Industry Standard Assures You and Clients are in Good Hands
Updated June 01, 2020

Industry Standard Assures You and Clients are in Good Hands

Jonah Dempcy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Avid Pro Tools

We use Pro Tools for audio recording and music production, specifically for music beds, interstitials, introduction music and music cues, or incidental music. The music might be for product demos and presentations, or instructional videos. We also include music in rich media EPUB3 ebooks as a way of demonstrating audio capabilities of the format.

Additionally, I have used Pro Tools extensively at various music studios over the years, when acting in my role as producer or as assistant engineer on various projects. Pro Tools is an industry standard for recording and arranging music, and it is rare to find a professional music studio that does is not using Pro Tools.
  • Integration with UAD - I have used Pro Tools with a number of UAD devices over the years and it always integrates perfectly, and saves CPU resources by offloading effects processing to dedicated Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips on external hardware. Plus, UAD effects sound great!
  • Multitrack Recording and Arrangement of Music - This is really the big one for Pro Tools. It's for recording and arranging, and that's really its focus.
  • Import and Export - Pro Tools is great for its ability to import and export multitrack files in a way that mimics traditional analog multitrack recording.
  • Loop-Based Production - Pro Tools is still in the old world of audio recording where you're expected to record a track from live sources. It has less features aimed at production of loop-based music like electronic music and hiphop.
  • Sample-Based Production - While you can sequence samples, you are expected to use MIDI to trigger the samples, for the most part. Of course, you can sequence them out without using MIDI to trigger a sampler plugin, but that's not the use case Pro Tools was designed for.
  • Creative Ideation - Pro Tools expects you to figure out what you want to record first, and does not have tools for helping you produce or create the music.
  • Positive - Industry standard, gives image of professionalism and reassurance to clients that they are in good hands.
  • Positive - Great integration with UAD means in certain configurations, you don't have to spend as much on a computer to get a large amount of processing power.
  • Negative - The cost and tie-in with hardware is prohibitive. Although it is possible to use Pro Tools without hardware, that is a less supported use case, and generally speaking, you will want to use the Pro Tools software with hardware together.
Pro Tools has the most prestige and branding of any Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that I know of. It is the industry standard for professional recording studios, and you'd be hard pressed to find an audio engineer who hasn't used it at one point or another. Most audio engineers I know exclusively use Pro Tools. That being said, I also know a number of electronic music producers who won't touch it, preferring Ableton Live, or Logic Pro.

I choose the right tool for the job, so I use Pro Tools when I am in a music studio working with another engineer who uses it, or working with bands who are familiar with it. When I am working on loop- and sample-based music on my own, I use Ableton Live.

I formerly used ACID Pro more often but I have not returned to it very frequently since making the switch to Ableton Live many years ago. I have also used Logic Pro X when in a Mac-exclusive environment, or when producing music on the go on my MacBook Pro.
I've never contacted Avid for support issues, but Pro Tools is so widely used that its user community can help you solve virtually any issue you encounter, if the issue isn't solved already by a simple Google search. The fact that Pro Tools is such an industry standard means that you can rest assured hardware manufacturers of audio interfaces test their interfaces with Pro Tools to ensure compatibility.

Do you think Avid Pro Tools delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Avid Pro Tools's feature set?

Yes

Did Avid Pro Tools live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Avid Pro Tools go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Avid Pro Tools again?

Yes

Pro Tools is the industry standard for professional audio recording of music, and is thus well-suited for professional music studios. If I were starting a music studio and going to have a number of different engineers rent out the studio to use, I would choose Pro Tools simply because I am guaranteed they will all be familiar with it.

Pro Tools is not necessary for home studios, or for studios where you will be the only studio engineer, as you can then choose something that caters to your genre of music. For instance, if you make electronic music, hiphop, or other sample- or loop-based music, you might consider something other than Pro Tools.