Pro Tools with Ryzen?

[tarheeljoe]

I'm trying to build a compute for a friend who does audio production in Pro Tools. Because of budget constraints, the best value seems to be a Ryzen 1600 or 1700 -- good multithreading and overall power.

The problem is, I'm reading a lot of things about how Pro Tools doesn't play nicely with AMD. Is this outdated info that Ryzen corrects? Or are we better off spending more to get an i5/i7 and sacrificing the multithread power?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Kasper Jorgensen]

I think you would be better of waiting for the new I7-8700K.
Most DAWs will take advantage of more cores but also on higher core speed. If he cannot wait for new Intel CPU to be released, then yes, Ryzen are the better option. With that said, Pro Tools is a crappy DAW in my opinion and there are better options out there.

 

[tarheeljoe]

I think you would be better of waiting for the new I7-8700K.
Most DAWs will take advantage of more cores but also on higher core speed. If he cannot wait for new Intel CPU to be released, then yes, Ryzen are the better option. With that said, Pro Tools is a crappy DAW in my opinion and there are better options out there.

Right now, even the 7700 strains his price range. He wants to keep things under $1,000 - including monitor.
But when does the new 8700 release? It might bring down the prices of old ones.

Also, what DAW do you recommend?

 

[Kasper Jorgensen]

Probably next month, but it will take a few more months before you can buy them. Don't expect the old ones to drop in price, at least not much.

For the DAW, i can only recommend Cubase. It's a lot better in every way an also a lot more CPU efficient, it also uses standard VST plugins and not the proprietary AAX format.

 

[Corwin65]

The DAW of choice will guide the build. Check specific forums for info on best build.

ProTools is the standard, but depending on what he produces there may be better genre specific DAW's.

I'm an Ableton Live user and It works for me (and many others) very well.

 

[Kasper Jorgensen]

ProTools are only the standard because large studios have always used them. These days with a lot of smaller independent studios, ProTools are no longer the real standard and many producers actually prefers other Daws like Cubase, Reaper, Sonar and Logic. Cubase is not a genre specific DAW like Ableton, and Ableton seems to be mostly preferred by bedroom producers making electronic stuff than in any professionel studio, because of all the limitations it has when it comes to mixing and audio editing.

 

[tarheeljoe]

He's going to be using Pro Tools. That's not really up for debate. So we have to make a decision based on that.

From what I'm hearing, it would be safer to just stick with the i5.