digidesign mbox and protools q

S

swollenrod

New member
even though i know absolutely nothing about it, ive been wanting to get my hands on protools for a while. friends say its very easy to work with and the mbox seems like a perfect opportunity. however, i have a couple of questions about it:

1. is this supposed to act like a usb external version 24/96 sound card, or do you need an additional card?

2. since my computer serves many purposes, i have also wanted to get the audigy 6.1 sound card from creative labs, will this work in harmony with an mbox, or will there be conflicts.

3. the mbox comes with phantom power, so is there any real need to buy an external analog mixer like a mackie 4701?

4. if there isnt a need for the analog mixer, does pro tools come with a digital gui mixer suitable for substituting?

5. any other suggestions or comments would be appreciated, thanks.
 
1. It is a USB audio interface. No other soundcard is required, and the included PTLE software cannot be used with any other hardware. Likewise the PT hardware cannot be used with any other software unless run in tandem with PTLE.

2. Don't know if they would play nice or not. You may have to set up a dual-boot scenario.

3. No, unless you want to mix more signals together before the inputs.

4. The PT mixer is adequate for most things. You may need an outboard compressor for tracking though depending on what you're recording. See also #3 above.

5. You might want to peruse some threads over at the DUC.
 
Since PT uses its own drivers, which windows doesn't recognize, and doesn't touch the ASIO and windows drivers of the other audio hardware, there shouldn't be a problem having both on the system. My 002 exists happily with my computer's built in soundcard.

If you have an outboard compressor, perhaps setup like a limiter, on the inserts of the mbox, tracking will be a little easier. You don't need an outboard mixer for that as the mbox is blessed with channel inserts.

You won't benefit much from and external mixer as the mbox can only output 2 tracks at a time. PT's in the box mixer does the job. Be warned, though: the mbox doesn't come with a particularly fancy plugins package. The compressors and delays and such work fine, but you'll likely want better ones. And pro tools plugs are p-r-i-c-e-y.

-Chris
 
1. It is a USB audio interface. No other soundcard is required, and the included PTLE software cannot be used with any other hardware. Likewise the PT hardware cannot be used with any other software unless run in tandem with PTLE.
Click to expand...
First part is true, second part is false. It includes both an ASIO driver, so it will work with any application that supports ASIO.

...pro tools plugs are p-r-i-c-e-y.
Click to expand...
Most of them are the same price as their VST/DirectX counterparts. I looked about a month ago and only found one plugin that was considerably more expensive... not including the stuff that isn't available on VST or DirectX.

To me the biggest downside of PT is that it's difficult to use softsynths with it--except for Native Instruments--I guess I'm just lucky those are the ones I like the most...
 
charger said:
First part is true, second part is false. It includes both an ASIO driver, so it will work with any application that supports ASIO.
Click to expand...

I guess it depends on what platform your talking about. ASIO is only supported for Windows systems.
 
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