A few basic Pro Tools 7.0 LE questions

[Majoria]

I have Pro Tools 7.0 LE with the mBox2 on a PC (1 GB RAM, 2.53 GHz) and am having a few basic issues. One, apparently the compressor plug in takes up a LOT of PC usage as it stops bouncing after 7 seconds and says it cannot keep up (I'm bouncing one mono track, a church sermon). I backed off the compressor a little and it went ok so I thought I'd compress in stages. I mixed one track as far as it would go onto another track so that I would have one track with no plug-ins but would have the plug in effect already built in. I then removed all plugin inserts from all tracks and then started to alter the new track. When I went to add even a tiny bit of compression to the new track it froze and said the buffer couldn't keep up. I double checked and verified that the new track was the only track with any plugins. I know it should be able to as I cleaned up a song once where the volume was all over the place (used 20-25:1 ratio with pretty heavy gain to level it out, it was real bad).

 

Second question. I want to have more than 2 inputs to record at one time (drums), would the digi 002 be the best route, even though it only has 4 channels? I have a spare Mackie 14 channel and have ran everything through there just to have the mics but I want individual control over every mic in PT, not just the collevtive output of the mixer. Currently I have to record just two instruments at a time (hi-hat and ride first, then add snare and kick, then two toms, then the other two toms, then overheads, etc). I could get by for some demo work with 4 total inputs to record at once, is this best accomplished with the 002 or is something else better?

[Shakabrah2]

for all your questions and answers:

 

http://duc.digidesign.com/

[Majoria]

No offense, but that site is one step shy of completely useless.

[Shakabrah2]

I get almost every one of my questions answered and, very promptly. A far cry from the useless boobs that make up forums, there's a plethora of industry biggies that call it home. I'm sorry that you haven't figured it out. Give it a chance, it's great!

 

Getting back to your first question. You DO have a machine that is within the parameters set up on the site? Your motherboard checks out too? That's the starting point.

 

You can also call Digidesign support and ask them.

[Lee Knight]

There a guys a lot more qualified to answer your question here but I'll add my observations.

 

"...apparently the compressor plug in takes up a LOT of PC usage as it stops bouncing after 7 seconds and says it cannot keep up".

 

No, the compressor plug doesn't eat up resources like you're experiencing. Something else is wrong. As Shakabra said, do you have a "Digi approved config"? Something else, have you set up XP as Digi recommeds?

 

The problem might be in the length of the file. I've never used Pro Tools in that type of scenario. What happens when you edit the sermon into shorter lentgths? Do you still get the bounce error?

 

The easiest thing is to optimize XP. Digi explains in the manual and there are a few good internet resourses for optimiing XP for audio. Goolge XP audio and I bet you'll find a lot of stuff...

[where02190]

Something is amiss in your system, compressors take up almost no CPU power, and you should be able to run dozens of them.

 

The 002/002R had 18 i/o:

8 analog(4 with mic pres, 4 line only)

8 digital via lightpipe

2 digital via spdif

 

All this info is readily available on the Digi website, and the DUC is by far a better place to get your Protools questions answered IMHO.

 

Also, you have one year of phone support with Digi free, try giving them a call. Be prepared to sit on hold for a long time, and have your product registration number ready.

[Phil O'Keefe]

As others have noted, your computer specs are crucial for proper operation of PT LE, or any DAW program for that matter. Can you tell us more about your computer? The CPU brand and type / speed, the motherboard model, amount of RAM... all of that will help us try to figure your problem out.

 

Also, what buffer setting are you using? A larger buffer increases system latency, but when doing a bounce to disk, that doesn't hurt anything, and will allow you to run more simultaneous plug ins without running into problems. However, if a single compressor plug in is bringing your system to its knees, the problem most likely lies elsewhere.

[Majoria]

It's a Dell desktop, I believe B110 (ordered new last December). I'm in Vermont currently and will get it all when I get back. It has 1 GB of RAM, a 2.53 GHz processor, buffer set at 1024.

 

I've tried calling Digi but never get through. I bought it last December so I still have a little time left. But since I'm not available during the day, are they available at night?

 

And what about the 002? Is it worth it? Is there a better alternative?

[Phil O'Keefe]

I use a 002, and I like it a lot. It's fallen to the (Digidesign acknowledged) power harness failure issue a time or two, but Digidesign has always quickly taken care of that for me, and overall, it's been a good purchase for me. I occasionally use the onboard mic preamps, but I also use my board and outboard preamps with it too, and "feed" it both analog (from outboard preamps and line sources) and lightpipe (from my Yamaha digital board) inputs simultaneously. I normally don't need more than 16 inputs at once, so that meets my needs. I wouldn't mind having more outputs, but YMMV on that.

 

Digi's tech support is only available via phone from something like 8AM - 5PM M-F west coast time. The best time to get through is right when they open (great, I just gave away the secret... now I'll have to wait forever whenever *I* need to get through to them... ); so what I'd recommend is that you call at 11AM your time if at all possible. Maybe on a break or your lunch hour? Anyway, that's the best time if you need to call. You can also post over on the Digidesign User's Conference ("DUC") and you'll usually get great responses from fellow users... and Digi's tech and web folks moderate it very well, so chances are reasonably good that you'll get a response from them if you address a question to them there.

 

Sounds like you have enough RAM and a fast enough CPU, so I don't know if it's your computer or not. I'd check over on Digidesign's site and see if your motherboard chipset is on the "problem" list, and make sure your system is either on the "recommended" list or at least meets all of the minumum system specs.

[UstadKhanAli]

I've had good luck on the DUC forums so far. A lot of people definitely know what they're talking about.

 

Sorry, I don't know the answer to your problem, but I would agree that it sounds like something is wrong, as a compressor typically doesn't draw that much CPU power (although some of my old Bomb Factory plug-ins that I still occasionally use on PT 5.1 really suck a lot of CPU juice).

[mrbrown49]

Do you have anti virus software running. I had alot of problems with norton draging my system down a while ago. Hasn't been a problem since i removed it.

 

Also try running some anti spyware software to make sure your system is clean, disconnect from the internet, reboot and try again.

[Majoria]

Ok, I can't determine which specific chip I have. It's an Intel Celeron but doesn't say which one. I downloaded a file that is supposed to determine it per digi's web page but when I launched it, it couldn't determine my chipset.

 

Also, I only have one harddrive that will accept files and that's the C drive. Pro Tools won't write to my secondary hard drive but I think the problem is with the drive as everything from that drive is slow (movies very slow, MP3's play choppy, etc, all fine from C drive).

 

Now, all that being said, I think the performance issue is resolved. I was under the impression that the hardware profile I setup for Pro Tools also would have the different msconfig settings from my full system profile. Oops. Went in to Pro Tools profile and saw the same everything-checked msconfig setup as my full system, only different was the hardware settings like internet, fax, etc. So now everything has the much more limited startup settings.

 

Is there a way to have each profile have different msconfig settings? I can't seem to find a way and my PC guru relative isn't answering the phone.

[littledog]

This may not be the root of your problem, but should at least be a work-around.

 

If you are having problems with plug-ins when bouncing, take the individual tracks that have the problematic plug-ins, and print a new track with the plug-ins recorded onto the track. Then you can disable the plug-ins on the original track, mute the original track, and do your bounce using the printed track or tracks.

 

As for your second question, I use an 002R, and yes it only has 4 mic preamps built in. You could input four more mics using an outboard four channel mic preamp going into the line inputs 5-8 on the 002. Or even easier, get an inexpensive 8 channel pre with ADAT/lightpipe output. There is a lightpipe input on the 002R, so that gives you 8 more mic channels instantly.

 

You can find some very inexpensive 8 channel pres with lightpipe, including one from Behringer that only costs about $300.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Originally posted by Majoria Ok, I can't determine which specific chip I have. It's an Intel Celeron but doesn't say which one. I downloaded a file that is supposed to determine it per digi's web page but when I launched it, it couldn't determine my chipset. The motherboard chipset is important... I ran into a problem a while back with setting up an MBox on a client's laptop - IIRC, he was running an INtel 915G chipset; whatever it was, it was known to be incompatable with PT LE. But the CPU is also important... and again, IIRC, the Intel Celeron and AMD Semperon CPU's are not supported... so if you're running a Celeron instead of a Pentium 4, that could be causing your problems right there. Also, I only have one harddrive that will accept files and that's the C drive. Pro Tools won't write to my secondary hard drive but I think the problem is with the drive as everything from that drive is slow (movies very slow, MP3's play choppy, etc, all fine from C drive). If your C drive is fast enough, you should be able to record and play back to it, but that is less than ideal. You really want to have the progrm and operating system running from one drive (the C drive) and record / play back audio from another. I don't know what's causing your issues with writing to the second drive - can you use it with other programs? Now, all that being said, I think the performance issue is resolved. I was under the impression that the hardware profile I setup for Pro Tools also would have the different msconfig settings from my full system profile. Oops. Went in to Pro Tools profile and saw the same everything-checked msconfig setup as my full system, only different was the hardware settings like internet, fax, etc. So now everything has the much more limited startup settings. That's a good idea. There's a doc up on Digidesign's website with the minimum startup config settings for running PT LE. Anything that is not on that list - especially things like virus protection - can be disabled in msconfig for your PT LE profile. Is there a way to have each profile have different msconfig settings? I can't seem to find a way and my PC guru relative isn't answering the phone. Have you created two seperate Windows XP users? IIRC, when you do that, you can set each one differently, with different hardware profiles and msconfig settings.

[Majoria]

I already tried having the settings built in to the track thus not applying anything when bouncing but it made no change (see my original post). I tried another sermon recently with my new computer settings and it appears to work.

 

The 002 may be something I'll check into. I really want fully functional channels that I can edit in Pro Tools. I did a few takes using a few mics into my extra mixer and took that into one of the channels on the Mbox. Four channels insted of the two on the Mbox would be an improvement. My problem is that the computer doesn't have firewire.

[mrbrown49]

Something like this could resolve that.

 

LINK

[where02190]

 

Originally posted by Majoria Four channels insted of the two on the Mbox would be an improvement. My problem is that the computer doesn't have firewire.

 

 

What does not having FW have to do with running 4 tracks into your M-box, it's USB not firewire.

 

In order to track 4 discrete tracks into an M-box 2, 2 of the inputs need to connect to the m-box via spdif interface.

 

I would suggest recording to an second physical drive, and you'll need some way of backing everything up as well. FW is the way to go if you don't have a second phyiscal drive available as your audio drive (if you have a laptop for example) however fw cards are cheap and readily available.

[Majoria]

The 002 requires firewire, that's why.

 

To be honest, I don't fully understand the spdif interface. The Mbox2 lists one s/pdif as in and the other as out, yet the input settings for an audio channel list spdif L and spdif R as if they are the usual left and right RCA connections.

 

My main purpose for 4 independant inputs is for simultaneous drum recording. So a set up would be like this, right?

 

track 1 is for the kick (input 1)

track 2 is for the snare (input 2)

track 3 is for the toms (one spdif input)

track 4 is the overhead (the other spdif input)

 

Will the spdif's support phantom power (I'm guessing no)? Do I just adapt the XLR to RCA to use the spdif? Or, since I have an extra Mackie 1402, do I run the mics for tracks 3 and 4 into the Mackie, pan one left and the other right, then use the left and right tape outputs to go to the spdif inputs on the Mbox2?

[littledog]

A spdif connection is two channels (stereo) - so one in and one out is really two in and two out.

 

But you are confused about the difference between an analog signal and a digital data stream. Plugging an analog device into a digital port is like trying to plug your toaster into your water faucet.

 

In other words, you should never confuse a spdif connection with an analog mic preamp. A spdif port only inputs or outputs a digital signal. This means if you want to plug a mic into a spdif connector, you have three options:

 

1) Get one of those new mics that has a built in A/D converter.

2) Use a preamp that offers a digital output

3) Use a regular preamp, and run it through an external A/D converter, then into the spdif port.

 

If your mic needs phantom power, you will need to use a preamp (or mixer) that supplies it.

 

If you were to try using an XLR to RCA adaptor to plug a mic into the spdif port, you won't hurt anything. But you won't get any sound either.

[Majoria]

So in other words my scenario of running through the mixer would work just fine?

[littledog]

Only if the Mackie has digital output. Does it?

 

(Otherwise you are still trying to plug a toaster into a water faucet.)

[littledog]

I just glanced at the Mackie website out of curiosity. The 1402 VLZ mixer has no digital output as far as I can see from looking at the back panel.

 

Clearly you are having trouble wrapping your mind around the basic concept of digital audio. But here is a basic fact to get you started:

 

Unless there is a converter somewhere in the chain, an analog signal can not be read by a digital input. A digital input can only recognize digital signals. A microphone does not put out a digital signal, unless it is designed with a built in analog to digital converter. Nor does a preamp or a mixer, unless they are also designed with built in converters.

 

No converter = no plugging into a digital input.

 

If you want to use the spdif port, you must have some piece of equipment that will turn your analog signal into a stream of 1's and 0's. That is what an analog-to-digital converter does. The shape of the jacks (RCA or XLR) on digital ports adds to the confusion, because they are the same shape as audio jacks. That is just a convenience for the cable manufacturers, and doesn't mean they are interchangeable.

 

Understand?