Back after 15 years

S Helge Alvar Hallberg

S Helge Alvar Hallberg

New member
Greetings everyone,

I am thinking about picking up home recording and music production again after more or less having taken a break from it for 15-ish years.

I do realize that I should probably get myself some new gear. I used to use a 2007 Macbook, an Mbox Pro with Pro Tools LE, and a couple of nice libraries, such as EW Symphonic Choirs, EW Symphonic Orchestra Gold Complete, EWQL Ministry of Rock, EQ Bösendorfer, EWQL RA, and Kontakt 3, and things like Melodyne. I would like to try to replicate what I had. As I have gotten older, I have a right to refuse to learn new stuff. ;)

I see that Digidesign (now Avid) still makes Mboxes. I am thinking about getting one of those, and some new Mac. Possibly 16 or 32 GB of ram. I guess I cannot use any of my old libraries or plug-ins, since those were all RTAS, and I understand new plug-in format is AAX? Is it possible to like upgrade a license for an old RTAS version to a new AAX version, or anything of that sort?

Since I am pretty much a complete newbie at how things currently work, I appreciate any recommendations.
 
I was very much in the same boat a few years back. I too had used ProTools for many years and figured that's what I'd get. Fast forward a few years and that ProTools subscription was the first thing to go. If you recall, ProTools wasn't that great at Midi. That hasn't changed unfortunately.

Another thing was that my direction changed. I rebuilt my studio thinking I'd operate the same way. What I mean is, I'd have session players come in and record ideas. I quickly came to realize that things really evolved a ton. Especially in the last few years. For example, I bought a drum kit and spent a great deal of effort in tuning and tweaking so I wouldn't be stuck with whatever a drummer brought with them. Shortly after, started programming basic scratch drum tracks and frankly if done right, I had no reason to actually bring in a drummer.

Old system Digi was 16 in with a 24 track inline console. After I started working with a basic interface, I ditched the console and the entire notion of tracking a full band.

If the old me from a few years ago could have used any advice, it would be to get the computer and a basic interface and start putting ideas together. Sure, get the demo of ProTools but don't leave out other options. As to RTAS, nothing was eligible for updates from my old system.

Audio isn't very taxing for modern Mac's. 16 gig basic Mac Mini or even Air will have you covered unless you are doing tons of tracks with lots of heavy VST's.
 
The killer for macs is sample libraries - what seemed OK just a few years ago has got tricky because the people who make the sample libraries are making them bigger and bigger. With macs, you can add external drives but internally, nothing seems upgradable, so your buying choice is dependent on what size the latest library upgrade is in the future - and while Apple think we buy new computers every two years, we don't. big internal drive and memory is a good future proofer. Welcome back to the craziness that is music now!
 
Thank you for the replies. With regard to libraries; I see that EW sells an SSD drive containing all of their libraries, for usage with their subscription service. Can you actually load the instruments directly from that SSD drive, or do you still need to get another drive to put the instruments on? If you can just buy that EW SSD, that seems like a pretty neat way of solving the storage space issue. Surprisingly cheap too.
 
S Helge Alvar Hallberg said:
Thank you for the replies. With regard to libraries; I see that EW sells an SSD drive containing all of their libraries, for usage with their subscription service. Can you actually load the instruments directly from that SSD drive, or do you still need to get another drive to put the instruments on? If you can just buy that EW SSD, that seems like a pretty neat way of solving the storage space issue. Surprisingly cheap too.
Click to expand...
The EastWest drive is a Samsung T7 which I use for video editing, and I have a dedicated one for all my samples, plugins and VST's.
 
S Helge Alvar Hallberg said:
Greetings everyone,
Click to expand...

Hi,
Do you still have copies of, or access to, all your old plugins and libraries?

If you want to go the new gear route that's fair enough but if you still have all the old stuff you could just set up an old mac
and recreate the setup you had.

You'd get an 07/08/09 Mac Mini for next to nothing on ebay or similar. No one wants them.

The main choice, I guess, would be to stick with PT 6/7/8 which would require Digidesign audio interface, like an Mbox,
or try to find someone who will sell or give you a PT 9 license (ilok), which would open up the audio interface field letting you use what you want.

Neither plan is perfect and there'd be a bit of figuring out and confirming to do with regard to compatibility of OS version, PT version, and your software versions, but I figured I'd throw the options out there. (y)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top