Pro Tools Or Cubase?, or anyother one?? Options

[slowintrepid]

Hows it goin. I'm required to get a pro tools equipped power book with an M-Box for school. I'm not too familiar with the Pro Tools interface (used for a little kinda confusing) I am a Fan of the Cubase interface however and I am a little more familiar with it.

I will have Pro Tools LE no matter what. but if I go out and buy Cubase would I be throwing my money away. I know that Pro Tools is considered "the industry standard". Does anyone have any opinions about these two programs??

(and what about Logic I've never even touched a systen with logic and I know nothing about it's capabilities)

*edit*

oh yeah I should also tell you that I am goin to school for Music Production and engineering / Music Synthesis. which means that I will be doing alot of Live audio. as well as Midi (I have to have almost every NI suite) so I need good audio and good midi I think

This post has been edited by slowintrepid: Wed 21 Jan 2004, 08:10

[Andrew Mehrtens]

ProTools LE is CPU driven. It relies on your computer's processor to do all the work. With computers now (such as the G4 and G5) it is a snap. Back when we were all on 286, 386 and 486 machines and small slow hard drives, ProTools was a dream because it used DSP cards to do all the work and ProTools used TDM technology.

TDM is Time Division Multiplexing. You'll find lots of information on that type of thing in the telecommunications field. If you are a comms tech you work with Frequency division and time division multiplexing. ProTools uses TDM and custom hardware to run it so your computer acts really as a conduit to your controllers and graphical display.

Logic Pro allows you to use Digidesign's TDM hardware technology and DSP cards including HD, so you see a bunch of top studios with ProTools TDM and Logic for the strengths of each.

Probably a hideous generalisation, but ProTools LE and MBox or 001 or 002 is a great start, but TDM is BIG GRUNT. TDM reduces latency in monitoring and allows you to record an enormous number of live inputs at once without a blink of a delay. Logic on its own with a plugin or two may give you a bit of a delay due to its full reliance on your CPU.

HOWEVER, if you run TDM hardware, Logic is a perfectly happy camper - and if you are primarily using software instruments and MIDI, Logic is stunning.

Personally I think ProTools strength is recording lots of live mic/line inputs, and Logic's is its MIDI/Sampling/Software Instruments.

WAAAY over generalised, and only my opinion, but I started with very little cash and had to make the wisest choices given all my other parameters and I chose Logic because I already was using FinalCutPro on a Mac and because my first jobs used software instruments - it was all done internally on my Mac. Then Apple bought E-Magic and it kinda worked out real well. I can buy any ProTools rig I want because I have the plugins to load logic onto it and have the best of both worlds if and when I want.

Cheers,

A