Pro Tools 12 vs Studio One 3 vs Logic Pro X

[bashville]

Here is another thread with input buffer information:

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=347456

I've searched the manual also, and for all the talk about "input buffer", the phrase never comes up once in the reference guide, so they clearly are behind the curve on that. I also suspect that the error message that comes up saying "increase your buffer size" when you have a freeze isn't correct or at least worded properly to minimize confusion.

Recently I still saw posts here saying that if you were having playback issues, increase this buffer ANYWAY because it seems to help. I think there's a lot of confusion about this; someone theorized that auxes sometimes are considered input paths, even if they're coming from internal sources. I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I find the lack of clarity and the deficient documentation about this annoying.

[ArKay99]

Originally Posted by DetroitT

I just came off the Cubase Pro 8 demo (Yes a dongle but the same as VSL and others)

Also I'm 2 week into Studio One 3's demo period.
Prior MOTU DP8, Logic 9 (However use X in another location)

HD-Cost for me as well as workflow but more to the future is why I'm looking around.
$600.00/Yr..... now a demanded fee becomes an issue as I relate to a Softtech-cycle budget.

DP8 with it's chunks and video tools very nice.
Cubase Pro8 I got around quit well and it was the least familiar to me in it's current configuration.
Logic a solid building-block (has come a long way from Notator).
Studio One Version 3 strangely logic like (Even CuBase 8 is) and seems a work in progress (Right Track though).
Pro Tools 12 like 11. most expensive upgrade path of any of the others.

Daw-Gonnit I still like working in Pro Tools.
There really does not seem to an apples to apples with any of the above mentioned (And don't even send me to Reaper).
Now I like use and own license to 3 of the above mentioned. (I write regularly)

Pro Tools has a simple elegance for editing (My main profession) and likewise tops my list.
Followed by DP8, Logic X, Cubase and Studio One.

Just a users non technical point of view for this post.

I have to agree. As far as editing, I feel Pro Tools is the best. I also like the paradigm of, or close enough too, a hardware console and tape machine. For post and editing it's very streamlined.

I think for composition and music production there are better solutions. My favorite at this point is Studio One V3. For music production, it's fast, lean, and you get tons of (over 80 gigs) of extras.

I still use Pro Tools and will probably for a long time. I just had to justify a different DAW as my primary...

[Blund69]

I have upgraded to 12 as I have clients who want the latest (I also have 10 and 11). I will admit that personally, I am more of a Logic Pro X person. But customers who rent the facility want to use Pro Tools. So, I decided that I needed to really start learning and using PT since I have invested so much in to Avid.

So two weeks ago I moved an album project wav files into PT folders and started to mix (first in 11 and now in 12). I am now struggling with mixing in Pro Tools and having the CPU crash - all the time. At this point, speaking in Logic Pro X terms, the current track / plugin count doesn't even make Logic breath hard AND I have just started - got a call into Avid support.

But if this is my fate every time I do a mix - hell I am going back to Logic for good. How do you guy's get around this? In Logic with Thunderbolt connected to my symphony I can record and mix down with 32 Buffers - 1024 in Pro Tools is insane especially if the artists needs to come back and do over dubs. But I am not even there yet!!! Just trying to do a mix how do I stop my CPU from overloading - meters only show 12%

[ShiftStudios]

Originally Posted by bashville

Here is another thread with input buffer information:

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=347456

I've searched the manual also, and for all the talk about "input buffer", the phrase never comes up once in the reference guide, so they clearly are behind the curve on that. I also suspect that the error message that comes up saying "increase your buffer size" when you have a freeze isn't correct or at least worded properly to minimize confusion.

Recently I still saw posts here saying that if you were having playback issues, increase this buffer ANYWAY because it seems to help. I think there's a lot of confusion about this; someone theorized that auxes sometimes are considered input paths, even if they're coming from internal sources. I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I find the lack of clarity and the deficient documentation about this annoying.

Yes, there does seem to be a lack of clarity on this subject. All I have to go on is my real-world scenarios. When I have a session open (40 audio + 12-15 stereo aux) Unless my buffer is set to 256 MINIMUM it will not play at all. So yes, I would say that this buffer size does affect playback, and possibly you are right that it has to do with the AUX channels because without them I can have it at 64 quite happily. It would be nice to get some clarification on this. If AUX channels are treated as inputs and this buffer affects them, then that knowledge could help me make more informed decisions. If in fact 10+ aux tracks is going to cause problems, then I will find a way to reduce it.

Also, wording does probably need to be changed if that's the case. If this buffer is not the playback buffer, but the input buffer, then why is it in the playback settings window?? Must be a legacy thing...

[acmost]

Originally Posted by Blund69

I have upgraded to 12 as I have clients who want the latest (I also have 10 and 11).

Seriously, they ask for PT 12 over previous versions?

[ShiftStudios]

Originally Posted by Blund69

I have upgraded to 12 as I have clients who want the latest (I also have 10 and 11). I will admit that personally, I am more of a Logic Pro X person. But customers who rent the facility want to use Pro Tools. So, I decided that I needed to really start learning and using PT since I have invested so much in to Avid.

So two weeks ago I moved an album project wav files into PT folders and started to mix. I am now struggling with mixing in Pro Tools and having the CPU crash - all the time. At this point, speaking in Logic Pro X terms, the current track / plugin count doesn't even make Logic breath hard AND I have just started - got a call into Avid support.

But if this is my fate every time I do a mix - hell I am going back to Logic for good. How do you guy's get around this? In Logic with Thunderbolt connected to my symphony I can record and mix down with 32 Buffers - 1024 in Pro Tools is insane especially if the artists needs to come back and do over dubs. But I am not even there yet!!! Just trying to do a mix how do I stop my CPU from overloading - meters only show 12%

Welcome to my world. lol.

Sorry wish I could help, but I too have this exact same issue. I find its plugins and busses generally. I know if Logic and S1 they're not a problem, they somehow seem to be though in Pro Tools. I have recently removed absolutely every program off my computer that I do not NEED, removed everything from startup, uninstalled all other system tools that I can live without, and went through the optimisation guide again. So far I've been having better luck. It just appears that in order to use Pro Tools, you need a dedicated machine that does nothing else. As I stated (from my 30 years of programming experience), Pro Tools appears to be poorly optimised for today's processors. Things that don't even make my Mac break a sweat in Logic and S1 make Pro Tools very nearly buckle. I've already had to replace the logic board in one mac from what I can only assume is constant CPU load/fanspin as the chips basically fried on it. Since the only thing I did on my computer that put any strain on it was Pro Tools, I can only assume that Pro Tools in the culprit. It's a Macbook Pro, I don't play games on it (I have consoles for that), and other than that, just programming and office work, which does not put any load at all on a core i7 processor with 16GB of ram.

To shorten it up, remove everything you can live without and pull everything out of startup. Follow this guide:

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/t.../Optimize-10-9

It does help, if only just. I still get occasional playback errors at 1024 sample size, but at least I can get through sessions.

[ArKay99]

Originally Posted by Blund69

I have upgraded to 12 as I have clients who want the latest (I also have 10 and 11). I will admit that personally, I am more of a Logic Pro X person. But customers who rent the facility want to use Pro Tools. So, I decided that I needed to really start learning and using PT since I have invested so much in to Avid.

So two weeks ago I moved an album project wav files into PT folders and started to mix (first in 11 and now in 12). I am now struggling with mixing in Pro Tools and having the CPU crash - all the time. At this point, speaking in Logic Pro X terms, the current track / plugin count doesn't even make Logic breath hard AND I have just started - got a call into Avid support.

But if this is my fate every time I do a mix - hell I am going back to Logic for good. How do you guy's get around this? In Logic with Thunderbolt connected to my symphony I can record and mix down with 32 Buffers - 1024 in Pro Tools is insane especially if the artists needs to come back and do over dubs. But I am not even there yet!!! Just trying to do a mix how do I stop my CPU from overloading - meters only show 12%

Originally Posted by ShiftStudios

Welcome to my world. lol.

Sorry wish I could help, but I too have this exact same issue. I find its plugins and busses generally. I know if Logic and S1 they're not a problem, they somehow seem to be though in Pro Tools. I have recently removed absolutely every program off my computer that I do not NEED, removed everything from startup, uninstalled all other system tools that I can live without, and went through the optimisation guide again. So far I've been having better luck. It just appears that in order to use Pro Tools, you need a dedicated machine that does nothing else. As I stated (from my 30 years of programming experience), Pro Tools appears to be poorly optimised for today's processors. Things that don't even make my Mac break a sweat in Logic and S1 make Pro Tools very nearly buckle. I've already had to replace the logic board in one mac from what I can only assume is constant CPU load/fanspin as the chips basically fried on it. Since the only thing I did on my computer that put any strain on it was Pro Tools, I can only assume that Pro Tools in the culprit. It's a Macbook Pro, I don't play games on it (I have consoles for that), and other than that, just programming and office work, which does not put any load at all on a core i7 processor with 16GB of ram.

To shorten it up, remove everything you can live without and pull everything out of startup. Follow this guide:

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/t.../Optimize-10-9

It does help, if only just. I still get occasional playback errors at 1024 sample size, but at least I can get through sessions.

I had been there a LOT and with an HDX system. Then I upgraded it to twin 3GHZ 5875 Westmere (6 cores) and 24 gig. 32 bit Geekbench was almost 24k and 64 bit was a touch over 32k. Mixes that were running at 20-30% were now running at 10-20%, and I still got cpu overloads. Went to 12HD and still got cpu overloads...

I personally don't think it's a cpu time slice issue with PT. I really think it's a time slice issue with the AAX format. I really believe Avid shot themselves in the foot by not allowing 64 bit VST's. This caused the devs to make hasty 'patches' to their RTAS and the ones that had VST's as RTAS. I also think it has something to do with the way the copy protection works with AAX and iLok vs VST's and simpler licenses. IMHO this is why when we have to find a misbehaving plug we have to do the move the plugs into the unused folder and move them back one at a time dance. When PT starts, it loads what I can only assume is a license stub that I suppose is checked with the iLok for every plug you own. For users with lots of plugs, that's lots of memory and lots of cpu cycles to attend to. If one of those plugs has a poorly written interface it may hog the cpu even if it's not being used in the session. Also, I think the guy that wrote the AAX spec is no longer with Avid.

The reasoning behind the above is now that I've been using a different DAW and VST, VSTi's, VST3, and AU plugs which don't have those licensing constraints the DAW just feels more mobile and responsive.

Just my $.02 and educated conjecture, purely empirical and loosely defined.

[ShiftStudios]

Originally Posted by ArKay99

I had been there a LOT and with an HDX system. Then I upgraded it to twin 3GHZ 5875 Westmere (6 cores) and 24 gig. 32 bit Geekbench was almost 24k and 64 bit was a touch over 32k. Mixes that were running at 20-30% were now running at 10-20%, and I still got cpu overloads. Went to 12HD and still got cpu overloads...

I personally don't think it's a cpu time slice issue with PT. I really think it's a time slice issue with the AAX format. I really believe Avid shot themselves in the foot by not allowing 64 bit VST's. This caused the devs to make hasty 'patches' to their RTAS and the ones that had VST's as RTAS. I also think it has something to do with the way the copy protection works with AAX and iLok vs VST's and simpler licenses. IMHO this is why when we have to find a misbehaving plug we have to do the move the plugs into the unused folder and move them back one at a time dance. When PT starts, it loads what I can only assume is a license stub that I suppose is checked with the iLok for every plug you own. For users with lots of plugs, that's lots of memory and lots of cpu cycles to attend to. If one of those plugs has a poorly written interface it may hog the cpu even if it's not being used in the session. Also, I think the guy that wrote the AAX spec is no longer with Avid.

The reasoning behind the above is now that I've been using a different DAW and VST, VSTi's, VST3, and AU plugs which don't have those licensing constraints the DAW just feels more mobile and responsive.

Just my $.02 and educated conjecture, purely empirical and loosely defined.

Come to think of it, you may be on to something there. I didn't have these problems in 9, and even mostly in 10 when I was still using RTAS plugins. But PT did start being more problematic with AAX plugins and 10. I did also notice CPU jump some in 10, so there may be something to that. I might go and make a habit of removing absolutely every single plugin I don't want to use and see what happens. lol.

[zedhed]

Originally Posted by ShiftStudios

... And getting my hands on Cubase in Australia is not the easiest thing to do, neither was Pro Tools though to be fair.

I don't think it can get any simpler than to go to the Avid website store & purchase/Download Pro Tools.

That's what I've been doing for years without a hitch and I live further away than you.

[ShiftStudios]

Originally Posted by zedhed

I don't think it can get any simpler than to go to the Avid website store & purchase/Download Pro Tools.

That's what I've been doing for years without a hitch and I live further away than you.

Yeah, but NZ isn't full of crazy lunatics. :P

I needed a iLok when I purchased it, so I had to find and get in touch with a local supplier to get a hard copy of Pro Tools with an iLok. Some local suppliers can be a pain in the backside to deal with. Since then though I agree, the purchase process has been smooth sailing. :)