Cubase and Protools

[gives]

Originally Posted by vudoo

I use mostly PT but also well verse in CB9 and DP9 as i collaborate with a few composers who use them. What are some of the must-have midi features you feel that's missing in PT?

Here are is a thing not necessarily midi, but good audio DAW stuff that could be helpful to people like myself.

I like the floating transport that can be resized within the same window as the edit window that Protools could implement. Other windows are available of course. PT transport can't be resized, which I have always found to be a hassle. I love the mixing console history in Cubase 9 that details all of the slightest changes that you have made in a particular point in the mix. That would be useful

[Carl Kolchak]

You said you use Ableton Live 9 ; have you considered using that (or perhaps even Reaper) as a ReWire client - solely for MIDI & hosting your VI's - that has the audio stream piped directly into Pro Tools?

Whenever I've needed to do that, it's worked very well (I'm just not a huge fan of having to work in two programs at once).

Personally, even though there are some MIDI features in Cubase that I sorely miss (though mostly it's the utterly bulletproof timing of the Atari ST's built in MIDI ports), the prospect of going back to using Cubase fills me with dread.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[gives]

Originally Posted by Carl Kolchak

You said you use Ableton Live 9 ; have you considered using that (or perhaps even Reaper) as a ReWire client - solely for MIDI & hosting your VI's - that has the audio stream piped directly into Pro Tools?

Whenever I've needed to do that, it's worked very well (I'm just not a huge fan of having to work in two programs at once).

Personally, even though there are some MIDI features in Cubase that I sorely miss (though mostly it's the utterly bulletproof timing of the Atari ST's built in MIDI ports), the prospect of going back to using Cubase fills me with dread.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nah. I am not just looking for midi features alone and even at that Live 9 is more of an EDM thing for me. Not really good for scoring and a lot of Live people I know are moving to Cubase that are really serious about scoring. They still use live like it do, but there are things in Live that you can do globally like you can in Cubase or EVEN in Protools or DP.

Thanks for the thought though. Either way, I am pretty set in Protools and the other programs. I just would like to see Avid do more innovations on the writing side.

[vudoo]

Originally Posted by gives

How would you compare DP9 and Cubase 9 since you mentioned you use them. Obviously you see a value in that. My point is to have more in Protools.

G

Since PT version 11, i find its handling of VIs on par with DP and CB. I have the same 750-800 patches template on all three DAWs connected to 8 instances of VEP pro and they all perform the same.

I actually prefer midi editing in PT vs CB and DP.

CB has Expression map, it's a cool feature but i don't use it as i prefer one track per articulation and regarding its chord pad, i never use it.

DP's best and most useful feature is chunks, great for scoring. I'm not too crazy about its tiny fonts and the consolidate windows, especially when working with a big template because the mixer redraw is painfully slow when switching between different windows. If you use a detach independent mixer window, it won't automatically scroll to the hi lighted channel, and with a 800+ track template, it's a workflow killer.

As for audio, there's no comparison, PT wins big time.

So at the end of the day, i still prefer PT but it is far from perfect, especially with all the buggy releases since 12.6.1.

[lesbrunn]

Originally Posted by lesbrunn

I don't see PT's MIDI editor superiority. Agreed, the smart tool is great, but needs some more improvement. There are times I have to get out of the smart tool in order to carry out certain basic operations.

Originally Posted by vudoo

Since PT version 11, i find its handling of VIs on par with DP and CB. I have the same 750-800 patches template on all three DAWs connected to 8 instances of VEP pro and they all perform the same.

I actually prefer midi editing in PT vs CB and DP.

CB has Expression map, it's a cool feature but i don't use it as i prefer one track per articulation and regarding its chord pad, i never use it.

DP's best and most useful feature is chunks, great for scoring. I'm not too crazy about its tiny fonts and the consolidate windows, especially when working with a big template because the mixer redraw is painfully slow when switching between different windows. If you use a detach independent mixer window, it won't automatically scroll to the hi lighted channel, and with a 800+ track template, it's a workflow killer.

As for audio, there's no comparison, PT wins big time.

So at the end of the day, i still prefer PT but it is far from perfect, especially with all the buggy releases since 12.6.1.

Hi vudoo,

One point here: Hosting VI's in VEP is a far cry from running them directly as AAX plugins in PT. Via VEP. PT doesn't even see the VI's. It only sends MIDI and receives audio from VEP, and not directly from the VI's. That takes a huge load off PT. Try running all those VI instances as AAX plugins in PT, and you'll understand why people complain about PT's handling of VI's.

On the other hand, load all those VI's directly into Cubase as VSTi's and experience the great difference in VI count, smooth handling and CPU/ memory efficiency. All this on computers that can hardly run PT.

[gives]

Originally Posted by vudoo

Since PT version 11, i find its handling of VIs on par with DP and CB. I have the same 750-800 patches template on all three DAWs connected to 8 instances of VEP pro and they all perform the same.

I actually prefer midi editing in PT vs CB and DP.

CB has Expression map, it's a cool feature but i don't use it as i prefer one track per articulation and regarding its chord pad, i never use it.

DP's best and most useful feature is chunks, great for scoring. I'm not too crazy about its tiny fonts and the consolidate windows, especially when working with a big template because the mixer redraw is painfully slow when switching between different windows. If you use a detach independent mixer window, it won't automatically scroll to the hi lighted channel, and with a 800+ track template, it's a workflow killer.

As for audio, there's no comparison, PT wins big time.

So at the end of the day, i still prefer PT but it is far from perfect, especially with all the buggy releases since 12.6.1.

Thanks for the input!

[Courtlaw]

Originally Posted by Marsdy

I don't think it's quite as simple as Cubase being superior for MIDI and Pro Tools better for audio. That's the old convention but in some respects, PT's MIDI editor is superior to the one in Cubase and is better than Logic's period. I find the constant tool switching in Cubase and Logic's MIDI editors a PITA. PT is far slicker and faster. Cubase does have some killer MIDI features, especially if you're working with orchestral samples. Track Folders, Expression Maps the way MIDI CC data can be edited are wonderful but not enticing enough for me to set up a whole separate computer and buy lots of expensive MADI interfacing. I certainly wouldn't want to work with audio in Cubase and Ableton Live is far superior for sound design, looping and creative sampling.

I agree. The 2 biggest midi features I would like to see in ProTools is (1) a midi script function so we can use third party midi programs (eg., like SkiSwitcher) and (2) track folders for large midi orchestration/templates.

[vudoo]

Originally Posted by lesbrunn

Hi vudoo,

One point here: Hosting VI's in VEP is a far cry from running them directly as AAX plugins in PT. Via VEP. PT doesn't even see the VI's. It only sends MIDI and receives audio from VEP, and not directly from the VI's. That takes a huge load off PT. Try running all those VI instances as AAX plugins in PT, and you'll understand why people complain about PT's handling of VI's.

On the other hand, load all those VI's directly into Cubase as VSTi's and experience the great difference in VI count, smooth handling and CPU/ memory efficiency. All this on computers that can hardly run PT.

Maybe i was not clear in my post but i've tested running VIs as AAX directly in PT and it works fine, no worse or better than if the same VIs were hosted in CB or DP.

With my set up, nMP 12 cores, 128 GB ram, all sound libraries stored on SSD:
I can run about 450 - 500 patches directly in PT, CB or DP (no VEP pro). All three DAWs show about the same CPU and disk usage.

If i host the VIs in VEP pro, i can run 40% more patches (750 - 800) as mentioned in my last post.

My buffer is at 128 the whole time.

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by vudoo

Maybe i was not clear in my post but i've tested running VIs as AAX directly in PT and it works fine, no worse or better than if the same VIs were hosted in CB or DP.

With my set up, nMP 12 cores, 128 GB ram, all sound libraries stored on SSD:
I can run about 450 - 500 patches directly in PT, CB or DP (no VEP pro). All three DAWs show about the same CPU and disk usage.

If i host the VIs in VEP pro, i can run 40% more patches (750 - 800) as mentioned in my last post.

My buffer is at 128 the whole time.

I'd agree with that. When I tested it the other day, I found Pro Tools to be pretty much on par with Logic. More or less the exact same raw CPU usage with Kontakt.

The reason I run a lot in VE Pro is not because Pro Tools can't handle the CPU load. It's because PT session files simply become too big. The save and auto-save times get impossibly long to be practical.

[lesbrunn]

Originally Posted by vudoo

Maybe i was not clear in my post but i've tested running VIs as AAX directly in PT and it works fine, no worse or better than if the same VIs were hosted in CB or DP.

With my set up, nMP 12 cores, 128 GB ram, all sound libraries stored on SSD:
I can run about 450 - 500 patches directly in PT, CB or DP (no VEP pro). All three DAWs show about the same CPU and disk usage.

If i host the VIs in VEP pro, i can run 40% more patches (750 - 800) as mentioned in my last post.

My buffer is at 128 the whole time.

That sounds good to me! What version of PT are you running? Vanilla 12.7/12.7.1 were especially bad for me, so I didn't stay there long enough to analyze what was happening. Apart from midi issues, I was getting too many -9173's. I rolled back to 12.4 and used that for about 6 months relatively smoothly. MIDI was stable and smooth, but I still had several crashes daily from a few plugins and from basic things like clip gain editing. Committing tracks would once in a while hang the system indefinitely till I rebooted. All this was seemingly random, because there were days when I could edit continuously without issues, then BANG! I trashed prefs, did several clean installs of PT, but these things would still happen. I run everything on SSD's except for a few of the larger sample sets.

I'm now on 12.6.1, and it's very smooth without the above-mentioned issues. I've run it for about 2 weeks without problems, but I've been working with only audio. In that time I've had only one -9173 (when I tried to host something in Blue Cat Patchwork) I haven't stretched it MIDI/VI-wise so I don't know about that side yet.