The State of PTools

studiorat

So I'm wondering what's the state of play with ProTools Hardware, Support and compatibility with PT 10.

Are the 002's on the way out?
MBoxes?

How long's left with the HD Accel systems now?

Shall we discuss the minefield that is Avid/Digidesign?

Squidgy Black

002's are definitely on the way out, they dropped the customer support for them altogether as far as I'm aware. It's all Avid now so I'd expect most of the digidesign hardware to be slowly killed off.

There's a new range of Mbox's from Avid though, more or less the same as the digidesign one's, overpriced and not that good, especially considering the fact you can now use any interface with ProTools.

The Accel's are what's causing most of the uproar, along with the release of 10 only a couple of months after people paid for 9. They're an expensive system that should only be a once off buy and a long term asset, not to be replaced every couple of years. I think like the rest of the digidesign hardware, Avid are playing to kill them off.

I dunno where i saw it, but apparently 002's will be ok for a while, maybe not supported properly, but work...the 003 however, wont..or well, there's some problem with them that isnt there with the 002..this is based on an internet report of hearsay credited to some random avid employee though..so..

woodsdenis

studiorat wrote: »

So I'm wondering what's the state of play with ProTools Hardware, Support and compatibility with PT 10.

Are the 002's on the way out?
MBoxes?

How long's left with the HD Accel systems now?

Shall we discuss the minefield that is Avid/Digidesign?

Once HDX starts to ship TDM support in PT will disappear very quickly. You need a relatively new Mac Pro too. I think a lot of people will hold on to PT9 HD systems and wait and see. There were rumors that Apple was going to kill off the Mac Pro, where would that leave PT then ? I would wait and see. Do you really max out a HD3 system that often. The real elephant in the room is the appalling state of RTAS vi plugs which at this stage will bring a Westmere 12 core to its knees, Crazy. I guess the big Film sound facilities will upgrade but I cant see it being a must have for us normal folk.

DamagedTrax

i find 10 a little quicker and more responsive but ultimitly its showing up a lot of the old error messages.

using AAX format plugs instead of rtas gives better performance and is a little more stable but still nowhere near reapers stability or power management.

woodsdenis

DamagedTrax wrote: »

i find 10 a little quicker and more responsive but ultimitly its showing up a lot of the old error messages.

using AAX format plugs instead of rtas gives better performance and is a little more stable but still nowhere near reapers stability or power management.

Ridiculous situation when a virtually free piece of software (Reaper) rivals, if not betters one that really started the whole ball rolling, and should be way ahead of the competition at this stage.

I will still say that audio editing on PT is its strongest point and IMO the best DAW for that, however is severely compromised in virtually every other dept when compared to the competition.

It does have to be said though that if you see a Satellite system running 3 PT rigs as one with an Icon, its pretty impressive stuff if you have a spare 100 k

alan kelly

Strongly thinking of moving to Pro Tools...

Using Logic 9 on a 4gig macbook pro and it is breaking my heart... I usually get to a template of about 20 blank tracks. I record a bit of midi on around 5 tracks and the thing starts crashing..

I use Sonnox , NI , Izotope , BFD2 and don't even use that many of Logic's plugins but i am used to the set up..

Any advice on the changeover would be great....

madtheory

Sounds like something is broken. I doubt if changing to PT will do the trick. What's the spec on your machine? Is all the software legit?

woodsdenis

alan kelly wrote: »

Strongly thinking of moving to Pro Tools...

Using Logic 9 on a 4gig macbook pro and it is breaking my heart... I usually get to a template of about 20 blank tracks. I record a bit of midi on around 5 tracks and the thing starts crashing..

I use Sonnox , NI , Izotope , BFD2 and don't even use that many of Logic's plugins but i am used to the set up..

Any advice on the changeover would be great....

Changing to PT for midi/vi stuff is NOT a good idea, it will be significantly worse.
Logic is by far the most CPU efficient in that regard.

alan kelly

Cheers guys...

Below are the specs and yes Logic is legit... Have never used torrent stuff...

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

madtheory

alan kelly wrote: »

Memory: 4 GB

You need more of this. As much as you can afford. Check the HD speed too, 5400 rpm would be a bare minimum.

DamagedTrax

madtheory wrote: »

You need more of this. As much as you can afford. Check the HD speed too, 5400 rpm would be a bare minimum.

actually 7200 is bare minimum speed for DAWs, otherwise you get 'disk too slow' errors.

splitrmx

DamagedTrax wrote: »

actually 7200 is bare minimum speed for DAWs, otherwise you get 'disk too slow' errors.

The MacBookPro7,1 came out in 2010 and had 5400 rpm drives as standard. Like the others I would say double the ram, get a 7200 rpm hard drive. Maybe consider a new Mac Mini, they look pretty nifty and they're cheap.

PS Sorry for the off topic Logic talk!

madtheory

DamagedTrax wrote: »

actually 7200 is bare minimum speed for DAWs, otherwise you get 'disk too slow' errors.

7200 rpm is not bare minimum, it's exactly what is required for 100% reliability. You can do reasonable work with a 5400 rpm drive in a Mac. I've done it many times, although I wouldn't recommend it for pure audio work. I did quite a few albums with 5400 rpm drives though!

In this case, the RAM is the major bottleneck because he's using mainly MIDI and not streaming audio or many samples from disk (BFD is not taxing in this regard).

alan kelly

Cheers guys,

Really appreciate the advice. Have already ordered new ram.

Apologies for the highjacking of the thread... As you were Pro Toolers