New stuff. Sounds better? Or just in my head?

[manyrains]

These aren't real important questions—just musing on a positive experience upgrading my system.

I recently bought a new Mac Pro; went from 2.66 duo, 5MB, Leopard to 3.7 quad, 12MB, Yosemite. It never occurred to me that my PT8 and 002, and plugins would become obsolete. (I have barely been using my studio for over a year—my head has been totally out od the PT world.)

I just installed PT 12 with a UA Apollo Twin, bought Waves Gold for some new PIs to get started with. Happy to report this went smoothly, no glitches so far, knock wood.

Spent yesterday testing things out; put up a mic and tracked a tiny bit, and worked on a few mixes done on previous system. Everything sounded great, running really smooth. My question is: Between the upgrade from 8 to 12, and from 002 to Apollo Twin, would there be any discernable difference in sound quality? (I remember reading discussions way back in the day about whether one DAW sounds better than another, etc)

2nd question: I threw the L1 Limiter that came with Gold Bundle on a mix; haven't used this before. All I did was set the threshold so volume came up, not knowing anything else about how to really use this thing. It sure seemed to sound great, better than some of the limiters I've been using to louden up rough mixes previously (Massey, T-Racks stuff). Would that be expected from L1—is it that nice? Any experience on how to use this would be appreciated.

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by manyrains

Spent yesterday testing things out; put up a mic and tracked a tiny bit, and worked on a few mixes done on previous system. Everything sounded great, running really smooth. My question is: Between the upgrade from 8 to 12, and from 002 to Apollo Twin, would there be any discernable difference in sound quality? (I remember reading discussions way back in the day about whether one DAW sounds better than another, etc)

2nd question: I threw the L1 Limiter that came with Gold Bundle on a mix; haven't used this before. All I did was set the threshold so volume came up, not knowing anything else about how to really use this thing. It sure seemed to sound great, better than some of the limiters I've been using to louden up rough mixes previously (Massey, T-Racks stuff). Would that be expected from L1—is it that nice? Any experience on how to use this would be appreciated.

#1. The upgraded D/A is enough to make EVERYTHING you do sound better. No surprise there. The actual PT app sounds the same.

#2. L1 shouldn't be too different from Massey or T-Racks. I'd do some real tests to be sure, but it's certainly possible that you like it better which is fine.

[Craig F]

effect of: louder is better, the assumption that if something is louder it sounds better even if it sounds worse

[Rubicon]

I went from TDM to HDX. Not only is it audibly better, but my mixes are all around easier to get good sound and with a computer upgrade, many more plugs.

[justus1900]

I associate this effect with ADC automatic delay compensation being so much better in the newer versions of PT and how it interacts with the plug-ins in the Mix, I might be totally wrong I might be delusional but I think my Mixes sound better on Pro Tools 12.

[fourthtunz]

Originally Posted by manyrains

These aren't real important questions—just musing on a positive experience upgrading my system.

I recently bought a new Mac Pro; went from 2.66 duo, 5MB, Leopard to 3.7 quad, 12MB, Yosemite. It never occurred to me that my PT8 and 002, and plugins would become obsolete. (I have barely been using my studio for over a year—my head has been totally out od the PT world.)

I just installed PT 12 with a UA Apollo Twin, bought Waves Gold for some new PIs to get started with. Happy to report this went smoothly, no glitches so far, knock wood.

Spent yesterday testing things out; put up a mic and tracked a tiny bit, and worked on a few mixes done on previous system. Everything sounded great, running really smooth. My question is: Between the upgrade from 8 to 12, and from 002 to Apollo Twin, would there be any discernable difference in sound quality? (I remember reading discussions way back in the day about whether one DAW sounds better than another, etc)

2nd question: I threw the L1 Limiter that came with Gold Bundle on a mix; haven't used this before. All I did was set the threshold so volume came up, not knowing anything else about how to really use this thing. It sure seemed to sound great, better than some of the limiters I've been using to louden up rough mixes previously (Massey, T-Racks stuff). Would that be expected from L1—is it that nice? Any experience on how to use this would be appreciated.

I've got the twin and the 002 and I noticed the difference between the two and love the sound of the apollo! It might be the difference in the clocking, the new tracks or just a new mix but hard to say that the apollo didn't have something to do with it :)

[Stereo Missile]

My experience was that the HDX mix engine sounds better than the old TDM engine. It is a totally different engine, rewritten from the ground up, 64 bit floating point all the way through the chain as opposed to 48 but fixed point with 24 bit choke points at plugins on TDM. Anecdotally it seems many users who upgrade from TDM to HDX report hearing an improvement in sound quality.

Apollo converters should also sound significantly better than 002.

Waves limiters like L1 / L2 are pretty old code now, personally I never liked the sound of them much, I would describe them as sounding kind of dead and dull, they seem to suck all the air out of a mix to me. If you are just after a limiter there are a number of good choices, the new Avid Pro Limiter is definitely a good option, there are several others also such as flux Elixir that are good. Having said that, particular limiters will work better on particular mixes or types of material, and of course these types of quality questions are highly subjective, so YMMV.