64 Bit is not a pre requisite for creating and producing good music. We all know that I dare say more hits have been produced on Pro Tools than anything else. In the end it is good music over bad music that sounds better and the importance of 32 bit vs 64 bit becomes very insignificant. You certainly can create excellent and amazing sounding music in PT. Any limitations are in the hands of the user remember. All the AAX plugs are great and cover every base pretty well too. Pro Tools can and does excell in certain areas like all programs that are weak in others. It handles certain things in a certain way  better than other DAW's too.

People who say Pro Tools is bad are only demonstrating to me they don't know very much about the program. And it is obvious they don't use on a regular basis. If they did they would be less inclined to make silly statements. After having done 3 Avid courses now on that version 10 (part of teacher training) it becomes very clear that the program is in fact very very deep and complex and capable.

Other DAW's are definitely not 10 times better as some may claim. That is a gross over statement and needs to be pointed out. I was not a PT fan before doing the courses but it changed my mind after a bit. They even gave us a copy of the software. I do not use PT as my main DAW, instead I use Studio One now and interesting right at the moment I am using and teaching Logic 9, Pro Tools 10, and using Sonar (8.5 and HS7) and Studio One Pro 2 at home a lot. Out of all of them I am finding Studio One the easiest to use.

But Avid stuff is expensive and by the time you shell out a lot of money you only have the equivalent of other DAW's that have sold you the same or better features for much less. If you are prepared to spend then it might be OK for you. 3 of those HD cards ($10,500 extra!) running in the fastest Mac is a serious setup that  performs seriously well. Like 780 tracks with instruments and processing plugins everywhere all playing without a hitch. Very low latency as well. But all at a very high cost.

Other software developers are offering a lot for a lot less and that is where they are winning out. Avid have to get on board with much better pricing if they are going to seriously compete.

I am not sure if they supplied the demo projects with the 30 trial but if not, get to guitar center this weekend. Some of the stores are giving Protools workshops for free and they will give you the project files. Run those up on your system and tell me what you think of the reverbs and delays in PT. I personally think they are substantially better than the VST counterparts and overall RTAS, to me sounds better. Sonically I think it produces output which is more clear with a smoother high end. The basic tools that come with the product also seem to provide a wider array of audio control choices.

I don't use mix view but if that is your mode of working and it sucks, that is a valid reason not to go there. Personally I like the way you can shrink down the tracks in PT and get access to a wider array of the mix components in the track view. Very clean and accessible versus Sonar X1.

But that said, Sonar is miles ahead on interoperability with the soundcard, drivers and tuning for performance. That is a major pain in PT and is more voodoo than functional.  Also the routing in PT although more flexible is challenging to grasp and Sonar is much more straight forward for beginner to intermediate DAW users.