PT 11 Performance vs. Other DAWs

[Chingy]

Hello,

Since Avid has been touting the new AAE as being exponentially more CPU efficient and revolutionary, I thought it'd be interesting to see how PT11's performance holds up against other super-performant DAWs (like Logic and Reaper). The goal for me is to see if PT can become my one and only DAW for writing, production, recording, and mixing (I hope it can).

I went ahead and did a (very non-scientific) test on my dual quad core Mac Pro (16 virtual cores). I had a number of other programs running in the background too.

Competing DAWs: Logic Pro 9 and Reaper
Each track has: 1 instance of Fabfilter Twin2 (with 32 voices and 32 unison) and 2 instances of Fabfilter Pro-L (with 4x oversampling). Default patches on both playing a 4 bar MIDI clip with 1 note.

Max tracks while retaining uninterrupted playback:
Logic: 30
Reaper: 32 (I could add like 50+ and Reaper seemed to playback smoothly but when I raised the main fader output, it was crackling, so I kept dropping it back until the crackling stopped)
PT11: ... 30!

If I increased PT's H/W buffer size to 1024, I got 1 more track for a total of 31. I've got to say, I'm really impressed because PT10 would've died with probably 1 track. Logic and Reaper are known to be a super efficient DAW and it looks like PT 11 is at least as good. I don't know if AAE is exactly revolutionary, but it certainly caught up with the top tier in terms of performance.

Would be interesting to see how it fares against other DAWs.

Well done Avid!

[Smurf43]

I have to say after this iLok meltdown I will not upgrade..ever...

[Chingy]

Thanks for contributing that off-topic comment to this thread.

[Craig F]

a video of the comparison between DAE and AAE on Pro Tools Expert Blog
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...-tools-11.html

[yeloop]

Originally Posted by Craig F

a video of the comparison between DAE and AAE on Pro Tools Expert Blog
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...-tools-11.html

Wow - this seems like a very positive outcome for PT11!

I have long been a Logic user and one of the highlights was always the way it could deliver so many simultaneous tracks at low latency with plenty of effects and virtual instruments running.

Out of interest, what would happen if you tried the same test and had both Logic and PT11's buffer set at say 128 samples - a buffer which would allow real time playing of virtual instruments without noticeable latency.

Would be keen to hear whether PT11 delivers an equal level of performance to Logic in this scenario. If so... very exciting indeed!

Cheers,
Mike