Pro Tools 8. Competition Analysis

Transcription

1 Pro Tools 8 Competition Analysis Pro Tools main competitors are Apple Logic and Yamaha/Steinberg s Cubase and Nuendo. MOTU Digital Performer is an alternative for Mac users, and Cakewalk Sonar is an alternative for PC users. Pyramix, SADiE, and Soundscape also provide some competition, but these systems are primarily designed for audio-only post-production rather than for music production. Digital Performer, developed in the United States, is probably closer to Pro Tools than the others, which were originally developed in Germany. But all these other popular DAWs were originally developed as MIDI sequencers, while Pro Tools was originally developed as an audio recording, editing and mixing environment. Pro Tools now has excellent MIDI features that compare very favourably with those of its competitors. Version 8 also includes a Score Editor that is specially designed for ease-of-use, and score information can be easily transferred to Sibelius when more advanced features are required. To compete more effectively with Logic and Cubase, Pro Tools 8 now includes a set of Real-Time AudioSuite (RTAS) instruments and effects plug-ins: the Pro Tools Creative Collection. Nevertheless, there will always be some people who prefer or need the advanced MIDI features that can be found in the DAW software that started out as MIDI sequencers. Pro Tools main competitor for audio recording, mixing and editing is probably Nuendo. Logic Pro is probably the most popular alternative for those using MIDI, although Cubase is also very popular for music production. Sonar is not as widely used by professionals, but Digital Performer is the software of choice for many film composers and is frequently used for live performance. Digital Performer is my recommended choice as a MIDI + Audio sequencer front-end for Pro Tools HD systems. Its rich feature set includes support for RTAS and AudioSuite plug-ins, TDM plug-in automation, sample accurate latency compensation for all plug-ins, virtual instrument tracks, stereo sends, send automation, automatic DAE voice allocation, QuickPunch support, System

2 APPENDIX 8 Resources Usage window, and much more. So if you do need the extra MIDI features, you can be sure that you can take advantage of the most advanced audio features available from your Pro Tools HD hardware while using Digital Performer. One of the big advantages that Pro Tools has over its competitors is its welldesigned, efficient user-interface that is generally easier to learn and use compared with most of these others. Perhaps its greatest advantage is the incredible range of third-party software and hardware that is designed to work with Pro Tools. Pro Tools 8 Overview Briefly, Pro Tools 8 has a more colourful new user interface; five new virtual instruments; dozens of new effects plug-ins; new scoring, MIDI, editing, and mixing capabilities; deeper controller integration; improved ease of installation and use; and enhanced performance. Digidesign has made no secret of the fact that this version is aimed squarely at people working on music production with its new Score Editor and MIDI Editor, twice as many inserts on each channel, new editing and mixing capabilities, and updated user interface. So now you can customize the toolbar to show only the tools you are using, re-arranging these however you like, and you can tile or cascade your window arrangements using new commands in the Window menu. New User Interface Familiar Functionality The first thing that you will see when you launch the software application is the new-look user interface. The colour palette has been changed so that instead of the light pastel shades of previous versions, you get a selection of darker shades. A control in the Colour Palette window lets you adjust the Brightness to suit your taste and you can also reduce the Saturation until the mixer channel strips revert to shades of grey if you prefer. Some people are going to like the new colour scheme one of my creative musician friends instantly loved it although some people may prefer the older look a serious engineer type that I know definitely preferred the grey look. You will also notice that all the small details of the controls, faders, fader legends, knobs, switches, and so forth have been worked on to give everything a more 3D look with higher-contrast text and graphics. There are many small improvements,

3 Pro Tools 8 with some controls moved into more logical positions or groupings, and the good news is that all the key functions that existing users are familiar with are still more or less exactly where they were in previous versions. Following the fashion to provide increasing levels of customizability, Pro Tools 8 now lets you re-arrange, show or hide tools that you are working with in the main Edit window toolbar and in the new MIDI and Score Editor windows. Figure A8.1 The enhanced colour palette lets you adjust the Saturation and Brightness of the colours you see in the Mix window. New Score Editor One of the best new features, the Score Editor, lets you edit, arrange, and print MIDI from your session as music notation. It won t take you long to learn how to use this either it has one main window with a simple tool palette and just a couple of dialog boxes to let you adjust things like the page layout for printing. The tools are the same ones that you will recognize from the Edit window the Zoomer, the Trimmer, the Selector, the Grabber and the Pencil so if you know

4 APPENDIX 8 Pro Tools already, you will know how to use these. Everything is very intuitive. If you see something you want to change, such as the Title or a Clef or a Time Signature, just double-click it, and it will usually open up a dialog window to let you change it immediately. It s very easy to enter chord symbols (Dm7, G, and so on) and chord diagrams either in the Score Editor or in the Chords Ruler that can be displayed at the top of the Edit window. And it s trivially easy to print out individual parts from the score just hide the parts you don t want to print! The only note of criticism here might be that the feature set is very limited compared with Sibelius but this is what brings the ease-of-use. And if you need more professional scoring features, you can export your session as a Sibelius file to work on it further in Sibelius. The Score Editor could not be much simpler to use just show or hide the MIDI tracks you want to display using the Tracks List at the left of the window, use the simple tool palette to edit or enter music notation, then print whatever is visible in the window. Figure A8.2 Score Editor. New MIDI Editor The other major new feature is the MIDI Editor windows. Just like Logic or Cubase, PT8 now lets you view and edit MIDI tracks in separate windows. Like the Score Editor, there is a simple tool palette so you can edit or enter data in the window and you can open separate lanes for Velocity or other data below the main display. You can open as many of these as you like one for each MIDI or Instrument track if you insist and display MIDI and automation data for all your MIDI, Instrument, and Auxiliary Input tracks. Automation and Controller lanes let you edit MIDI automation and continuous controller data using multiple lanes without changing Track views. You can also view MIDI and Instrument tracks superimposed on top of each other, colour coding MIDI notes by track, type, or velocity all very convenient when you are editing your arrangements.

5 Pro Tools 8 And there are lots more new features, such as Mirrored MIDI Editing that lets you edit MIDI regions and have your edits apply to every MIDI region of the same name so you can make lightning-fast edits to looped MIDI regions, for example. Figure A8.3 MIDI Editor. New Track Comping Feature The new Playlists view lets you easily assemble selections from alternate takes in Pro Tools playlists into the main track playlist. You can Loop record multiple takes on an audio track then switch to Playlists view, rate regions on a scale of 1 5 to help identify which takes you like the most, select the best parts of each take, then copy these to the main playlist with a single click. It couldn t get much easier! Figure A8.4 Track comping in Pro Tools. Elastic Pitch Version 7.4 introduced Elastic Audio, providing great new features such as real-time Time Compression and Expansion (TCE) in the Edit window. PT8 introduces Elastic Pitch to give you real-time pitch manipulation as well. Select any audio region maybe one wrong vocal or guitar note on an Elastic Audio-enabled track and use the Elastic Properties window to apply pitch shifting in semitones and cents by ±2 octaves. Auto-Tune it ain t but for a quick fix, it s great!

6 APPENDIX 8 Figure A8.5 Pitch shifting in the elastic properties window. Loop Trimmer and Dynamic Transport The Trimmer tool has a new Loop Trim mode that lets you instantly turn any audio or MIDI region into a loop, and there is also a new Dynamic Transport mode that allows you to decouple the playback location from the current selection in a similar way to using Unlink Timeline from Edit Selection in previous versions of Pro Tools. Dynamic Transport improves on this by allowing your timeline selection to be freely moved around by clicking and dragging the grey area that defines the selection. It also lets you start playback from any point without losing either the Timeline or Edit selections. Most importantly, when you are using Loop Playback, Pro Tools automatically updates the playback start and end locations every time it goes around the loop if you change these. Previously you had to stop playback and start again for Pro Tools to recognize new selection start and end locations. There is also a new Use Separate Play and Stop Keys preference that lets you use the Enter and Zero keys on the numeric keypad to start and stop playback just like Cubase. New Plug-ins and Virtual Instruments One of the biggest criticisms from Logic and Cubase users was that there just weren t enough plug-ins and virtual instruments included with the basic Pro Tools package. With PT8, Digidesign has redressed the balance by launching

7 Pro Tools 8 the newly developed Creative Collection a set of RTAS instruments and effects plug-ins that is now included with all Pro Tools systems. There are 20 new Advanced Instruments Research (AIR) Effects, including all the usual suspects such as Chorus, Reverb, Phaser, and Flanger, along with several less common effects such as Spring Reverb and Talkbox. You also get Eleven Free (the guitar amp-speaker simulator) and the SansAmp PSA-1 distortion plug-in. Virtual Instruments include the Structure Free sample player with more than 8 GB of loops to play with; Xpand 2, which is a serious development of the original Xpand multitimbral synthesizer; Vacuum, which is a tube emulation synthesizer; and Boom, which is a drum computer with a pattern sequencer that resembles a software version of the Roland TR808. There is also an excellent tonewheel organ simulator, the DB-33, and a sampled acoustic grand piano the Mini Grand. Linking and Syncing PT HD Systems You can control up to five Pro Tools HD systems as one using the optional Satellite Link software and the Video Satellite and Video Satellite LE options bring Avid and QuickTime HD/SD video playback to Pro Tools in high definition, without sacrificing your audio track counts or processing power. For example, Video Satellite LE lets you connect a cost-effective Pro Tools LE Mbox 2 Micro system to a Pro Tools HD system for use as a QuickTime HD video satellite playback system. Enhancements for ICON Users Pro Tools 8 delivers major enhancements to ICON users, bringing new functionality to the Soft Keys, adding a local assign mode, introducing I/O view, and letting D-Command and D-Command ES users expand their console to 40 faders. Pro Tools 8 also deepens its ICON console, Digidesign control surface, and M-Audio controller integration, enabling you to map plug-in parameter controls to almost any encoder on your controller, and access each track s ten inserts. Technical Notes Operating Systems Pro Tools 8 requires Mac OS X (Leopard) or Windows XP Home or Professional with XP Service Pack 3. You can also use Windows Vista (32-bit) Ultimate and Business with Vista Service Pack 1. Pro Tools 8 is not compatible

8 APPENDIX 8 with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or with the Windows 64-bit Operating System. QuickTime HD support is included on Mac OS X-based systems. RAM Requirements Pro Tools 8 requires 1GB of total system RAM as a minimum and 2GB or more is recommended. To achieve maximum track counts, 2.5GB of RAM is required, but anything over 4GB would be overkill. Where installing extra RAM becomes worthwhile is when you are running other applications alongside Pro Tools. Disk Formatting Pro Tools 7.3.x is the last version of Pro Tools that supports FAT32 for Recording. Pro Tools 7.4 and higher for Windows XP and Windows Vista do not support FAT32 for recording but will continue to support FAT32 formatted volumes for Playback and Transfer. File Sizes Pro Tools 8 supports files up to 4 GB in size, letting you work with longer files with higher sample rates. Something to watch out for is that if you record into files larger than 2 GB and subsequently wish to transfer these to an earlier version of Pro Tools, the earlier version will not be able to open files longer than 2 GB. To get around this problem, you would have to split longer files into two sections of less than or equal to 2 GB in length so that you would be able to open these in earlier versions. If you do open a Pro Tools 8 session that references files larger than 2 GB in an earlier version of Pro Tools on Mac, regions that refer to those files will appear in the Edit window as offline files so these cannot be used to play back or to record into Mike Collins