Since I live so close to the Sweetwater headquarters, which is supposedly the top seller of ProTools in the world, I attended a ProTools LE 101 seminar last night. I came away with the general impression that most of what I can do in Audacity is immensly simpler than if I had to do it in ProTools.
The one thing that 1.2 lacks is great looking interfaces for plugin effects and great sounding plugins. Otherwise, I think I’ll hang onto my $295, which is what an MBox2Mini would cost, and stick with the big A.
The engineer mentioned that big studios get perfect takes on vocals, instruments, whatever, by doing multiple takes (sometines as many as 25) and editing the good parts into one final take. He said that engineers may spend hours on a one sylable lyric.
I have been doing this with A. I’ll record a guitar part, for instance, at least hree times (it’s amazing how difficult it is to get a perfect take of 2.5 minutes of playing). I’ll then solo each take and silence the goofs. Hopefully, from the left overs I’ll have an entire take that I can convert into a quick mix and have one good, if not perfect, take. Granted, PT allows you to do this with one track, but I don’t see the advantage in time or effort.
It really says something when PT offers a free week of on-line video training and a free instructional DVD if you buy a $295 item. This says, we have made something so powerful, and so complicated, that you will need lots of help to learn it.
I was able to learn A from the various written tutorials which are available - for free!
If you would like to hear some of what I have done with A, you may go here: