Pro Tools 9, don't ditch your Nuendo yet !!!

Steinberg Lounge
#1

Hi Guys,
Just a quick testimony as Pro Tools 9 has been a hot topic lately, I thought I’d share my own experience with it.

So I got the Pro Tools 9 upgrade. It installed flawlessly and launched ok appart from the very, very long boot time (fresh OS, no extra plugins). Finally the long boot time is due to the antivirus (you’ll have to make an exception for the program files folder) and subsequent launches were fast.

My SonicCore cards were recognised and I could get my hardware inserts back.
Now the asio performances : catastrophic. I don’t know where users take their figures, but on my system, I have to triple the asio buffer size compared to nuendo. Where I work on 128 buffer size on NU3, I had to up it to 512 to get a smooth audio with no clicks or warnings.
Then the VI test… Not any better. Worst even. It’s random clicks here and there at buffer size I don’t even feel comfortable playing with. The cpu meter is on par with the windows performance meter (wich is not the case with Nuendo). As soon as I move a windows (resizing the mixer for instance) it’s click festival. I had better performances letting one cpu to windows.

So is it all bad ? No I reckon with some improvements in the upcoming versions, Avid might render it more usable, but I can feel they rushed to get this thing out (and probably due to the hacked pro tools hd that had been out for a couple of months already). Avid are fast to release cs updates (9.01 is here today) and they could polish Pro Tools pretty fast.
Not the time to throw Nuendo into the bin I reckon. Steinberg still has the edge as far as native and performance is concerned. But they are coming closer everyday. Watch your back Steiny !

#2

I’m not to sure why so many people discuss the idea of only choosing one DAW platform. Use as many as you like who cares. I’ve run Nuendo and PT for like 8 years now. Clients never tell me I “have” to use Pro Tools.

Anyways…PT 9.0.0 is very stable and the best release they’ve ever put out. they did spend 2 years re-writing it from the ground up. I find virtually no difference in performance between my Mac or my PC using PT 9 as well which never use to be the case. It does need to be tweaked a bit though once installed.
If you’re not tracking why are you concerned with the Buffer size? 1024 or 2048 is fine.

PT 9 was crashing with my UAD 2 card so UA told me to put the buffer size up to 512 or higher and unallocate a processor or 2 in the setup. Thankfully all the crashes went away.

Overall though PT has always used more resources than Nuendo. Thanks for the tip about the update.

#3

I totally agree. My post was related to heated exchange on the former forum & Gearslutz etc… that followed the release of PT9. Lotsa people swore to jump sh*t in favor of the newcomer. Known song, true for some, but prety often based on the grass is greener syndroma… :wink:

The novelty with Pro Tools 9 is the ability to use Asio drivers and thus comparing and benchmarking the overall cpu consumption for certain, defined tasks. I’m using Nuendo for tracking and VI/midi composition/arrangemment + little post-production. I’m trying to use protools in the same way I use Nuendo but It then feels like I’m halving my machine power. Did the Avid optimisation and all that. I’ll probably have to tweak deaper the asio engine in PT9.
I’ll compare results with the OSX 10.6 system that works on my (I7 920/12gig DDR3) Daw.

I’m in no way an anti Avid guy even if my heart goes to where my workflow is faster, so Nuendo for the time being.
When/if the asio performance gets better,I’ll gladly try to do projects from start to finish on Pro tools.

#4

Sorry. That comment wasn’t directed at you.

IMO I think the only way you’ll probably get more performance out of PT 9 is to upgrade your hardware. I’m on an i7 Quad Core 2.67 CPU and it is really good but not amazing.

#5

The expression is usually jump SHIP. I agree with what you say…

#6

Oops, didn’t know that. :blush: I’ve been using this expression wrongly quite a few a times !
Thanks for telling me.

I have the very same setup (I7 920), I thought it was beefy enough along my dsp cards…
Well, I will probaly overclock it a bit later if I need some extra headroom while waiting for the next Intel multicore generation (chipset 2011).

#7

Is it possible without too much hazel to use direct monitoring through RME HDSP/Hardware instead of using the monitor function inside Pro Tools? I know lots of us RME fans are used to track through the RMW dsp mixer.

Does P9 suppoert XP?

#8

Hell no Evil ! That’s the catch. For obscure reasons, they left out the possiblity to disable software monitoring…
You’ll have to lower the volume of the track your recording, or others workaround users are trying to find to circumvent this “feature”. :unamused:

#9

they did spend 2 years re-writing it from the ground up.

Actually that’s not true. Code is still very old and total mess for programmers.

#10

Oh man that sucks! I know my friend also monitor through his Magix Samplitude DAW. Didn’t run into any latency problem but I would miss totalmix… I’m thinking of buying Cubase - Don’t know if it’s possible to sell my N3 licens. The upgrade is pretty pricey… Almost the same amount of money to buy Cubase… Think I want to go win7 when I build my new puter…

I was curious about pro tools but after reading reviews and stuff it seems like P9 native still is a closed system with weird restrictions.

I like Samplitudes mixer… But Nuendo feels more like home.

#11

Same here - I am in Nuendo 3/4 - not spend money for V5 yet - but last year I bought C5 seperately… For laptop and compatibly purposes… Upgraded to 5.5 some day, started to enjoy this as my main Midi and Mixing DAW - but still doing all recording work in N3 because it is sooooo solid and nice, N3 is an old friend and I can’t say goodbye to him… But I started to throw an Eye on PT9 because I was waiting for beat detective style drumediting since ages - and bang, now there is C6 out… coming with beat detective And (!!!) the edit-groups! Oh dude I am waiting so long for that. I just ordered the 150 bucks C6 upgrade - will most likely keep Nuendo and wait how things turn out - maybe one day when N5,5/6 has all those C6 features I will update, because I do not want to say goodbye to Nuendo… But now with C6 - I don’t think that I will keep on looking on PT9 anymore.

#12

I hear you Brandy…
More is more.
The more you wait, the more you wonder what to do… :smiley:

I skipped Nuendo 4, was thinking of getting Nuendo 5, now Cubase 6 is coming with great features. When will it come to Nuendo ?
Nuendo 3 to 5 + Nek is 650€. Should I buy Cubase for that price and forget about Nuendo upgrade cycles…
Do I really need the “flagship” that is always a year late behind his younger brother ?

Since I got PT9 in the mean time and I have to make myself fluent (for Avid certifications) with it, I can tell you that it is not to be compared with Nuendo but with Cubase unless you add the 2000€ CPTK to it.

#13

Yes… and no - because I still have the feeling that the “very new” releases (Cubase) are usually quite bugy - using it a year later in Nuendo could give us a more solid solution cause everything is already real-life-tested…

I am not able to mix in Nuendo 3 again - free routing and drag n drop plugins is absolutely necessary for me, it was a big PITA without that. But I do not like to record in N4 / C5 - I like in N3 much more - so, as I said - I am using N3, N4 and C5.5 simultaneously.

Having a second Cubase licence for the price of just a Nuendo Upgrade is a cool thing in my opinion… Don’t like to travel with my $$$ Nuendo Dongle as well as I can use two almost identically applications at the same time - for example it is possible to have a big big N4 project open and using C5 in the same time to export tracks and stuff for import in the big big Nuendo project. When you work on a big session while other dudes are still recording somewhere else in Cubase it can save a lot of time closing/reopening projects… Esp when you have projects which use 5-10 min to open and you just need to export a small overdub out of a small Cubase project … No, I do not had great success to deal with multiple open projects - this is a no go for me, esp on bigger sessions.

Sorry, going slightly OT here…

#14

If N3 supported WIN7 I wouldn’t care about upgrading because I don’t use that many plug-ins. I use the stock plugs that came with N3 and they are fine for my humble needs. I don’t feel that I need that many plug-ins to be happy. I miss a good reverb though. The IR verb (roomworks?) is kind of buggy… Think I’m going to invest in a good hardware reverb. My dream is to own a real plate reverb.

Sorry I also went off the grid with off topic topics…

#15

Though I am most of the time “in the box” because of time and stuff (working one multiple mixes simultaneously) I still have the best results regarding reverb when using my old Lexicon as a external FX :slight_smile:

N3 is cool - I love it! Ha, someday I will install a retro system running Nuendo 1.5 or something like that, I remember 1.62pre1 was a damn solid release… Recording and mixing just with that, with tons of workarounds when using external gear and oh it was tricky with plugins in the busses because only track-channels had PDC :slight_smile:

#16

Hi, I’m planning on upgrading to PT9 very soon. Was it said that TotalMix does not function with PT9? That’s a big shame. I’ve never seen my FF work without it so that will be weird. It DOES work without it tho? Right :question:

Thanks!

#17

Hi John!

Since we have the same speed CPU, just curious what kind of performance you’re getting out of PT9 in terms recording latency? I’m not looking to ditch Nuendo so this isn’t in that spirit, but I have clients who are demanding PT and my partner knows and prefers it so it’s something of an inevitability for me.

Are you running the standard PT9 - as in the artist formerly known as PTLE? Right now in Nuendo I can record with my FF800 set to 48 samples without problems. This setting yields an input latency of just under 2ms and an output latency of around 3ms. 5ms is more than I’d like, but I could probably suffer through a “Haas effect” if that was possible. More than 5ms?..I don’t think I could live with that. Really ironic that the software that CAN do low latency doesn’t even need to thanks to DM.

Thanks for any info you can share on this! I hope somehow PT9 will be feasible.

#18

I’ll be interested to hear how others get on with PT and RME gear. I’m just about to get PT9 for mixing, because Nuendo has too many negatives with grouping, trim and other things. PT should save a lot of time for me.

DG

#19

PT 9 cptk2 with fireface runs fine here.

Ola

#20

Good to know. Thanks.

DG