Please Help! ProTools user wants to switch...

Hello all... I guess the title says it all. Long time user of PT... After the recent launch of PT10 - which is STILL not 64 bit and therefore will not make the most of my 12G RAM (and as well as that Avid are asking another $300.00 a year after launching PT9)...and they are launching features that Sonar and other DAW's have had for a long time - as revolutionary.... As well as that they are launching a new plug in format called AAX that has no guarantees that my plug in manufacturers will support (IK for example).....so the risk is rendering me with a rig that is useless...once they go with 64 bit PT11... I am exhausted with it and have had enough. Of all the bugs, error messages, instability and the frankly terrible ripping off attitude from Avid. Clearly they have made up their mind to concentrate on Pro studios... So......... I am minded to switch to a 64 bit platform that will enable me to compose and record midi and audio and be stable. Hopefully I am in the right place...(please reassure me here!!) My simple questions are - before I jump....  1. What should I do with my existing PT sessions to save them in a format I can use later? Should I just bounce them down as L&R .wav tracks. At what bit rate and quality?? What about OMF? Is it easy to do?? 2. My rig - Windows 7 64 (black viper services tweaked), i7 960 cpu, 12G DDR3 RAM, MBox 3 Pro, Plugs by izotope, IK, NI, Toontrack, Mellowmuse - anyone see a problem here offhand....? Appreciate your advice folks - will place my order immediately I feel reassured I am doing the right thing.... Keep well all Tony

from the way your talking i can understand why the uni im at still havent bothered upgrading PT since version 7 and 6 on some machines

You could use OMF or export all tracks and waves as broadcast wave files and then import them into SONAR. Its a bit of a painful process if you have very large projects but definitely doable. My last CD project originated from protools sessions and I brought in all the files in just a couple of hours of work.
Note that you will not get any effects or mix settings/envelopes. So you will have to remix the projects, or alternatively flatten the tracks applying any automation within PT itself.

Interesting to hear from a PT user.  Since this is a Cakewalk forum, we naturally hear various complaints about Cakewalk, but a view from a PT user gives us a good balanced perspective.  No application is perfect, but I think Cakewalk has done a really good job of packaging features and keeping the price reasonable.

I thought about switching to PT right before X1 came out, but the feature/price ratio made X1 a clear winner.  I also like the integration with the V-Studio 700.  (Say what you will about Roland, but they make rock-solid stuff.  I still have a U-20, a JV-1080 and a VS-1680  that haven't been turned off since they came out of the boxes, except for moving them to a new studio one day.)

To be fair, my past use of Roland and Cakewalk made the X1 learning curve more gentle than it would have been for PT; but that was not the deal-breaker for PT: it was price, function, and stability.
 
Edit: I should have added that 64-bit was a consideration.  I honestly had issues getting some of my virtual instruments to work under 64-bit (including the Fantom packaged with the V-Studio), but they have all been resolved.  Most software companies (e.g., MusicLab) have now addressed this, and there is plenty of help on this forum.  I bought most equipment and software from Sweetwater and those techs definitely now understand how to make everything run in 64-bit.

lowthert 

Should I just bounce them down as L&R .wav tracks.  

I've never tried importing tracks from Pro Tools into Sonar, but I recall regular stereo tracks imported from Sonar and/or Logic into Pro Tools being converted when I imported, as if Pro Tools was using 2 dual mono files instead of regular stereo. 


I'm curious how it'd work importing stereo tracks from PT into Sonar. Anyone?

Rain

lowthert 

Should I just bounce them down as L&R .wav tracks.  

I've never tried importing tracks from Pro Tools into Sonar, but I recall regular stereo tracks imported from Sonar and/or Logic into Pro Tools being converted when I imported, as if Pro Tools was using 2 dual mono files instead of regular stereo. 


I'm curious how it'd work importing stereo tracks from PT into Sonar. Anyone?

Never seen anything strange with exported stereo Wavs from PT. Behaved just like any other stero wav imported into Sonar. I don't think PT can do interleaved stereo files and split them in "halves" and treat them as one whole. Or it does something to the wavs before working with them. Dunno but I've seen the converting process many times. I don't really care as long as it works
 

No worries. Now, I haven't actually tried moving stereo tracks between PT and anything else for a few years, I mainly dabble in mono It may have changed since then - for the better. But shouldn't be any problems.

i agree, I guess the hardware integration have had something to do with it.