Pro Tools Plugin filepaths/ Processing power (Mac)

[mrcraiggrant]

Hello there, I am brand new to HR.com and although I have a fair experience recording music, I still have a whole bunch of questions i've never bothered to ask over the years and I feel it's really time to fill in the blanks and get my shiz together! So please bear with me. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Before I ask anything I should say that I have Pro Tools M-Powered 7 on my windows XP desktop and run it with and M-Audio 26-26, but I have just moved house and so for the time being have reverted to Pro Tools LE 8 on my MacBook circa 2005 with my...wait for it... M-Box 1!
And as I have put the Windows machine in to storage for a while, I'd like to do some rough demoing on the Mac with old Mbox and this has now raised a couple questions I never bothered with when installing.


My first question relates to plugin types and how pro tools accesses them. Firstly, what are the main plug in types and their features? For example, what's the difference between a MIDI soft instrument and a VST?
Secondly, does pro tools access plugins by filepath? If so, where are they commonly held? I am pretty anal when it comes to my computers being "tidy", but I had a friend install PT and some plugins for me and I am concerned that he has left stuff lying all over the shop! If I could understand how PT accesses plugins, I could consolodate them all and settings to one nice neat file without fear of PT not finding them again.

My other Q is just straight up processing power. I am on OSX 10.5.8 with 1Gig of RAM and 2.16 Ghz intel core duo. Surely to god this is sufficient to just run PT 8 on a silly little MBox 1 with a handful of plugins/ instruments? But alas my PT behaves like shit on this machine and constantly crashes. I commonly use Guitar Rig, Addictive Drums and Waves/ Oxford plugins. But like I say, I don't have sufficient knowledge to know where the problems are arising.

Again, any input is greatly appreciated

Thanks folks!

C x

 

[Steenamaroo]

Hi,
On your mac, go to system drive/Library/audio/plugins
That's where they are all stored.
If you have demos installed and want to remove them or anything like that, you should be able to use their installer packages to clear them out. Failing that, you can manually remove them from that folder.

** DON'T remove something just because you don't recognise it! **

Addictive drums are guitar rig are two big hitters, cpu wise.
I'm sure you should be able to run a basic enough session ok, but just be aware that those two plugs are very intensive.
Keep instances of them down to one of each, if possible.

Are you aware of the option to adjust hardware buffer size in Pro Tools?
If not, basically small buffer = low latency and hard load on the computer.
Big buffer = high latency and lighter load on the computer.

Hope that helps.

 

[mrcraiggrant]

Thanks a lot for this, great help. Managed to get everything tidied up. Went through and checked every plugin and yeah, GR and AD are the only ones that are giving me any real problems.

One more question though - regarding CPU usage, do you think the addition of more RAM would help? It's just that my friend has some spare that he isn't using, I mean I guess I'd go ahead an install it anyhow, seeing as how it can only improve my machine for any other usage. But what I mean is, is the issue with running hungry plugins in PT an issue with RAM or CPU cores? If so, is adding a core as straight forward as adding RAM?

Sorry that this is a bit off topic, any advice appreciated.

 

[MrWrenchey]

Thanks a lot for this, great help. Managed to get everything tidied up. Went through and checked every plugin and yeah, GR and AD are the only ones that are giving me any real problems.

One more question though - regarding CPU usage, do you think the addition of more RAM would help? It's just that my friend has some spare that he isn't using, I mean I guess I'd go ahead an install it anyhow, seeing as how it can only improve my machine for any other usage. But what I mean is, is the issue with running hungry plugins in PT an issue with RAM or CPU cores? If so, is adding a core as straight forward as adding RAM?

Sorry that this is a bit off topic, any advice appreciated.

I honestly think the issue is you're running Pro Tools with 1GB of RAM. So if your friend can install his spare RAM (make sure it's got the same pins and is the same DDR type as your old MacBook Pro), a core duo at 2.16 should be able to handle an instance or two of Guitar Rig and Addictive Drums. Try installing the RAM and you should be fine. =]