I don’t have any desire to start a war here…just to ask a question.
PT HD 12.8.4 is the most stable DAW I’ve used to date. And I’m confused as to why others (all over the internet) are having so many problems with it. I have years of experience with everything except for Mixcraft and Samplitude. Here’s my questions:
How much of the stability is based on the architecture of the DAW itself, and how much is based on the user’s system?
What is the main cause of most DAW crashes? Plugin incompatibility? Driver hiccups? Hardware conflict? Developer screwups?
Don’t know I have more problems with Protools than anything else and lots and lots of people do.Its well know its unstable .All of these people cant have dodgy pcs.I even see at mix of the masters at namm ,one of the mixers couldn’t carry on because of protools crashing .
In all fairness, it looked to me like that had to do with lack of planning on behalf of the sponsor that was providing the PT and SSL Duality hybrid.
I see what you’re saying, but at the same time all PT systems aren’t unstable…So the question is why some people have more trouble with it than others. I’m having a lot of problems with Logic at the moment. I’ve always had problems with Ableton.
That is a really good point. I’m running Studio One on an anemic old Dell laptop that I upgraded from Win7 32 bit and used to overheat regularly. Now I can’t seem to get the video drivers to update. As a result, some newer plugins that use newer OpenGL won’t display properly. Also, if I leave Studio One open for a while and come back, I usually see some sort of “display acceleration” error. But when I get really pissed is when I’m into a mix and making all sorts of changes and I get the old Blue Screen of Death. …then I realize I had not been saving. Someday I’ll get a new PC…
Back on topic, your point is TOTALLY valid. I’ll bet 95% of DAW crashes are related to configuration issues on the DAW’s OS. We should all spend some time making sure our OS is running well and efficient before we blame our DAWs.
I think what generally happens with an older piece of software like PT is that half the code being used is old and written by someone who doesn’t work there any more, so nobody can touch it because it will end up breaking everything else.
It’s like having an A/V closet with wires going in all sorts of directions. Ever wire was put there for a reason, but someone new comes in, looks at it, and has no idea how to troubleshoot anything because it’s just a big rat’s nest. At some point, it’s better to just rip it all out and start from scratch when you have a better idea of what the finished product will look like.
That’s why some of the younger DAWs tend to be more stable (kind of). At least when there are issues, it’s easier to find them and fix them.
Funny, that reminds me of my first job in NZ. I was hired to do some test conversions on a big mainframe from some system to Cobol and CICS. Then when that was completed, they told me they wanted me to take over a massive stores system that was written in IBM assembler many years ago, and to which there were no manuals…
Man, that was a quick exit.
Someday I’ll get a new PC…