i need your advise!!! please help!!! pro tools question.

[maskedman72]

right now i have a mackie 24-8 and 2 tascam da 38's.
i wish to upgrade this setup to a mackie hdr 24 recorder.
my question is shoud i do that upgrade or should i go to a pro tools setup? i plan on spending $1800. will this get me into pro tools?
i would only need 8 ins and outs and i have 4 mic pres right now.
i dont know jack about pc recording. would i be opening up a can of worms?

 

[fprod south]

I don't know anything about the equipment you have so I don't know how useful my answer will be.

The digi 001 is around $800 and comes with Pro Tools LE. It has 8 analogue ins and outs. Two of these ins have pre amps, so you'd have a total of six. The preamps it comes with, in my opinion, are comparable to what comes built in to a low end mixing board. The sound card sounds much better than the SB Live that I used to use. You can get up to 18 inputs by using S/PDIF and optical in, but I don't have the gear or the know how to do that.

I use the digi 001 with a sm pr 8 (8 pre amp strip for $200 new). I don't need an outboard mixer because you can get latency down to next to nothing. I find the software to be very intuitive. You can get started right away without reading the manual. I've been using mine problem free for almost 2 years and I'm loving it.

The catch is having a decent computer. I've got a Mac G4 466. That is not powerful enough for me to do anything too complex in 24 bit. But at 16 bit I can easily get 24 tracks with plenty of plugins, so long as not too many of them are reverb.

 

[M.Brane]

i dont know jack about pc recording. would i be opening up a can of worms?

Yes and no.

The key to setting up a good DAW is to plan your hardware carefully. If you decide to go with the PT setup you should hang at the DUC for a while and see what setups others are using. Used to be that PT was pretty much a Mac oriented program, but in the last few years there have been alot more PC users. Just depends on which platform you prefer.

If your not into fussing with the computer occasionally then maybe the stand-alone recorder is for you. You don't have the flexibilty of the DAW and need to buy outboard gear for all your effects. Maybe cruise some of the recording oriented sites to see if that Mackie HD is really more reliable than a good computer-based DAW.