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Pro tools vs logic 8 ?
- Thread starter HazzFq
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As I said to my ears. Do you have research to back up your initial claim? If so, I'd like to see it please.
The audio playback from logic is fine, it's the synth/sample/loop/fx sounds that bother me, maybe I should have been clearer.
For many years I was critical of ALL non-linear and digital recording platforms, as they simply didn't sound as good as a well maintained 2" 16 or 24 track analogue recorder, particularly with the last generation of tape formats. However the advent of HD recording and a better understanding of AD/DA conversion has placed Protools (and others) in the position of being a perfectly acceptable replacement for my trusty Studer 820. If pushed I still admit to preferring the sound of analogue tape, but the sheer productivity of Protools et al is hard to ignore
In the end you use what you want to, based on your needs as a musician/engineer/producer.
Hi again,
The synth sounds in these three programs are centered around the same plugins, the same sample and loop libraries, and the fx also come from the same code, coded by the same people - which basically are the same Emagic guys that worked (and sill work) in Rellingen, Germany, with a few exceptions. If you would install Logic and Garage Band two different hard drives, and check eg. the sample library, you'll see that the files they share have the same size, length, creation and modification date. Logic 8 has a few goodies that Garage Band doesn't, like the Space Designer - which used to be a separate plugin costing several hundreds dollars, but this is a reverbs that sounds better than the GB reverbs. The JamPacks that are included with Logic 8 are the same JamPacks that were included with Logic 7, except that they take a little less space on your drives due to Apple's lossless compression format.
The sound of a DAW depends on the summing engine (32 bit floating in Logic, 48 bit fixed in Pro Tools HD) and the convertors. In terms of AD and DA, Digidesign don't make their own convertors, and Pro Tools can be used either with 192 I/O or with interfaces from Apogee (AD16X and DA16X) and Lynx (Aurora). Not all, but most people agree that these interfaces from Apogee and Lynx sound better than Digidesign interfaces, which probably is because they are newer (they are also faster).
The same interfaces can also be used by Logic or even Garage Band). So - if we talk about summing, it comes down to the difference between 32 bit float 48 bit fixed, and if you buy the DAW summing comparison CDs, or read what's written about them by people who have bought these blindfold listening source material, you'll discover that there isn't any agreement that Pro Tools HD came our better. Not even Digidesign claim that. Personally I agree that old, analogue gear often sounds a little bit better, especially in the low end, but both Logic and Pro Tools users can use external, analog summing boxes or analogue mixers if they want.
I've seen people claim that Logic sounds better then PT, that Pro Tools sound better than Logic, that Logic 8 sound better than Logic 7 and so on, but nobody I'm aware of have been able to produce a 10 seconds long stereo file demonstrating it. I've sold my Pro Tools HD rig, but made some comparisons before I got rid of it, and couldn't produce anything suggesting that one PT HD sounded better that Logic. I still have Logic 7 and Logic 8 on my drive, and we could always - just for fun - make some comparisons if you can specify what it is that you think is worse in Logic 8. I thought you referred to the audio engine, which has been discussed up and down (eg here), but if there are samples or loops or synth engines you think have changed to the worse, we could always waste some time on comparing files.
Just now, I actually found a thread discussing if Logic 7 sounds better than Logic 8 (not the audio engine, but the plugins) - it's here...
Newer converters don't have to be better (or even faster), but the development in the converter business isn't that different from the development in the rest of the computer industry. You get more for the money and higher speed today than you did back when Digidesign's 192 I/Os were designed. Disclaimer: please note the word 'probably' in what I wrote, I could be totally wrong, I just know that most people I'm aware of that have compared Digidesign's interfaces with newer (and less expensive) interfaces prefer the non-Digidesign interfaces. Personally I like the sound of Digidesign 192 I/O, so this wasn't the reason I stopped using Pro Tools hardware.
By faster I mean the time it takes for the converter to convert. This affects the total roundtrip latency. Today's converters can perform a DA or AD conversion in less than 0.2 millisecond, but as far as I know, this wasn't possible when the 192 I/Os were designed, at least not unless if you were using much more expensive converters than those found in the 192.
Pro Tools HD was released in 2002 (and probably designed in 2000/2001), and 6 years is a lot of time in the digital world in terms of processing speed. This must be one of the reasons that most, if not all native systems (in so called 'zero latency mode') today have lower roundtrip latency than what was commonly considered impossible for just the DA and AD conversion alone a few years ago. Good converters with as low conversion time as 0.2 millisecond wasn't considered normal back then.
I have used both programs extensively,.. Pro Tools 7 is a great program and the industry standard (if there is one). Logic 8 is also a great program, I have had fewer problems (errors, etc) with Logic 8,.. of course the other plus is the great interface. The Pro Tools interface is a big mess imo.
The sound quality from both programs is pretty similar.. what makes more of a difference of course is the quality of mics, pre amps, monitors and of course engineer and performer skill.
I say use the program that makes the most sense to you, both work well, what it come down to for me is workflow, and Logic wins hands down in that category.
The sound quality from both programs is pretty similar.. what makes more of a difference of course is the quality of mics, pre amps, monitors and of course engineer and performer skill.
I say use the program that makes the most sense to you, both work well, what it come down to for me is workflow, and Logic wins hands down in that category.
The thing about conversion speed was a side comment to comparing Pro Tools with Logic, Logic 8 sounding like "a toy" etc. There's a myth that Pro Tools sounds better (due to more "professional" interfaces) and have lower latencies, and my comment was pointing to the fact that the converters you can use with Logic is as fast as those that can be used with Pro Tools HD - in addition to, in most people's opinions, also sounding better than Digidesign's own HD interfaces.
with regards to your use of the word "fast", and how it relates to quality, i really have no idea what you're on about.
If one converter A use 0.2 ms for doing what it needs to do, and converter B takes 1 ms to do the same job, converter A is a faster converter - right?
This doesn't relate to 'sound quality', but it relates to what you can do with a native, Logic based DAW. Most people assume that if you buy Pro Tool HD and Digidesign's 192 high end interface, you'll get lower latency than if you buy Logic for $500 and a 3rd part interface... Since 3rd part companies like Apogee have reverse engineered Digidesign's 'interface code', you can use these interfaces with Pro Tools as well, but if it's correct that the latency in a high and Pro Tools system only comes from the converters, the converters in Digidesign's Pro Tools system has a latency that's circa 6 times higher than the latency in newer converters (in interfaces costing a lot less).
that it does relate to sound quality seemed to be your whole point:
i will assert that:
1. "speed" is a silly term to use when talking about interfaces
2. a converter's latency has no bearing on its sound quality
3. the design of the analog circuits around those converter chips does have a bearing on sound quality
4. the reason apogee converters (e.g.) may sound better than digi's is because of the design of the circuits and execution to a price point, not because of age, latencies, or clock rates
I guess the reason that several manufacturers (like RME and Lynx) write about the converter 'speed' (the time it takes to convert a signal), and even post info about this before their interfaces are shipping is that most DAW users want as low latency as possible.
We agree in this.
Sure.
If you compare the price/sound quality ratio in CD players, converters... anything digital, actually - you'll see that you get 'more quality per dollar' for every year. A $400 CD player produced in 2005 normally sounds better than a $400 CD player produced in 1990. This isn't (of course) because the new products have a different production date, but because technology has improved, and the prices have gone down.
Digidesign's 192 I/O sounded a lot better than their 888|24, not because it was newer as such, but as well all know things get better over time in the digital world, and due to increased competition, a larger market, and generally more knowledge and better technology, you get more 'digital audio quality' for the money than you did 5 or 10 or 15 years ago. So - if developers know what they do, they should be capable of delivering a much better interface for $500 or $4000 (or whatever) today than they did eg. 10 years ago.
The 192 I/O didn't use the best converters that were available when it was designed - not because they didn't want to use better converters, but better converters would of course increase the price.
I didn't say that they sound better because they are faster, I said that they probably sounded better because they were newer (as explained in this post), and that they also are faster (as in "by the way, they are also faster which influences the latency"). I didn't link conversion speed to better sound quality, but if I would, it would probably be the other way round. The old 888|24 were faster than the newer 192 I/O, but didn't sound as good either.
So - I stand by my words. 'Newer' normally means 'better' in the digital world (better per dollar) and faster conversion is important for latency, but does not mean better sound. You may disagree, but so be it...
Mediocre Argument, RIght Result
dLight, you are right on. Go over to gearslutz or Lynn Fuston's site (3Daudio I think) and you'll see that the general consensus is that Apogee is even getting dated. Mytek is the hot little number right now. That being said, for prosumers you can't argue the bang for buck of a Duet if you don't want to get into the 2-3k range - although I'd save my money for the Mytek (not the Rosetta) rather than getting an Ensemble. Depends on what you're after.
Now, you got caught up a little with the latency argument. First and foremost are two things - quality of converters and quality of clock. You need to get an accurate reproduction of what's coming in, and you need to be able to put all those little digital slices into your digital stream in as close to the exact right timeframe as is possible (harder than it sounds) - this is actually where a lot of pieces still scrimp, and is why clocks such as the apogee Big Ben sell - 1200 smacks and all it does is act as the master clock - bass tightens up, highs shimmer more, and working with a lot of tracks it gets much easier to get a good sound.
Latency is just a measure of how long it takes between the drummer hitting the drum and it getting to tape. Latency can turn into a real bear if you're kicking input back to analog for monitoring or punch ins, but it isn't a detriment to the sound (usability yes, sound no, but don't trivialize low latency - very good thing).
More and more studios are downgrading their Digidesign IO's to the ones that don't do the AD/DA, or even now trading in their Apogees for the new crop of converters because they already did step 1 (get rid of Digidesign IO's). Apogee has been porting their stuff to the prosumer level lately with the Ensemble and Duet, their real pro stuff is getting a little dated. But I wouldn't count them out just yet, let's see what they have to say to these upstarts in the next year or two. They are dominating with the Duet, I could see them porting this to PC and then getting down to the business of recapturing dominance in the true pro space, although at this point it would just be a pride thing - there's gold in them thar Duets that they'll never see in the high end.
dLight, you are right on. Go over to gearslutz or Lynn Fuston's site (3Daudio I think) and you'll see that the general consensus is that Apogee is even getting dated. Mytek is the hot little number right now. That being said, for prosumers you can't argue the bang for buck of a Duet if you don't want to get into the 2-3k range - although I'd save my money for the Mytek (not the Rosetta) rather than getting an Ensemble. Depends on what you're after.
Now, you got caught up a little with the latency argument. First and foremost are two things - quality of converters and quality of clock. You need to get an accurate reproduction of what's coming in, and you need to be able to put all those little digital slices into your digital stream in as close to the exact right timeframe as is possible (harder than it sounds) - this is actually where a lot of pieces still scrimp, and is why clocks such as the apogee Big Ben sell - 1200 smacks and all it does is act as the master clock - bass tightens up, highs shimmer more, and working with a lot of tracks it gets much easier to get a good sound.
Latency is just a measure of how long it takes between the drummer hitting the drum and it getting to tape. Latency can turn into a real bear if you're kicking input back to analog for monitoring or punch ins, but it isn't a detriment to the sound (usability yes, sound no, but don't trivialize low latency - very good thing).
More and more studios are downgrading their Digidesign IO's to the ones that don't do the AD/DA, or even now trading in their Apogees for the new crop of converters because they already did step 1 (get rid of Digidesign IO's). Apogee has been porting their stuff to the prosumer level lately with the Ensemble and Duet, their real pro stuff is getting a little dated. But I wouldn't count them out just yet, let's see what they have to say to these upstarts in the next year or two. They are dominating with the Duet, I could see them porting this to PC and then getting down to the business of recapturing dominance in the true pro space, although at this point it would just be a pride thing - there's gold in them thar Duets that they'll never see in the high end.
It was generally agreed that Digi's interfaces were a little lacking in the AD dept even when they were brand spanky new, and someone elsewhere in the thread pointed out that they were a vast improvement on the gravely 888's.
That said, there is still so much variation in a studios input and monitoring chain as to make the differences apparent only to those with ears sufficiently educated to hear the improvements.
Most of the mix engineers and producers I work with prefer to feed the DA outputs to a good desk for mixing, allowing the audio to be coloured by the desks architecture, and even Abbey Road's mastering guys feed 192/24 master mixes through a Studer 1/2"!
Subjective comparison aside, new is not always better, numbers don't tell the whole story.
That said, there is still so much variation in a studios input and monitoring chain as to make the differences apparent only to those with ears sufficiently educated to hear the improvements.
Most of the mix engineers and producers I work with prefer to feed the DA outputs to a good desk for mixing, allowing the audio to be coloured by the desks architecture, and even Abbey Road's mastering guys feed 192/24 master mixes through a Studer 1/2"!
Subjective comparison aside, new is not always better, numbers don't tell the whole story.
More screed
A friend smacked me over the head and told me that Apogee already answered at the pro level with their X series - 16 channel AD and DA units with the Big Ben clock mechanism built in. Basically $3200 gets you 16 tracks of AD or 16 tracks of DA (Apogee) or 8 AD + 8 DA (Mytek) and right now for my purposes I see myself as happier with 16 AD and either getting 2 tracks of DA or just shining on that, sending anything I want spiffily mastered out to someone as digital. For home mixes I'm burning my CD's/mp3's straight off the Mac.
I don't own, but used the Big Ben going into a Rosetta 800, did hear a decent difference.
WinteMute, I think your point is that there is older stuff that sounds good and not to discount it, which I totally agree with up to a point - add analog warmth for mastering (or wherever works for you), use tube preamps, mics compressors (and of course guitar amps). Someone try and smack the Pultec EQ off it's pedestal, hasn't been done yet. I'll even vouch that I get nostalgic for my DA-38 - it's "numbers" weren't the greatest but it's sound was far better than it's numbers.
That being said, when we hijacked a page of this thread to discuss AD conversion I have to say that this is an area where the tech is still young, and where the "prosumer" is just starting to get wise to the fact that in our rush to get onto the new technology we had taken a step back from our ADAT's and DA-38's in terms of A -> D quality when we went to Firestudios and Laylas (now do we understand what happens when we replace a $2000 piece of gear with a $500 piece of gear? It generally ain't good.)
In the real pro space, though, you had Digidesign and Apogee ruling the roost for a long time, but now there are young upstarts starting to make noise (Mytek, Lynx, others) and it's nothing but good for all consumers. Stir things up with new innovation, and more competition = better prices. The pros see more and better gear coming out at good prices, and the prosumer starts to see price points that they can manage (maybe). The converter market is ACTIVE right now, what is coming out is just getting leaps and bounds better in the pro space, and with the Duet we are starting to see some new tech hit at real consumer (not even prosumer) price points. They are going to starting to sell them in Apple stores, for crissakes (already in pilot in Japan). This is big. When little Johnny starts asking Presonus why his Firestudio audio quality just plain sucks compared to Billy's Duet they're going to have to answer for the PC space - and then it's on all over the freakin' place.
BTW, I am a gear-happy prosumer with a few pro friends but FWIW my info on the pro space is mostly secondhand talk or reading (I read a lot of boards) so grab that grain of salt and run with it. Personally, I really like Logic - you get so much (SO MUCH!) bang for the buck, releasing 8 Studio at 500 clams was a real body blow to the PT behemoth. As a DAW I am comfortable that it will do whatever I want from it throughout our time together (I engineer some local bands, but I am not a pro studio by any stretch of the imagination). If you already know PT or are completely 100% serious about getting hooked into the real pro studio network (where having PT can still be a general assumption) I think those are the only real justifications to go that way, otherwise Logic rules, PT drools (baby!).
Just my $.02
A friend smacked me over the head and told me that Apogee already answered at the pro level with their X series - 16 channel AD and DA units with the Big Ben clock mechanism built in. Basically $3200 gets you 16 tracks of AD or 16 tracks of DA (Apogee) or 8 AD + 8 DA (Mytek) and right now for my purposes I see myself as happier with 16 AD and either getting 2 tracks of DA or just shining on that, sending anything I want spiffily mastered out to someone as digital. For home mixes I'm burning my CD's/mp3's straight off the Mac.
I don't own, but used the Big Ben going into a Rosetta 800, did hear a decent difference.
WinteMute, I think your point is that there is older stuff that sounds good and not to discount it, which I totally agree with up to a point
- add analog warmth for mastering (or wherever works for you), use tube preamps, mics compressors (and of course guitar amps). Someone try and smack the Pultec EQ off it's pedestal, hasn't been done yet. I'll even vouch that I get nostalgic for my DA-38 - it's "numbers" weren't the greatest but it's sound was far better than it's numbers. That being said, when we hijacked a page of this thread to discuss AD conversion I have to say that this is an area where the tech is still young, and where the "prosumer" is just starting to get wise to the fact that in our rush to get onto the new technology we had taken a step back from our ADAT's and DA-38's in terms of A -> D quality when we went to Firestudios and Laylas (now do we understand what happens when we replace a $2000 piece of gear with a $500 piece of gear? It generally ain't good.)
In the real pro space, though, you had Digidesign and Apogee ruling the roost for a long time, but now there are young upstarts starting to make noise (Mytek, Lynx, others) and it's nothing but good for all consumers. Stir things up with new innovation, and more competition = better prices. The pros see more and better gear coming out at good prices, and the prosumer starts to see price points that they can manage (maybe). The converter market is ACTIVE right now, what is coming out is just getting leaps and bounds better in the pro space, and with the Duet we are starting to see some new tech hit at real consumer (not even prosumer) price points. They are going to starting to sell them in Apple stores, for crissakes (already in pilot in Japan). This is big. When little Johnny starts asking Presonus why his Firestudio audio quality just plain sucks compared to Billy's Duet they're going to have to answer for the PC space - and then it's on all over the freakin' place.
BTW, I am a gear-happy prosumer with a few pro friends but FWIW my info on the pro space is mostly secondhand talk or reading (I read a lot of boards) so grab that grain of salt and run with it. Personally, I really like Logic - you get so much (SO MUCH!) bang for the buck, releasing 8 Studio at 500 clams was a real body blow to the PT behemoth. As a DAW I am comfortable that it will do whatever I want from it throughout our time together (I engineer some local bands, but I am not a pro studio by any stretch of the imagination). If you already know PT or are completely 100% serious about getting hooked into the real pro studio network (where having PT can still be a general assumption) I think those are the only real justifications to go that way, otherwise Logic rules, PT drools (baby!).
Just my $.02
Back to topic:
Personally i find Logic alot more 'fun' to work on as compared to PT.
For me it's similar to the experience of Mac vs PC.
Logic has it all. SFX, Loops, great plugins..etc
But Logic 8 also has some stability issues at the moment, we need a fix!
Personally i find Logic alot more 'fun' to work on as compared to PT.
For me it's similar to the experience of Mac vs PC.
Logic has it all. SFX, Loops, great plugins..etc
But Logic 8 also has some stability issues at the moment, we need a fix!
I have been using Pro Tools for almost 5 years now. I have a Digi002 and an MBox. Every time there was an upgrade for Pro Tools I bought it thus keeping my studio up to date. In November I bought a new Mac and it came with Leopard. I love the new OS! I upgraded to PT 7.4. It worked ok.... I have a set of Vdrums that I use to trigger BFD. I found that on the new system I was using over 90% of my system resources and PT would crash every 5 minutes. I have a MBP dual 2.4 gig w/ 2 gigs of ram. I was very frustrated and believed that this was because PT didn't have the version for Leopard yet.... So I waited.
Now it has been 6 months and there is still no update. I tried Logic Pro 8 for the first last week and I was blown away. It is very easy to use, sounds great and doesn't crash. It runs BFD just fine. I will never PT again...
For those of you who are in the process deciding which system to use I will say this.. If you have $12000. to buy a PT HD system do it. However, If you want to record music and not pay through the teeth for every little scrap of anything that Digidesign sells that come standard with Logic.... Buy Logic 8.
You can save your session to an OMF format so it can be opened in PT..
Very disappointed with Digidesigns reluctance to look after the people who pay good money to buy their software.
Now it has been 6 months and there is still no update. I tried Logic Pro 8 for the first last week and I was blown away. It is very easy to use, sounds great and doesn't crash. It runs BFD just fine. I will never PT again...
For those of you who are in the process deciding which system to use I will say this.. If you have $12000. to buy a PT HD system do it. However, If you want to record music and not pay through the teeth for every little scrap of anything that Digidesign sells that come standard with Logic.... Buy Logic 8.
You can save your session to an OMF format so it can be opened in PT..
Very disappointed with Digidesigns reluctance to look after the people who pay good money to buy their software.
Logic Pro 8?
I am one of the many Pro Tools users that is impatiently awaiting an update so I can use my new 8 core 2.8, which only runs Leopard. I am a freelance engineer and I mix a 1 hour music performance oriented show which airs weekly on a national cable network. So working to picture is 95% of what I do. I am very curious about Logic Pro 8, but I've never had a demo and I am very reluctant to fork out $499 just to try it out to see if it suits my work style. I have tried Digital Performer, which I have had for some time for music composition/MIDI, but it's flaky about OMF files. For me OMF MUST work properly.
Is there anyone on this forum who does post audio that has transitioned from PT to Logic? Also where could I go to get a demo of it's use for post?
Thanks
I am one of the many Pro Tools users that is impatiently awaiting an update so I can use my new 8 core 2.8, which only runs Leopard. I am a freelance engineer and I mix a 1 hour music performance oriented show which airs weekly on a national cable network. So working to picture is 95% of what I do. I am very curious about Logic Pro 8, but I've never had a demo and I am very reluctant to fork out $499 just to try it out to see if it suits my work style. I have tried Digital Performer, which I have had for some time for music composition/MIDI, but it's flaky about OMF files. For me OMF MUST work properly.
Is there anyone on this forum who does post audio that has transitioned from PT to Logic? Also where could I go to get a demo of it's use for post?
Thanks