I have to December 2022 to leave ProTools. Recommendations?

[TimothyJohn]

After nearly 15 years, I can no longer afford Pro Tools. I am looking at both PreSonus Studio One and Cubase. I lean towards the audio recording/editing/mixing and distribution side of things. I also use UA plugins. My VI of choice is Toontracks' EZ Drummer. I use it quite a bit. But other than that, 99% of my tracks are audio recordings: Vocals, bass, drums, keys, guitar etc. Also, believe it or not, I STILL use the Zoom H2 recorder for field recordings, and import those 44.1 k, 24bit wav files in for editing. Anything from lessons to guitar improv sessions to interviews ... Midi editing is nice, but certainly NOT my go to for creative inspiration. Suggestions? I will be calling Presonus on Monday 5/2, with a ton of questions re Studio Live and Sphere. I hate to say goodbye to ProTools, but they seem to have stopped caring about my patronage at least a few years ago. Thank you for your thoughts and opinions!!

[Wizzoboy]

If you have a perpetual license PT won't stop working if you no longer pay for updates, it'll stay at the last version you paid for. I froze my system at 2018.4 when I stopped doing commercial work but it still works fine for what I use it for.

[The Weed]

This ^^^^ or Reaper.

[PH68]

Reaper

[Darryl Ramm]

As always the first question is what DAWs do your friends/collaborators/bandmates etc. use, even if say it's their second DAW behind Pro Tools.

With no other info, if mostly tracking live then Reaper, but if you are also doing a lot with drum VI and any other VIs etc. then Logic Pro is sure worth a look. You can get a free *90 day* trial. (Apple is not screwing around with that trial). https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/trial/

[Ben Jenssen]

I've been trying out Reaper myself the last few days, hearing much good about it, being good native on Apple silicon and running Acustica Audio plugins better than most (AA crashes PT on M1). I hadn't come far when I found that there was no way to carry over the functionality of my command8 and UC1 controllers, which is more important to me than anything else with mixing. People might say I'm wrong about that, but they will be people who just repeat what they've read somewhere. Just so you know. Other controllers might work better w/Reaper.

[TimothyJohn]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

As always the first question is what DAWs do your friends/collaborators/bandmates etc. use, even if say it's their second DAW behind Pro Tools.

With no other info, if mostly tracking live then Reaper, but if you are also doing a lot with drum VI and any other VIs etc. then Logic Pro is sure worth a look. You can get a free *90 day* trial. (Apple is not screwing around with that trial). https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/trial/

Thanks Darryl. Your input is always welcome. I have a Presonus Revelator mic I got for a song. It comes with Studio One Artist, so I'll put it through it's paces over the next few weeks. I'm familiar with Logic Pro, and will not go that route. I spoke to Presonus re their Sphere subscription model. If I go with Studio One, I'll forego Sphere and just spend $299 to upgrade to Studio One Pro. I'm probably not going in the Cubase direction, although I will still learn as much as I can about it as well.

[cwsand]

Originally Posted by Robruce

if you're somehow in the UA universe, try Luna. It's not a mature DAW - long way to go there, but it's analog-music-recording oriented, free, and incorporates many PT-style command paths. Worth a gander perhaps.

Keep in mind you have to have a Thunderbolt-equipped Apollo or Arrow UA audio interface to run Luna. I'm in the UAD universe with a UAD-2 Octo Core PCIe card to run UAD plugins with, but I can’t use LUNA unfortunately.

[basslik]

Originally Posted by cwsand

Keep in mind you have to have a Thunderbolt-equipped Apollo or Arrow UA audio interface to run Luna. I'm in the UAD universe with a UAD-2 Octo Core PCIe card to run UAD plugins with, but I can’t use LUNA unfortunately.

Barry Johns gave a good clip on that. With the new M1 chip the word is that DSP while tracking will smoke and outdated SHARK chip. Getting interesting indeed.