Starting Out Advice

[mostapha]

Protools is still the final mixdown software for the pop world, so it would be good to learn what they're doing on that thing.

A lot.

Pro Tools HD dominates pro studios, mostly because people have been using it forever but also because of things that mostly don't affect dance producers (damn near zero latency monitoring and DSP-based processing). But I think it's the easiest to work in for a lot of things.

Then again…I still haven't figured out why anyone would feed MIDI from Ableton to Maschine and that seems like something everyone else does because of just how many tutorials there are. So, apparently I think differently from a lot of people.

[login]

I dont see the point of using maschine in ableton because of drum racks,, it feels redundant.

[mostapha]

The sequencer.

I don't see the point of using Maschine inside Ableton the way a lot of people do it (by feeding MIDI from Live into the Maschine plugin) because then it literally is drum racks that might be marginally easier to route to different audio channels (if you want to work that way).

[Hygro]

Thinking differently from the masses of unsuccessful producers is probably a good thing

Zero latency? I could use that. My tracks are getting really processor intensive. And honestly the mixdown is critical in dance music. What differentiates a track whose main part is one loud kick drum and a high pitched synth hitting the same note over and over again? It's all in the mix, baby. Mixdowns on Logic seem wholly sufficient, but how do I know unless I try? I could have learned to mix in garageband if I had to--you never know what other tools bring to the table.

[mostapha]

Zero Latency monitoring only matters for tracking.

Plugins that run on the CPU still add latency just like they do on anything else. There are a lot of processing plugins that run on the HD DSP chips that happen in very low latency (something stupid like 0.7 ms) but not synthesizers. And while it's doing that, it kind of just turns off all of your Native (meaning, not running on the DSP chips) plugins.

And to my knowledge, there aren't any good synthesizers or drum machines that run on the DSP chips.

It really doesn't affect many electronic musicians. It's only really relevant for recording live musicians.

It does help save some CPU power, but so do the UAD cards…and they wind up a lot cheaper since their Quad Omni 6 package (which comes with FW or PCIe DSP chips and, i think, every plugin they currently have) costs like $5500, which costs a couple grand less than the PT HDX+HD Omni (it's weird that they're the same word, but they have nothing to do with each other) is the cheapest way to get into PT HD……and costs a couple grand more.

If you're recording musicians professionally, it's worth it. If you're doing it out of your house and really serious about it…it can be.

For an electronic musician that mostly isn't playing anything in real time who can freeze/bounce tracks at will to free up resources…it's basically just bling.

Fortunately, the non-HD version is priced comparably to Live Studio and comes with at least as much awesome stuff. And it's like $300 for students and educators. And the only shortcomings compared to HD are that the latency is based on your plugins and audio interface (just like everything else) and it's track counts are more limited (something like 128 playback tracks; 32 simultaneous record tracks; 192 buses; etc., as opposed to higher limits with HD).

[Hygro]

That's some data right there. Thanks, boss.

[akm]

Sounds like the OP has already settled on Ableton, which I think is a good choice. I demoed that for a while when I began, before settling on Reason. Now that I look at it, I should have stuck with Ableton. Reason is a fantastic beginner's building block--it gives you an excellent idea of how real hardware would connect together, and it's a great way to learn the workings of various types of synths (all the extra options in Albeton confused the hell out of me at first). However, the workflow really isn't very good and you really, really have to micro-manage everything if you don't want to get lost in your own project. Everything gets especially cluttered once you start running a lot of automation. Currently I am on 5 (with Record 1.5), so I haven't checked to see what Version 6 offers.

[Roshanbhoj]

Check it http://www.djforums.com/forums/showt...9-Summer-Fever