Originally Posted by Jody Whitesides
Originally Posted by Stevens119
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I know a little about Reaper, and I can tell you that Reaper is now 64 Bit, and Pro Tools is still 32.

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Most of the mathematics are not as important as how the sound is recorded. It's possible that many people believe because a recording program isn't as expensive, it isn't as good. This isn't true, as with any recording program, you will still be using the same sound engine. For instance, on a Mac, it's core audio.

The concept of 64bit and 32bit means absolutely nothing unless you're dealing with a large amount of sample based instruments. What does it mean? It's the bit rate of the program's compiled code. At 32bit a program can only access a max of 4gigs of RAM. If a program can run at 64bit it can access a ridiculous amount of memory, many terabytes worth - more than anyone can currently afford or even put into a machine. What is this good for? Well, composers who have to load gigs and gigs of orchestral samples into memory so there's no lag when composing.

The bit rate of the programs code does not change it's audio quality. So Reaper being 64bit capable means nothing. In fact, unless it's got a way to use 32bit plug-ins, it would mean that most 3rd party plug-ins wouldn't currently run in Reaper.

Now if an audio card and a program could do a sample rate of 192/64 - that would be significant. However current computer technology is not available to support such files as they don't even exist yet. As far as I'm aware the only program that can even do 32bit recording depth is Nuendo - but that hasn't helped it's cause of being an industry standard. Mostly because most cards can't do it anyway.

The idea that all DAWs on the Mac are using CoreAudio as their sound algorithm is incorrect. CoreAudio is Apple's sound engine for the computer to output sound through Mac's output and to deal with Midi instruments tied to the machine - it's not the DAW's algorithm to output from the program.

As I mentioned in my post - one's experience with Pro-Tools is an opinion based on how it works for them and that you know it very well. Something better technically is already around, but it's splitting hairs based on how someone works and what they like in a program. There are editing features in other DAWs that outshine Pro-Tools.

BTW: Pro-Tools is no longer the de facto standard. Though it is a great brand name like Kleenex.


Yeah, I didn't mean for it to sound like I thought there was a sound quality difference between 32 and 64 bit programs. There obviously isn't, my point was to point out that reaper may actually be more advanced than he thought it was. At least it's more modern. I didn't say it sounded better. It sure would be nice if Pro Tools was 64 bit. Probably wont happen until PT10. Lame. As far as the plugins in reaper go, if I'm not mistaken that J-bridge thing works both ways right? You can not only make plugins 32-64 bit, but also use 64 bit plugins as 32, I'm pretty sure. Also, apparently I got the term core audio mixed up with that thing in system preferences titled "sound" where you can choose display audio, PT HD, that little speaker thats in the Mac Pro. I guess I thought that as a whole was core audio. I've always called Mac sound "Core Audio" I just thought the term applied to all mac sound

There are other people who can make use out of 64 bit though. Ever since I started using Pro Tools many years ago, every upgrade, every new computer, it always still seems like I could use more power. Even with a new 16 Core Mac Pro with 16 gigs of Ram in it, and the new Pro Tools HD Native, plus a UAD Quad card, which not only has great sounding plugins, it keeps me from using too much DSP with the RTAS plugins....anyway, with a computer that poweful, it still chokes sometimes. So 64 but will not only make people using large plugins happy, it would help alot of people who need to use more plugins as well. See with HD Native, TDM is gone. So none of the DSP processing is using the card. Which is why 64 bit is vital, because of the ram limitation of 32.