REQ: Advice from the ProTools gurus

This may be long, i apologize ...... I need to 'see the light' .... i ask the gurus for wisdom! Preface: I come from the 'other side' -- For the past 5 years I have worked in a Steinberg/Emagic environment. I am changing jobs, new facility is Emagic/Fairlight. BUT, I want to go ProToolsHD; but I have a few questions/concerns. I hope this is the proper arena to address this. Ok, i'm a composer/engineer, i have worked exclusively on PC systems built around either Logic or Nuendo/Cubase. I use mainly software samplers (Gigastudio, ESX) for my sound sources for composing. I'm also responsible for dubbing sfx/score and dialog to film (after i cut the score, lay in the foley) I did all of this strictly with DV files, never to tape (shows, im a bit young, eh). Also, i will be responsible for engineering/producing live musicians/ensembles. Yeah, so, ok ... Now, my up coming gig ... The gear, composition desk: Logic audio, EXS, and Midi hardware. The production/post desk: Fairlight Fame (running on an old ass PC) MPX3 editor and a hardful of outboard dynamic and DSP gear, no nice pre's :-( ANYHOW: my issue ... the Fame, was also used for 'production', recording bands, besides being the dubbing board for sync to Beta machines. Well, as some may know, Fairlight is solid, but it's a Dinosaur with a padlock. Its a great control surface, decent editor, but ..... has no DSP, only compression/gate/eq ..... no compatibility with ANYTHING, only import old Avid files .. nothing else (as far as i know). Limiting tracks, no updates ... Proprietary hell! NOW .... i want the most clean/efficient sytem for composing/engineering and post. All in one (well, kinda). I dont really want to go Nuendo with digi board, multi cards, etc. I want streamilined reliability! Steinberg is a bit dodgy these days. I want to go ProTools. There are so many options, yes ? Where do i begin? I want my hands on faders, lots of them! No mouse, i want a solid editor, tons of resources for dsp on everytrack, (no outboard) .. i also want it to have decent midi sequencer within, to trigger the PC's running gigastudio (and bring the digi outs of the PCs into the mixing desk. 5.1 is also of importance! Does this make sense? Is it possible to have all in one? How well does PT sync to external machines (the Fairlight is rock solid, if PT is not, then new bosses will reject the PT bid). Ok, i'll shut up now, thank you for your time :-) HeMiOla

Yeah, Pro Tools HD seems to be the choice. Very solid and lots of plug ins coming all the time. The latest Filterbank from soundtoys is amazing... You can always do what I do. Use a PC for all the softsynths and stuff, all synced with MTC. Transfer to Pro Tools is done with ADAT optical 8 channels at a time. Works great I must say. No problems and lots of options.

Thanks Johnny .. that's how i anticipated getting the PC's into the PT design. Ok, any Fairlight guys ?? I've never worked on one, but what i see, I dont like. How do I get this thing out of the control room and a PT system in :-) Fully reliable for sync ? Everyone says the editor is 'soooo fast' ... uhhh, but really, what is 'fast' by todays standards? I can't see the Fairlight EVER functioning as 'all-in-one' unit. AND -- what about the sound ... do the HD converters sound as good as the ones on the Fame? Thanks again!

The DSP is killer. Nobody else is even in the same solar system. SYNC is solid. Machine control no problem. Fairlight = Dinosaur. Great idea but dead in the water if you ask me. MIDI has much to be desired on the protools system. I also wish they would implement more DSP based soft synths. The RTAS / HTDM versions eat up too much CPU and cause a noticeable instability. If you need to rely on synths for composition then I advise getting a few good hardware synths. The G5 may solve this problem. The native synths are great if you only need a few voices to spice things up. Plus you will be doing yourself a favor by learning a system that has become the default standard. If your future employer doesn't get it. Go elsewhere. They can use that fairlight as a great anchor for the boat they will be buying when they realize how much free time they will have.

i am running the exact system mac pthd3 with 2 pc's funning giga 160 and other audio software...also they are all networked together for easy transfer of files..have had no problems with sync....the fairlight was a great system and still is...but it is really useless for my purposes..i need to take and recieve files from other studios and protools really is the only option....also what happens if fairlight goes under as so many have...digi won't...

I was using DP for a few years for MIDI. It was in a 2nd machine timecode synced to PT. I decided close to a year ago to just start doing everything in PT. PT's MIDI works great. Not as feature rich as most of the competition, but very solid. I also like being able to adjust my MIDI as well as my audio on my C24. Goodluck, John