man, I have tried.
If N-track flips your beanie, do er up!
If not, use something else.
Pretty simple, eh?
Cheers,
C
That does tell me anything about ProTools LE 
that’s right. it doesn’t
IF I could have afforded the Digi 002r system, I’d be a PTLE trackin’ fool. However, PTLE has a few quirks I did not like but so does n-Track Studio. Its all good man. Just tools.
TG
The question of n-Track v.s. Protools depends largely on your needs and hardware setup(I am also a fulltime user of n-Track v4.0 and Sonar v1.3.1), IMHO this is what you get for the premium price of Pro Tools:
- They virtually guarantee stability by including the audio hardware which is fully matched to the software.
- Their User Interface was very, very well thought out and as a musician I prefer it to more complex, geek oriented layouts of say, Sonar.
- IMO, they have the most intuitive track display and piano roll editing, I don’t have Pro Tools anymore and whenever I use Sonar, n-Track, or any other sequencing software, it’s the Piano Roll I miss the most.
- In the Piano Roll it is very easy to draw pans, volume changes, or midi controller data that flow up and down with precision and you can do that using note values in intervals of quarter notes, whole, etc… Very usefull.
-In general I just tend to get more done in Pro Tools and the layout seems to make the most sense of all the ones I’ve used, plus I can do mnore fine tuning of Midi parameters and panning with it, something I have not been able to do even with Sonar.
But, I LOVE N-TRACK !!! 
"They virtually guarantee stability by including the audio hardware which is fully matched to the software."
That is the best part, I think…
Stephen - those are exactly the reasons I’d consider switching to Pro Tools if I were a professional. But I’m a home hobbyist/semi-professional & nTrack seems to work very well for me.
And that is why I BEGGED Joel to not start this thread. It’s insignificant in this forum, really.
But I am at fault for keeping it going.
This kind of discussion is very useful to Flavio & others, so why stifle it? If I were Flavio, I’d want to know exactly what features in other software users liked, and why users would consider switching from nT to something else.
Competition is King!
Agreed.
Just that historically it turns into “Ntrack does all I need and provides the best bang for the buck” over and over and over…
that doesn’t really help differentiate.
The system that one uses depends heavily on what one’s intentions. If one wants to be a professional engineer, many studios use ProTools, so familiarity with the program (and a Mac for that reason) is essential. I, personally, cannot afford a Mac and ProTools setup right now, even though I would like to be an engineer eventually, so I went with a PC and Sonar 3 because it has all of the features that I need.
Cakewalk updated the GUI and it is much more intuitive. It’s laid out like an analog mixer and the workflow has increased dramatically. The other reason that I bought Sonar was because of the excellent Sonitus:fx plug-ins, synths, and samplers included. There are also some other extras that are very nice to have.
In addition, Sonar is very compatible with all of the digital gear that I have, as well as my Behringer BCF2000. It has a history of playing nicely with many different kinds of equipment.
I’m certainly not knocking n-Track as I learned on n-Track and it is a great piece of software: it’s stable, reliable, and is powerful.
It totally depends on what one’s intentions are.
Sonar 3 is great. the new layout feels much more like PT to me.
I also love the plugs you mentioned. I imagine v4 is even better
i think PT still has some features that ntrack does not have and workflow is better. in my opinion ntrack is very close to PT. the biggest problem is that it is not compatible with PT.
probably OMF import would be a grreat step. and also some additional features…we will see what flavio will do in the future versions.
I agree. Workflow in PT makes more sense to me than Ntrack, Nuendo or Logic. Sonar is pretty good now. Logic is just pure crap. Nuendo is deep. I find myself a little lost in Ntrack sometimes.
I’m sure lots of people find it helpful to know the differences folks see between n-Track and ProTools LE. It’s useful to know that ProTools only works with their hardware. Sure, that is a major reason for its stability. I bet that if you took 100 different peoples’ platforms and tried both N and PT (using the same Digi soundcard for both), PT would be stable on a higher percentage of them. (But not all – it still depends on MOBO and what other software you’ve loaded.)
Some people find N’s interface more intuitive than PT, but PT is definitely laid out better for quick changes between projects, like a pro engineer needs to be able to do. Once you’ve mastered it, that is. I understand PT is also more conveninet when you’re recording lots of channels at once (e.g., 16 or more). This is all second-hand “knowledge”, though, so don’t take my word for it.
Sure, you’re going to get more favorable posts about N – this is an n-Track forum. Ask the same question in a PT forum and what do you expect there? It doesn’t mean it’s not a valid question, nor does it mean that the responses are useless.
It’s too bad the poster deleted the text; there might have been some useful info there to help guide answers. No big deal, though.
I would prefer folks post answers rather than sending PMs or email. We can all learn from it. We can also avoid flame wars by ignoring flames. Haven’t seen many of those lately anyway, thank goodness. I think our “lightning rods” have either left or else they hang out in the “anything goes” forum.
Workflow in PT makes more sense to me than Ntrack, Nuendo or Logic
Could you elaborate on this more? It's hard for me to imagine a workflow any different than creating/recording a bunch of tracks & then mixing them down.
Thanks in advance.
Could you elaborate on this more? It's hard for me to imagine a workflow any different than creating/recording a bunch of tracks & then mixing them down.
Thanks in advance.
Toker,
To ME, the mixer layout “feels” like an analog console. IN the edit screen, I like the regions list, the midi event list and overall feel of the edit window.
Again, I think it’s a personal feel thing…I find it quicker to edit and mix.
To ME, the mixer layout "feels" like an analog console. IN the edit screen, I like the regions list, the midi event list and overall feel of the edit window.
Again, I think it's a personal feel thing...I find it quicker to edit and mix.
I totally agree about feeling well oriented in a program. n-Track's console window feels a little unorganized to me, but I haven't tried version 4 yet, so I don't know if that has changed. Sonar 2's console window was the same way. Fortunately, they overhauled it and version 3 was born and it feels so much cleaner and things are where I would expect them to be if I were working on a real mixer.
The MIDI window also feels very systematic.
Again, I think it's a personal feel thing...I find it quicker to edit and mix.
I totally agree about feeling well oriented in a program. n-Track's console window feels a little unorganized to me, but I haven't tried version 4 yet, so I don't know if that has changed. Sonar 2's console window was the same way. Fortunately, they overhauled it and version 3 was born and it feels so much cleaner and things are where I would expect them to be if I were working on a real mixer.
The MIDI window also feels very systematic.
Argh. If I could figure out how to post pics here, I would put up screenshots to illustrate what I mean…
Pics would be nice. If you have a web site, post them & then you can link to them, or if you can find the pics on the web, then just get their http address and post it.
I tried Cakewalk once (and I’m assuming that Sonar is very different) but it was totally unintuitive to me. I also tried the light-weight version of Vegas & I found it easy to use because it was track-oriented, similar to how nTrack is.