionally advantageous.

The concrete things:

• If using HDX you can actually track and monitor with zero latency even when using plug-ins and complex routing, due to the HDX hardware. This is pretty huge. There's no getting around the massive advantage of this when recording multiple musicians playing at the same time, especially if virtual instruments are involved in any way.
• Selecting, zooming, tabbing to transients, crossfading, creating tempo maps from off-click performances... all this stuff is just so much more seamless on Pro Tools compared to any other DAW I've found. This isn't just "post production" work, by the way... all of these functions are things I regularly do in the course of producing a track
• If working with audio and video together, Pro Tools is also just uniquely capable in this regard. This is something I do less frequently, but the advantages of Pro Tools seem real in this area

But a big one in a "real world" sense is the large power user base. Entire workflows have grown around the function of this application, and this is more useful than it is detrimental (It's only "inertia" in the sense that standard guitar tuning is also "inertia." Inertia isn't always so bad!)

There's other stuff people like... some of the remote/cloud-based collaboration things are pretty innovative even if they don't "come up in conversation" much for me (yet).

But yeah... the big ones are the HDX advantages for tracking large sessions, as well as the editing capability. Another thing is that it scales remarkably well with ability. It's kind of like an SSL console in this regard... easy enough to get going on a basic level, but most users will never scratch the surface of what it's capable of. But the capability is there if/when you need it.

[NBarnes21]

For performance-based music production (e.g. "someone writes a song using a musical instrument, and then a band comes in and plays it, and we do some overdubs, and then we mix it") Pro Tools is still pretty close to optimal, in my view.

Obviously this isn't necessarily the most common way to produce music anymore, but it remains valid and isn't exactly rare. And Pro Tools excels there.

Pro Tools is not limited to this workflow, of course. It's just highly optimized for it. I'd prefer it to any other commercially-available DAW for productions that are predominantly performance-based (as opposed to loop-based or electronic).

This is it essentially, for me, along with the film aspect- I can't see any other DAW cutting into market share for this type of application. I worked in a commercial studio for several years and had to learn ProTools after having grown up on Logic 8. At the time Pro Tools HD was annoying and also super unstable (but it seems like they've gotten pretty stable as of late)- but for recording a band in a studio, comping tracks, editing, and mixing, it's still by far the best IMO. I eventually switched back to Logic when I stopped working at that studio and started doing remote drum recordings in my own space, mainly due to better MIDI integration and incorporating loop/ sample based stuff, but for recording, comping, and editing tracks I'd still prefer ProTools, and have to work around some of the less optimal parts of editing in Logic.

As mentioned they also have the benefit of being grandfathered in to most all commercial studios and the loads of engineers that grew up working in ProTools, so I think they'll continue to be the gold standard for what they're know for.

[Larry Mal]

OK, well, don't let me put any words in your mouth.

What about Pro Tools makes it necessary? Why couldn't you get your work done in your studio without using Pro Tools?

Using your workflow that you outlined above, what makes it more "optimal" over its competitors?

• If using HDX you can actually track and monitor with zero latency even when using plug-ins and complex routing, due to the HDX hardware. This is pretty huge. There's no getting around the massive advantage of this when recording multiple musicians playing at the same time, especially if virtual instruments are involved in any way.
• Selecting, zooming, tabbing to transients, crossfading, creating tempo maps from off-click performances... all this stuff is just so much more seamless on Pro Tools compared to any other DAW I've found. This isn't just "post production" work, by the way... all of these functions are things I regularly do in the course of producing a track
• If working with audio and video together, Pro Tools is also just uniquely capable in this regard. This is something I do less frequently, but the advantages of Pro Tools seem real in this area

But a big one in a "real world" sense is the large power user base. Entire workflows have grown around the function of this application, and this is more useful than it is detrimental (It's only "inertia" in the sense that standard guitar tuning is also "inertia." Inertia isn't always so bad!)

There's other stuff people like... some of the remote/cloud-based collaboration things are pretty innovative even if they don't "come up in conversation" much for me (yet).

But yeah... the big ones are the HDX advantages for tracking large sessions, as well as the editing capability. Another thing is that it scales remarkably well with ability. It's kind of like an SSL console in this regard... easy enough to get going on a basic level, but most users will never scratch the surface of what it's capable of. But the capability is there if/when you need it.

Well, firstly, I am more talking about the software itself here, since I can't very well account for everyone's hardware needs. I can imagine, though, that if I gave you an equivalent amount of money that you spent on your Pro Tools rig that you could easily come up with something that gives you the ability to track and monitor with zero latency same as you are now.

What I've seen over the last ten years is a steady stream of people come to the realization that they don't need Avid's DSP, for anyone who cares to dig into this more deeply, here's a longtime Pro Tools user explaining his choice to stop.

Regardless, though, maybe someone might need Avid's hardware still or maybe not. I think there is no denying that more and more users are finding that they can do their work just fine natively, which Avid addressed- somewhat poorly- with HD|Native back in the day. Even if you do need some DSP hardware, Avid is an expensive proposition as always. I mean, think of the amount of people that you know that do some kind of audio work, what percentage of them would you recommend an HDX solution to? Or even Carbon?

One thing you mentioned that stuck with me was the prevalence of Pro Tools in classical music. Now, I don't doubt you see that, but I have to question why, since the last thing you would be doing with classical music is a bunch of processing while recording. It occurred to me that I am well acquainted with the man who recorded the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra as his primary job for some fifteen years, he emphatically did not use Pro Tools and always had scorn for it. I forget exactly what Paul used, I think it was Sequoia, which is why I am somewhat familiar with that but have never used it. Regardless, we all know that it is completely possible to do great classical music recording at the highest levels without using Pro Tools whatsoever.

You mention the editing in Pro Tools, and that's always said to be its strength, I don't have a bad thing to say about it. However, I tend to dismiss that it's the "best", because I think most people used to use Pro Tools first and so they tend to get better at it. You've been using it for some time now, you had a 001 as I recall, so you've been at it some time. I would bet that if you had spent 20 years or whatever with Cubase you'd be every bit as used to that. I mean, I haven't touched Pro Tools in some time, but I'm used to Logic at this point, so I'd be slower and more cumbersome at Pro Tools for a good long time. Does that mean Logic is better?

I bet you anything if I presented you with a job that required you to use Digital Performer, for instance, you would get in there and get to work and you would find some things you thought Digital Performer did that you really liked compared to Pro Tools and some stuff you didn't. If I moved you over to Cubase the very next week you'd find something similar. That's just the nature of these things.

That being said Pro Tools' tab to transient is cool, here's a guy demonstrating some Logic techniques, for anyone who cares to compare.

You mention the audio/video stuff, and you've got me there... no one seems to care to compete with Pro Tools and Avid. I'm a little surprised by that, honestly, they lumped a lot of Logic's features into Final Cut but not vice versa, and Adobe does not seem to care to develop Audition into anything useful for composing alongside Premiere. Digital Performer is said to be very popular with composers, probably more so now that they finally have instrument tracks, but MOTU doesn't seem to want to do much more than that.

Anyway, I think these are all great tools, and I would recommend anyone take a look at any of them. Pro Tools is hardly the only deep software out there, also- Logic, Cubase and Digital Performer are all about as old and incredibly deep softwares. Logic, for instance, has the "Environment" which probably almost no Logic users actually use, it's just buried there if you want it. Digital Performer has "Chunks", not exactly hidden, but it's deep workflow that might be just perfect for some.

But, I get it. A lot of people go to work and just want to use the tools they have to produce whatever their deliverables are, and time spent learning new tools is time that you are not producing the deliverable.

On the other hand, though, the idea that Pro Tools is somehow "best" just has never sat well with me, especially since while it shines in some areas it is a ridiculously overpriced solution in a lot of others. But like you say, Brad, your clients come in and they expect to see Pro Tools so you feel you have to have it, I guess. I might call that "inertia", I mean, if I was paying you, which I absolutely would do, I would be paying you for your skill and knowledge and not because you had a hundred dollars a month subscription to Pro Tools. Because after all, standard tuning might be inertia, but then again standard tuning doesn't cost a lot more money than other tunings, you know?

[Embenny]

I think the thing about Pro Tools is that the stuff it does best has simply become a smaller and smaller percentage of what people are doing with DAWs.

With the combination of cheaper and more capable hardware and new approaches to making new styles of music, a very small percentage of total DAW users are recording large multitrack sessions of live musicians. Most are recording a small number of people at a time (often just one at a time) and/or working with loops and/or using the DAW itself as a songwriting and sound design tool.

Pro Tools has positioned themselves as a very expensive product for a few specific groups of customers, which is fine. If you're running a 3-room studio or producing soundtracks for TV and film, there's no reason to use anything else.

It's just that the democratization of music production has led to a staggering number of DAW users, most of whom can do what they need to do more easily or more inexpensively with other DAWs.

[Larry Mal]

I think the thing about Pro Tools is that the stuff it does best has simply become a smaller and smaller percentage of what people are doing with DAWs.

With the combination of cheaper and more capable hardware and new approaches to making new styles of music, a very small percentage of total DAW users are recording large multitrack sessions of live musicians. Most are recording a small number of people at a time (often just one at a time) and/or working with loops and/or using the DAW itself as a songwriting and sound design tool.

Pro Tools has positioned themselves as a very expensive product for a few specific groups of customers, which is fine. If you're running a 3-room studio or producing soundtracks for TV and film, there's no reason to use anything else.

It's just that the democratization of music production has led to a staggering number of DAW users, most of whom can do what they need to do more easily or more inexpensively with other DAWs.

I view it a little differently, I guess. Pro Tools addressed a real need for recording multiple tracks of audio back when computers basically couldn't do it, but once computers were more and more able to handle greater track counts the reason to buy Pro Tools dwindled. It continues to dwindle.

When I came onto the scene Pro Tools was trying to create a justification for their more expensive hardware by crippling some of the Pro Tools software. They would have these dreadful Firewire interfaces, the 001 and 002, and they would have different levels of Pro Tools. The "HD" stuff would run on their DSP equipment but the "LE" was designed not to compete with that, so it would have a 32 track limit and I think you could pay a lot of money to expand it to 64 audio tracks.

They still fucking do it! The "Artist" Pro Tools subscription is $10 a month, and gets you a whopping 32 audio tracks. Nothing says "Pro" like artificially hobbled software, does it?

Anyway this made no sense back then because you could just get, you know, any other fucking software and have no limitations whatsoever other than what your computer could handle.

But Avid had to try and create a reason for folks to have to buy their hardware even when they didn't need it for what they wanted to do, they thought that the name "Pro Tools" would somehow blind people to this.

It didn't, and Pro Tools suffered miserably and eventually just retreated to the places where there is a more genuine need for their DSP hardware, but even that isn't safe for them since computers are getting much better all the time and other companies are offering other DSP solutions that are more economical in a lot of cases.

But, is the software that much better? No, but it's very good. You'll always hear that "Logic is good for MIDI and Pro Tools is better for audio" but that totally outdated advice doesn't take into account the great strides both titles have made over the years, not to mention all the other great software out there. If you can't get your audio editing done in Logic or your MIDI needs done in Pro Tools (I mean they added fucking notation, for the love of God), the problem is not the software. This doesn't mean you won't find creatively awesome workflow in one or the other, and there are some genuine strengths and weaknesses in all of it.

I don't know, writing all this makes me feel like I should use some of the other DAWs again. I used to really like Digital Performer, for instance, and now that there are instrument tracks I would like it a lot more. One of my big regrets is that I've never been able to wrap my mind around Live and get a good workflow in that. And I used to really love Reason. But it's hard to keep up with it all.

But not Pro Tools, though. Being in education I was able to get it for something like $15 a month, I see now it's $300 a year. I just can't think of anything it would really do for me, though, that I can't otherwise do. But like I say, if someone sent me some Pro Tools projects, or I wanted to open some of my older ones, I would use it no problem, in the end it is really good software.

[Larry Mal]

Here, I wanted to be clear on the track counts- it was actually "voices", so a stereo track was two "voices":

Pro Tools LE shared the same interface of Pro Tools HD but had a smaller track count (24 tracks with Pro Tools 5, extended to 32 tracks with Pro Tools 6 and 48 tracks with Pro Tools and supported a maximum sample rate of 96 kHz (depending on the interface used). Some advanced software features, such as Automatic Delay Compensation, surround mixing, multi-track Beat Detective, OMF/AAF support, and SMPTE Timecode, were omitted. Some of them, as well as support for 48 tracks/96 voices (extended to 64 tracks/128 voices with Pro Tools and additional plug-ins, were made available through an expansion package called "Music Production Toolkit". The "Complete Production Toolkit", introduced with Pro Tools 8, added support for surround mixing and 128 tracks (while the system was still limited to 128 voices).

[øøøøøøø]

Larry, I didn’t get through that entire thing, but did want to clarify one important point:

HDX isn’t just powerful “hardware.” It’s hardware and software integrated, which is rather unique to Pro Tools.

Endeavoring to approximate that performance with an alternative is absolutely *not* a matter of spending money to beef up your hardware. You simply can’t get there from here, as other DAWs are not engineered to integrate scalable external DSP resources like HDX/Ultimate is.

It’s a difference of type, not of degree.

HDX/Ultimate makes use of a unique and powerful form of hardware-software integration that allows latency of 0.7mS, which is effectively “zero”—less than ten inches of distance at the speed of sound. You can’t do that with Logic, Cubase, Reaper or any other DAW no matter how fancy your hardware is. This is why it remains an industry standard for performance-based music.

The narrative that PT’s “industry standard” status is a holdover from an earlier era with fewer options is—in my opinion—a plausible-sounding narrative that’s flat wrong (but has been repeated for so long that it’s become accepted as true by lots of people). For one thing, Sound Tools (Pro Tools’s original name) wasn’t even the first to market, but I’ll spare us that long tangent

Anyway, you can also run native Pro Tools, of course, at which point it behaves more or less like any other native DAW. I run native at home, as it’s much more affordable. HDX/Ultimate is expensive, but its no-latency performance is, as far as I know, substantially unique in this industry.

I’ll tap out now, but not before gently suggesting that you may have some misconceptions about how HDX works—and that a bit more information might elicit a rethink of some of those broad-brush opinions.

[OffYourFace]

I'm thinking of switching to Logic soon but I've been using PT since 2007. I don't mind the subscription deal but my computer is old! 2013 Macbook Pro but I replaced the HD with a SS one and it runs like new. I just can't keep up with the updates on both the DAW and the OS. But I used to pay $299 every 3 years to update PT so $99 a year is the same haha.

I'm using Catalina and PT 2021 i think... PT 2023 is out now and I know I'll have to update my OS to use it. I need to wait as I'm in the middle of making an EP. Everything is running very smooth atm.

[Jaguar018]

I like watching this from the safe distance of my half-assed usage of Reason.

Casual solo basement recording FTW.