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Brave marketing, Protools confuses the market part 2
August 9th, 2007 | Author: peter
I can’t help feeling that a little jiggery pokery was going on, or that the objective wasn’t to simply get the best sound out of each medium. It’s also difficult to believe that the objective was to make them sound as close as possible, because you wouldn’t expect such a massive difference – which there was.
Anyway, back to the story…
Firstly I only judged Alt Rock Looped.
Originally I got it almost totally wrong, scoring only 14%. That was because I was expecting the analogue to sound dull and warm and the digital to sound harsh and possibly thinner.
BOY was I wrong!
Firstly the AMOUNT of difference was outstanding, especially for a standard (crummy 16bit 44.1khz) Quicktime movie. Also note I wasn’t going on which I preferred, only on what I thought the differences would be.
Protools appears to be a muffled, lack lustre, lifeless, piece of crud, but which doesn’t sound digital. Or at least with this mix, it was disguised if it is.
The analogue version was full of life, and generally had body and depth, but sounded a little harsh (strangely digital harsh) – I suspect because Mr Engineer decided to try and trick us, or wrongly chose to overdrive the analogue console. Or maybe he’s so used to virtual digital circuits not being able to be overdriven in this part of the frequency spectrum.
Either way, he’s one engineer my record company will never be booking!
Only segment 5 confused me. I picked the one that sounded thinner (less warm) and bizarrely, this time only, that was the analogue.
So somehow in this section, which is more full-on, the digital actually sounded better. I think this is more evidence that Digidesign were trying to fool us and weren’t playing with a level playing field.
Or maybe the Protools “sound” just suits higher energy bass material…
This is only my personal opinion and sonic preferences of course. But I hope you’ll consider my observations when you do your own trial.
Slightly more worrying is I bought my own Digidesign Protools system to mix with, as it “sounded” 180% better than Steinberg Cubase 3 does (and that’s ignoring any plug-ins). Work out the consequences of that for yourself!
I’m currently evaluating Sonar Cakewalk, and I’m hoping that will leave me somewhere.
The material is currently available from here; ProTools Vs Analogue Showcase
Posted in Thoughts
[...] My point is that having done the review myself, I am 100% sold back on analogue. Frighteningly so. And here’s why… in part 2 [...]
A tough one Pete! What is between the Pro Tools mixes and your ears (Equipment wise)?
In todays listening world dominated by squished mp3 type formats played through mobile phone speakers will an analogue mix shine through and cut the mustard? Analogue is dying so don’t get too fond of it, you won’t be able to buy the tape soon, although I am sure one of the numerous tape saturation plug-ins will go nicely with the valve emulation?
Just my 2€s