Pro Tools FREE and internal audio ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brad
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Brad

Brad

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Howdy - anybody know if this is possible:

I d/l'd Pro Tools FREE from Digidesign and I want to use it only to edit. Is it possible to insert audio into the Pro Tools program internally? Instead of plugging into the soundcard, I want to pull tracks from an audio CD in the computer's CDROM drive - will this work?

Please give me some pointers if anyone knows how to do this - I am a lame ass when it comes to computer recording.

Thanks,

Brad
 
I can get u in the right direction....im trying to do the same thing myself... I record in N Track but i need a 24 bit editor......Once it loads up, hit File and New session...give a name to the file youll be working on....then it goes into the program...hit file, inport audio track, the select where you want to get the file from...from here im lost...if you figure it out let me know....
 
hi,

you need a player that will that will take the song off the cd and save it as a .wav . after that you can import it into protools. I believe that windows media player can convert a song to wav, but I am not sure.
 
Brad,

You need some ripping software...that is, any software that does "digital audio extraction." The new Windows Media Player will do it. Winamp will do it. Wavelab will do it. EZ CD Creator and most CD burning programs will do it.

Note that these programs are NOT all created equally...especially if the disc is damaged and/or jittery.

Once you have the track as a wave, you should know what to do with it.

P.S. You haven't been archiving your mixes on Audio CD's have you? Big no no!

Slackmaster 2000
 
Slack - why is archiving to a CDR a "big no-no"? I do it all the time - copy my Cakewalk bundle files to CDR. Of course it is data, not an audio file.
 
Oh I didn't say CDR, I said "audio CD"....data would be the appropriate format for archival/backup/storage/etc as you implied.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Thanks for the input guys!

Slack, now I am confused - The CD I would use is one that I burned in my non-computer based studio. 16/44.1 audio on a CDR. Then I want to pop it into my iYak, I mean iMac and be able to edit the 2 track stereo mix - Now this is how I do it when I post mp3 files - I cram the cd into the iMac and use an mp3 converter to change it to mp3. Am I changing a .wav to mp3? So is it a .wav file to begin with? I am fookin' stoopid.

I HATE COMPUTERS! I KNOW NOTHING! B B B B BALL TONGUE!
 
If you have an audio CDR, then you need to rip the audio off the disc. (This is a potentially error prone means of transfering music due to the physical implementation of an audio CD. You should be making data discs if you're just moving stuff around like that)

If your MP3 player is converting CD Audio to mp3, then it *could* be first converting it to wave, but this doesn't have to be so. The program could be using any number of means. The actual ripping process is the same regardless of the end result...it's really all up to the software.

You need to look into "ripping" or "audio extraction" software. Now crapintosh computers like to use aiff instead of wave, correct? I'm not sure what software is available for the crapintosh, but if it can rip an audio track off of a CD into wav or aiff then you're set.

The best thing to do in this case, however, from what I gather, let's see how many commas I can use, quite a few I guess, is to burn a data CD in your studio. Is that something you can do?

Good luck man.

Slackmaster 2000
 
BTW Brad...I noticed that MS released a version of MSN Instant Messenger for the mac. You should download it man....several of us using it regularly.

Slackmaster 2000
 
http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/mac/CD_RIPPERS/

Go here to download a ripper if you dont have one, youll have to scroll down a little...this will rip a song from the CD to your computer, hopefully in the right format for ProTools.....once you get it ripped, go back to my first post and start there....Ive GOT THE LIFE....
 
Sorry Slack, after re-reading I understand what you were saying (must be these 12 hour days clouding my mind).

Yes an audio CD is obviously appropriate for the finished product - hell it IS the finished product - but you always want to keep a copy of your work in a pure "data" format, regardless of what software you use. You would not want to ever have to take something you wrote as an MP3, then convert it back into wav/aif, stroke it some more, then convert again to mp3, etc. etc. Every time you convert data formats you are rolling dice, not to mention the obvious which is you lose your ability to seperate out individual tracks.

As someone who is at heart a "twiddle the mixer knobs while rolling tape" kind of guy, I still get a kick out of how cool it is to automate mixdown in Cakewalk. Never again do I have to look for my notes on just how did I mix this track, which rack effect I used, blah blah blah. Now I just open the project, play it back, and watch. DAMN this is a beautiful thing.... <sniff> sorry I get choked up.

Anyway Brad once you have that kind of thing going to can do as many edits or mixes as you want, but always keep your original data and work from there. Don't be re-mixing from your finished product.
 
newbie intrusion...

My original files are in .wav format on my hard drive. What is the best way to back them up - can I do this as a pure data file or do I have to burn them as CDs? I have a PIII/166mhz/128ram with a CD burner (and a super disk drive).

What is the difference between an audio and a data file anyway?

an electronically overwhelmed muse
 
A "data file" is just a term that encompasses all standard digital data. A data file can be a wav, an executable, a picture, etc. Even though a wav is audio data, the computer doesn't treat it any differently...it just sees it as data.

Confusion typically sets in when we start talking about CD's. There *is* a difference between audio and data CD's. Without going into details, audio CD's are not as robust for a couple of reasons: a) an Audio CD should still play even if it is scratched and there are errors. It would suck if a tiny little click or pop made an entire track unlistenable. b) to make players easier and cheaper to produce.

If you are backing up audio data to CDR, then burn data discs. They can take much more abuse and any file you copy back from the disc will be a duplicate of the original, pretty much guaranteed. If you burn an audio disc, then you will have to rip the audio off the disc later...and what you rip might not be exactly what you wrote.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Thanks, I transferred everything. Wouldn't it be nice if everything in life could be so neatly categorized and stored...

btw just to embarass myself further, to show you how electronically challenged I really am, my computer is actually 700 mhz, not 166 as I wrote earlier. At least that's good news :)

muse
 
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