DigiDesign DIGI 002 and Reason 3 REWIRE

[Cmystictruth]

Hello everyone here at Home Recording and beyond! ....

I am running a Power Book G4 1.33Ghz PowerPC G4 with 1.25 GB DDR SDRAM and i am Running Tiger 10.4.11

For audio i am running Pro Tools LE 7.4 and recording through a Digi 002. (I purchased it used and received no disks and no software with it.) I am also running Reason 3.

I have a basic question :

I am brand new to Reason Rewire and i would like to use Reason sample synths to add a drum track to my recording projects.

I have gotten rewire to connect and route to a new track in PT. I can hear the sample through PT, change the levels, and play using my midi controller.

* I am still unclear about how to record the notes i play onto the track in PT.
I have tried enabling both the record on PT and Reason, my notes are not sequenced in reason, nor are the sounds that they make recorded into PT.

ALSO while attempting to playback my live recorded tracks and sequence synths while using rewire PT tells me very quickly (within the first 25 seconds) that i do not have the processing speed to continue. That i should go into my options and increase the cpu usage.

My cpu usage is at 95%, so i wonder a couple of things...

1. Are there optimal settings that i know not of which can help me here?
2. I have recorded in a sample rate of 96, if i bounce the live tracks down to a lower sample rate will that allow me the extra cpu power? I do not plan to release the tracks in digital quality obviously however i wanted to utilize the extra quality while recording the live material. If bouncing down to a lower sample rate is suggested could you also give me a bit of a step by step?
3. Would Reason ADAPTED be a cleaner method here? Would Adapted lighten my cpu workload?

ASSUMING i can get my CPU to handle all of the tasks needed can anyone point me to a solid tutorial for Reason 3 / PT 7 rewire recording?

Blessings,
Michael

 

[deejaytrixx]

Well I will try to answer some of these.

Rewire is a VERY DSP intensive thing to do. It does tax your system resources to the fullest, esp if you are not on specially built computer for audio. Pro Tools and Reason together especially, seems to pull on computer resources the most (In my experience at least) I've used rewire with other programs, and have had less computer intensive results. There are a couple threads on this site about tweaking your computer for maximum performances. Also, a quick google search will turn up a lot of results on articles dealing with tweaking you CPU for maximum performance:

Check this link as a good start.
http://www.homestudiotips.com/tweak-your-computer-recording-audio

Unfortunately, there is a brick wall so to speak when using a regular home computer for mixing projects period. Some say Mac is better at handling this, but I've hit brick walls on Macs many days, and had to do stem mixes to save DSP.

As far as recording what you've arranged in Reason into Pro Tools, there is no way. Reason is a MIDI program, and as such, is not really "playing audio" but rather, "telling the program to play certain sounds when you program in trigger certain info...this is just the nature of MIDI. If you want to use Reason, you will have to use its sequencer. There are ways around this of course..You can arrange some of your instruments in Reason and Rewire them into Pro-Tools, that way the instruments and other tracks in Pro Tools can play simultaneously. Or another solution many ppl do is to individually bounce each instrument using the "export song" feature in Reason, and then importing the .wav into Pro Tools. The latter definitely is less computer intensive, but takes up a lot more time (there is always a trade off)

One thing you can try is to do is rewire to one track, set that tracks output to say bus 3-4, create a new audio track, and make its inputs Bus 3-4. Arm that track whose input is Bus 3-4 to record, and when you're ready start playing. This will create an audio loop and should allow you to record your playing. But, it will use a lot of computer power, and it really doesn't make sense since MIDI is definitely what you want to use..Hope this helps

 

[Casjam]

Video Screencast: Pro Tools 8 + Reason 4.0 = The Killer Combo

For a detailed video screencast of running Reason 4.0 instruments on individual tracks in Pro Tools 8 via ReWire, check out this blog post / VIDEO:

Pro Tools 8 + Reason 4.0 = The Killer Combo

The same process should apply to Pro Tools 7 and Reason 3.0 (however, I highly recommend upgrading both : )