Pro Tools 9 vs L9, no comparison.

daveyboy

daveyboy

Logician
I've owned Pro Tools LE (and now 9) for many years now. I mostly use it to open up projects and covert them to DP or Logic or to track outside projects. Now that I have PT 9 I'm back in "give pro tools a chance" mode and am writing/recording a new song from scratch. Wow, what a dog (from a CPU efficiency standpoint)! I'm at a buffer of 128 and so far just am using BFD2, 1 ampitube 3 track and 3 of PT's VIs. Recording the midi drums is weird as there are timing errors and CPU spikes. I'd say PT's CPU meter is around 25% so far. On another song I had K4, Trilian and GTR rig 4 and couldn't even work without major hiccups in performance. Anyway, the point is this, I don't think it's possible to do any serious "in the box" midi work with PT but was curious to find out from others who were successful what their strategies were. I'm going to make myself finish this song as it will be interesting to see if I'm able to . I have learned PT fairly well and even recently went through the tutorials at groove3 (thanks Eli!). I want to like it and I realize that since I don't use it all the time there's more of a learning curve. I did track 10 channels of live drums a month ago in PT 8x without a hitch and that session probably had a good 30 or more tracks going. No VIs though as I think those are the culprit. So far Logic has stolen me away from my first love (DP) and seems to still smoke PT (for what I do).
 
Hi Dave,

Your post is very timely. I'm currently in the thick of doing a new series of videos on PT 9. And I completely agree about the performance being way under par compared to Logic. I tracked a live drum kit this morning with five mics, and a buffer setting of 256 and had overload errors. And with only a couple of Structure tracks, a few auxes, and a AIR reverb. I had to up my buffer size to 512. Can you believe it!!

All this to say that I basically do really like Pro Tools. But in terms of performance, forget it - IMHO of course.....

BTW, have you (or anyone else) tried it with MOTU hardware? If so, have you found that it will crash every time if you try and open the session Setup window?
 
I'm now mixing my test song and I have to say it's kind of a nightmare. For one thing, it looks like I'm maxing out PT's ram so I have to sort that out. I'm running a whopping 15 audio tracks and 6 VIs. Really nothing. I'm going to start printing some of the VIs to see if I can get through the mix. My buffer is set to 1028 btw.
 
Hi Dave,

What audio hardware are you running PT 9 with? Do I recall correctly that you use some of the MOTU PCI hardware? FWIW, I'm not sure if the MOTU core audio drivers work particularly well with PT 9.

If you are using MOTU drivers, can you try opening your session setup window and let me know if it crashes PT instantly. I have seen this on two PT 9 - MOTU setups. Sadly, one is my own !
 
I'm running Apogee symphony. It's my ram ceiling. Even after printing all the VIs (except bfd2) my ram is very close to 4 gigs. Wow is all I can say. Soooo glad this isn't my main DAW ;-).
 
I have the same with current Logic on a 3 years old Macbook Pro, external harddisk and 4 GB RAM. Freezing, bouncing, freezing, with just a couple of tracks and plugins. Audio engine overload.

It feels worse than many years ago, as I had the same issues with G3 or G4 Macs and software with smaller footprints. Just the graphical interface ist now slower to support the overall lame performance visually. Well, not only in music programs, to stay fair.

Thanks for telling about ProTools' issues. Since I work mainly with audio tracks I thought about switching the DAW. Not necessary so far I see, I can keep enjoying the adventures in the DAW I know.

Did I mention that we have far too many fulltime programmers on this planet?
 
Peter Ostry said:
I have the same with current Logic on a 3 years old Macbook Pro, external harddisk and 4 GB RAM. Freezing, bouncing, freezing, with just a couple of tracks and plugins. Audio engine overload.

It feels worse than many years ago, as I had the same issues with G3 or G4 Macs and software with smaller footprints. Just the graphical interface ist now slower to support the overall lame performance visually. Well, not only in music programs, to stay fair.

Thanks for telling about ProTools' issues. Since I work mainly with audio tracks I thought about switching the DAW. Not necessary so far I see, I can keep enjoying the adventures in the DAW I know.

Did I mention that we have far too many fulltime programmers on this planet?
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Hey Peter,
Logic runs very well when its given more ram. I've been in 64 bit for a long time now and never have memory issues. I never had memory issues when running Digital Performer either. I would strongly recommend DP over PT any day if you're looking for an alternative/ addition to Logic. It has very advanced audio editing and it's comping feature works great. I now prefer Logic out of these 3 having used all of them extensively. If you're "bored" check out Reaper. I have Reaper too but haven't gotten very involved with it.
 
daveyboy said:
Logic runs very well when its given more ram. I've been in 64 bit for a long time now and never have memory issues.
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But 4 GB RAM sounds generously, thinking about my small projects and almost sample-free instruments I use. 6-8 audio tracks, about the same number of instruments and again for auxes, makes around 24 tracks, half of them automated. Not too challenging for a DAW like Logic in the year 2010. Doesn't work. However, audio engine overload is a system/CPU thing and my CPU was phantastic a few years ago. I don't blame Logic alone for that because other programs behave similar. It's more a common issue.

daveyboy said:
If you're "bored" check out Reaper. I have Reaper too but haven't gotten very involved with it.
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I heard about Reaper, took a first look right now. Of course I looked for things I would like in Logic but I found some surprisingly quick: phase button, pre-fx sends, sends can be instantiated from the target channel, the I/O function, in Logic a plugin, is the main routing tool. Loads AU and VST plugins, apparently internal MIDI (plugin to host) and so on. Not bad. The first plugin I tried didn't show it's display, the second had a display but no sound. Bad luck 🙂 I am not keen to replace Logic by another DAW but Reaper seems to be ok for many people, feature-wise, basically.
 
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