* 1 x quad dual-core AMD PC with the right ram and harddisk. This gives you enough power to run 200 tracks at 64 samples of latency and a bucket full of plugins. Cost? 6000 Euro.

* 2 x Sydec Mixpander cards ===> 128 inputs + 128 outputs in MADI/ADAT/TDIF/AES/EBU/Analogue formats or a mix of these. 18 DSP chips giving you 2x128 channel digital real-time mixer with zero latency. Enough processing power to run 20 TC Reverbs, 120 dynamics processors (gate/expander/compressor/limiter), 600 bands of fully parametric EQ, 12 TC Dynamizers and 60 delay based effects simultaneously with zero latency. Cost of these two cards + I/O? 5990 Euro.

<SNIP>

Cost so far? 12500 Euro. To put things into perspective, you need at least 4 192 I/O cards for the I/O for the above mentioned project. List price 16000$. An HD3 system is listed at 14000$ so that is allready 30000$ for PT and you need to factor in the PC, SYNC I/O etc.

As we have so much change left over compared to a PT rig, we can throw in a Magma PCI epxanssion box with a few PowerCores and UAD-1s into our setup for good measure and access to some nice plugins not available in native format. We can also throw in the entire Waves suite, the entire Voxengo suite, Algorithimx, URS and Sonalkis plugins.

This give you MUCH MORE processing power than any PT rig . If somehow this isn't enough, the quad dual core AMD can be expanded with 4 more dual-core processors on a daughter board. You can also add more mixpander cards. Imagine the upgrade path we are talking about...

ORIGINAL: jweldinger

Here's a question that pops up frequently, and I just accidently came across the definitive answer while surfing the net. I thought I'd share it with you...

Find out here.

NOTE: This topic is not intended to start or promote any time of flame wars.

ORIGINAL: bandasound

im not one to be product loyal....a chevy or a ford will get me to town and back ...maybe not a crysler ....lets say that crysler is likeband-in-a-box...(tools>laughs>export laugh)....but anyways...how about this.... any native daw except protools... of coarse Sonar 5 or Nuendo or Sequioa or SX3
with this:
Apogee Converters Ad 8 channel deal
ADI or Avalon Preamps X2
some nice Digital in 192khz / 24 bit
Mackie Control
a Dual Opteron with 3 gigs or ram ...raid SATA2 500 gig redundant blah blah blah
you get the point.....and look at about $15k would be better than a pro tools HD rig.
and with the dual opteron or 64bit athlon you would have enough CPu headroom to compensate for a dSP card......

anyone have a rig like this?
just a thought.....I think there is always a way to do better or even best! at the same price.

thats what i would do....and you can interchange..not just for sonar but steinberg...whatever....

ORIGINAL: Jake68

I am not a Pro Tools user nor endorsee. But Pro Tools can actually do quite a bit that Sonar cant. Im afraid. Or not, actually because Im not actually afraid.
However...

Pro Tools is a complete DSP audio solution that can place no strain on the host CPU, its a real time mixing environment that can utilize BOTH host and TDM hardware at mimal latency. So you can record with FX in real time as if it was a giant mixing desk and tape machine with racks of effects all rolled into one with no latency.

Pro Tools NON TDM LE, etc etc. Is total crap. Dont use it, its not Pro Tools.

Pro Tools has a large (sorry extremely large) market share for a very good reason. It may not look so hot (to some) it may not have the workflow you require but it is an awesome complete tool. It also is great for creating beats and analysing beats and in this area also is better than Sonar, which is still uses an incomplete method for extracting timing. Yes guys it is actually incomplete. Trust me. Or dont, I dont mind, however I have exchange a few mails with Cakewalk about whats missing and they know about it.

If you have Pro Tools, you wont need a DSP solution, you dont need a mixing desk just Pre's and I/O, and you will no doubt be provided with first class ADDA.

If you have Sonar you will require a monitoring solutions, possibley a DSP platform depending on your choice of hardware, and you will have to spend some serios money to get world class I/O.

Its actually aguable which is cheaper. But Sonar is by a margin depending on your stance.

As to weather you can make better music? Thats got f-all to do with the platform. But if you run a commercial studio Pro Tools will earn you far more clients, on its own it can make the phone ring. To a degree.

Now, I know you guys are Sonar devotees and thats great, but objectivity doesnt require a great analytical mind, just a short observational skill and possibly many hours sat in front of all this stuff as a jobber like myself. Its not so much that Sonar is incomplete, its more like Pro Tools has been at it forever!

And remember, if you arent using TDM you arent using Pro Tools. In fact if I was them I would call it something else (or maybe not !?)_

Back to the original topic, yes there are a few major things that Sonar cant do compared to PT TDM, but that why TDM cost so much money!

ORIGINAL: Jake68

Oh...and Sonar does have to be everything to everybody.

If your competitor has a fast functional ability built into his product that you have to have it in yours.

ORIGINAL: UnderTow


You make some good points. A few comments:

ORIGINAL: Noah330

One of the biggest pluses of ProTools is that you can eliminate plug-in latency and line up all your tracks so that everything is exactly where it should be. A few samples of latency here and there may not seem like much, but when everything is truly in sync things start to sound great.

This is actually a point in favor of Sonar. Sonar had full automatic plugin delay compensation before Pro tools.

----- Actually, what ProTools does is quite different from ADC for a native system. You can actually see a visual readout of the delay in each channel. There is also an automatic compensation and a way for a user to adjust this themselves. You can also adjust delay compensation on inserts, inputs, auxes, or master faders. This in itself is a feature that makes ProTools 'Sound Better' becasue tracks can be aligned just as they should be. Also, no DSP resources are allocated to this process so you don't tax your system.

Another major plus is that some of the best 3rd party developers make TDM or RTAS plugs that are simply not availible in VST or Direct X formats. Altiverb comes to mind, and there are many more.

This argument goes both ways. There are many many more plugins available in DX and VST format that are not available in TDM or RTAS format. Altiverb is an interesting example as there is the free SIR reverb and Sonar includes Perfect Space. Altiverb is expensive.

As for "high-end" plugins, Algorythmix develope their plugins in DX format first. There is also alot of plugins available on the UAD, Mixpander and PowerCore platforms. The "plugin advantage" of TDM isn't what it used to be. (Although I would love to have the CraneSong Phoenix in another format ...)

------- Actually, you can run VST and Direct X plugs in ProTools using a simple wrapper (much like Cakewalk uses for VST). It costs about $70.00. Altiverb may be expensive, but it sounds great and many people (like me) have an old box running JUST Altiverb. If something sounds great I'm less concerned about cost and more concerned about performance. You can get a G4 for under $500.00. Add Altiverb and he setp pays for itself after mixing a couple tunes.

The reason I have a TDM rig is simply becasue 90% of the people I work with use ProTools and exchanging projects is easy.

This is the best argument for Pro Tools (including LE).

This is a Sonar forum and a lot of the people here are biased towards PCs or Sonar or whatever, but the only DAW that I could see ever getting a share of Digis market would be Nuendo. I think Cakewalk could make a killer app if they looked at Nuendo and made a new product to compete. IMHO Sonar kills Cubase (much of the reason I think this is personal preference) but it really can't compete with Nuendo (look at all the video features you have with Nuendo - Cakewalk simply doesn't make a product that offers these features).

Indeed. Alot of people talk about making music in this thread but they seem to forget the whole post-production and composing to video side of things. CakeWalk obviously want to be in that market too but Sonar isn't up to speed yet in that departement.

Cakewalk fills a niche market in that they offer a great DAW at a fair price that allows people to make great recordings. I think that's something we can all agree on. Unfortunatly, many of their competitors have deeper pockets these days (Digidesign is owned by Avid, Steinberg by Yamaha). It seems like MOTU and Cakewalk are the only companies still owned by a small group. It will be interesting to see what happens. Sometimes a big company ruins things. If you remember StudioVision - a program made by Opcode back in the 90's - it was light years ahead of everything else at the time until Opcode was bought by Gibson and stopped making software.

Aye. This is a tough one. There are very few companies that I would like to see Twelve Tone be partners with. (Roland isn't one of them). And even less that have deep pockets. Yamaha was one I had in mind untill they bought Steinberg. (Smart move on their part). There are a few small ones like Sydec but they are really competitors so I don't see that happening unfortunately. (Although they could give Nuendo a serious run for their money if they did). MOTU is just too Apple centric but that could be an advantage is there is no direct competition. Other companies that I respect are simply too small to compete with the likes of Yamaha and Avid.


----- MOTU is less 'Apple Centric' than Cakewalk is 'PC Centric'. MOTU makes a line of hardware that works on Macs and PCs. I think it's great that TwelveTone and MOTU have stayed small and sill put out a great product but you have to wonder how TwelveTone will fair now that all of their direct competitors (MOTU, Steinberg, Digidesign) are all integrating hardware and software to work together. Steinberg has a whole line of products out or coming out with Yamaha's mLan thingy, MOTU has a ton of interfaces as does Digi. Everytime Cakewalk has tried to do this it hasn't worked out (remember the Peavey Mix system?).

I don't think platform matters much. Most people who are making music as a living work on both platforms. Many of my die hard Mac friends have a box running XP/GS3 and many of my Windows buddies run Altiverb or DP4 on a Mac.

Platform defintly matters in the hobbyist/home market but in the pro market most people will buy a machine to run a piece of software. Personally I like Macs and PCs about the same and work on both every day. I'm really indifferent about the whole thing.

Good ponts though, thanks for an intellegent reply

ORIGINAL: Noah330

One of the biggest pluses of ProTools is that you can eliminate plug-in latency and line up all your tracks so that everything is exactly where it should be. A few samples of latency here and there may not seem like much, but when everything is truly in sync things start to sound great.

----- Actually, what ProTools does is quite different from ADC for a native system. You can actually see a visual readout of the delay in each channel. There is also an automatic compensation and a way for a user to adjust this themselves. You can also adjust delay compensation on inserts, inputs, auxes, or master faders. This in itself is a feature that makes ProTools 'Sound Better' becasue tracks can be aligned just as they should be. Also, no DSP resources are allocated to this process so you don't tax your system.

------- Actually, you can run VST and Direct X plugs in ProTools using a simple wrapper (much like Cakewalk uses for VST). It costs about $70.00. Altiverb may be expensive, but it sounds great and many people (like me) have an old box running JUST
Altiverb. If something sounds great I'm less concerned about cost and more concerned about performance. You can get a G4 for under $500.00. Add Altiverb and he setp pays for itself after mixing a couple tunes.

Aye. This is a tough one. There are very few companies that I would like to see Twelve Tone be partners with. (Roland isn't one of them). And even less that have deep pockets. Yamaha was one I had in mind untill they bought Steinberg. (Smart move on their part). There are a few small ones like Sydec but they are really competitors so I don't see that happening unfortunately. (Although they could give Nuendo a serious run for their money if they did). MOTU is just too Apple centric but that could be an advantage is there is no direct competition. Other companies that I respect are simply too small to compete with the likes of Yamaha and Avid.

----- MOTU is less 'Apple Centric' than Cakewalk is 'PC Centric'. MOTU makes a line of hardware that works on Macs and PCs.

I think it's great that TwelveTone and MOTU have stayed small and sill put out a great product but you have to wonder how TwelveTone will fair now that all of their direct competitors (MOTU, Steinberg, Digidesign) are all integrating hardware and software to work together. Steinberg has a whole line of products out or coming out with Yamaha's mLan thingy, MOTU has a ton of interfaces as does Digi. Everytime Cakewalk has tried to do this it hasn't worked out (remember the Peavey Mix system?).

I don't think platform matters much. Most people who are making music as a living work on both platforms. Many of my die hard Mac friends have a box running XP/GS3 and many of my Windows buddies run Altiverb or DP4 on a Mac.

Platform defintly matters in the hobbyist/home market but in the pro market most people will buy a machine to run a piece of software. Personally I like Macs and PCs about the same and work on both every day. I'm really indifferent about the whole thing.

Good ponts though, thanks for an intellegent reply

If you remember StudioVision - a program made by Opcode back in the 90's - it was light years ahead of everything else at the time until Opcode was bought by Gibson and stopped making software.