Compatibility Options

[Paulie!]

In all essences, Pro Tools (shudder at the thought of cost) is the industry standard format. Yet there are so many DAWs that are more efficient for alot of people, cost and workflow wise.

My question is this, is it feasible to just use what ever DAW you like then if an outside mixer is needed, consolidate the wavs of each track (w/o plugins) and load them seperatly into say Pro-Tools M-Powered(via MBox Mini -- The USB Stick Version), Save the session and just send that session and the consolidated wavs to the external mixer(or whoever needs the PT Session).

Just a thought, should be easy enough but I don't know if the track limitations and stuff would effect anything, etc..

Is anyone doing this, or thought of doing this?

NOTE: Basically, I like my DAW but if I ever get lucky enough to get bigger bands I'll most likely be sending it out to mix, so compatibility would be a factor at that point..

-Paul

 

[aortizjr]

Yes I do it all the time between Cubase and ProTools. You can also use MIDI for the tempo tracks. But it is a bit of a PITA since your tracks need to be edited and punches and such already done. After that you have to export all the tracks, these days it is way easier than it used to be. Cubase 5 has batch export and ProTools you can Consolidate Regions and then pull them right out of the Audio folder.

I ended up buying an M-Box because I fear engineers and bands would bring me tracks done wrong. Or if you have multiple takes to go through to find the best ones to piece together. This is all easier in the original tracking DAW.

I have also tried using OMF and the Digitranslator, it didn't quite work out for me. Even between Sonar and Cubase, it didn't quite pan out. Especially since I use a lot of VSTi's, so they had to be printed etc.

Basically I wouldn't worry about it too much. Recording I think is more about concepts than the DAW. If you are a wiz at Cubase or Sonar say... then learning enough ProTools to get the job done should come pretty quickly. Or at least enough to collaborate and then do your final work in your primary DAW.

Which reminds me... I gotta get learning Reaper. Bands at the level I work with are using this a lot.

 

[Paulie!]

I'm personally used to using Sonar, I've used Cubase on occasion as that's what a friend of mine uses, and I've recently been using Reaper on my laptop.

I just figured an MBox would be good to have so I could access ProTools if the need ever arose, this is mainly because if I was going to drop 30k into my studio I'd rather buy some kickass mics/pres/etc vs. an hd system and 48 tracks worth of ada...

-Paul