Please Help! Pro-tools M-power Fire Wire 1814

[MikeyAceStudios]

Hi Dot,

I have a Mbox and Pro-tools Le and want to sell the Mbox and get a M
audio
Firewire 1814 and Pro-tools M-power software.
I am using a Powerbook 15 inch 1.5 512 Ram 128 Video Ram
with Panther 80 gig hard drive.

Just a couple of important questions,

1) Does firewire work better than USB 1.0
"more plugs and tracks, better Latency."

2) Is the M-power software stable like in LE? (There's no tested
Digi-approved computers for M-power software and M-audio hardware
yet,
does it mean to expect bugs, or is it the same as the LE software, my
laptop is Digi approved for the Mbox and Le software.)

3) Also does this create a separate division for Digidesign with the
M-power being the lowest range, Le being the middle range, and HD
being
the highest range. Does this mean that soon Le will get better
software
updates and better hardware functionality and maybe a 003 series and
the M
power will be stuck with nothing, or will Le and M power get the same
updates and the only difference is that one is for Digi hardware and
the
other is for M-audio equipment?

4) Also the M-powered software says it needs an I Lok dongle key. I
do not
have one, would I need to purchase it, how does it work and how much
does
it cost.?

5) How does the M-power software differ from the Le software (will
there
be more differences in the future)?

6) Also I look to get a ISA 428 in the future, how would I interface
the
ISA 428 with the M audio Fire Wire 1814, what wires would I need,
and will
it work together in Pro-tools M-power.
The M-audio Fire Wire 1814 comes with a BNC word clock would I be
able to
clock a ISA 428 with AD card out of it, and will Pro-tools M Powered
recognize this and work appropriately?

7) How is the M-Audio Firewire 1814 and how has it been working for
your
customers? Any returns, problems, driver issues? Or is it very
stable?

8) What do you recommend between the Firewire 1814 and M-box?

9) Should I make this move now, or should I wait for the next best
thing.

Thanks a million Dot, You are the man.
Mikey Ace

 

[SonicAlbert]

I'm only going to answer question 9. My suggestion would be to wait for a little while and let things shake out a bit. At the very least wait until Digi has come out with a list of approved systems. This is all very new right now, and not every M-Audio interface is going to be compatible with the M-Audio ProTools software, so just hold on for a while until things become more clear.

 

[Jburn34]

I'm not Dot, but.......

Firewire will be much better than usb 1.0. It is faster, less latency, and more tracks, if your computer can handle them.

M-powered protools seems to be pretty similar to LE. It is great that they finally provided it for other hardware. The firewire 410 and 1814 seem to be pretty stable, but we'll just have to wait and see what kind of stability Protools M-powered provides. You can be pretty sure that any issues will get worked out pretty quickly.

An ilok is about $40. You can get it online from digidesign.

Any hardware that you can connect with your 1814 (analog, spdif, or ADAT) will be able to be used for the purposes of PT m-powered.

Here are the minimum system requirements for PC for the 1814. You can expect it to be a little higher to successfully run Protools.

Pentium 3 – 800MHz or higher (may be higher for laptops)
256MB RAM; DirectX 9.0b or higher
Windows XP (SP1); Windows 2000 (SP4) or higher
(Windows 98, 98SE, Me or NT not supported)