Pro Tools Rig for Cheap
06/05/10 10:15 Filed in: Tips and Tricks
UPDATE:
Since the original post, Avid has released Pro Tools 9, which no longer requires a Digidesign/M-Audio interface! You can now use any audio interface with PT, so some of the information in this post is outdated. The general way of using your slave with a second audio interface still holds true, though, only you can now choose whichever interface you like.
This is sort of an idea for all those monetary challenged people out there (like me), who nonetheless want to have a Pro Tools rig at their disposal.
As you might know, we use Logic Pro as our Main DAW, a choice which we are pretty happy with, but which sometimes leads to format problems, i.e. when we need to work on films for making the soundmix. The industry standard in this area is Pro Tools. But Pro Tools is sooooooooo expensive. No, it isn’t. Pro Tools HD is. But there’s more.
If you have your project ready as a Pro Tools file, with a certain certainty everyone can open it. You might know that there are cut-down versions of PT, namely LE and M-Powered. Besides the name, there is _no_ difference between LE and M-Powered and with Version 8 the differences to Pro Tools HD have shrunk, too. For most projects, an LE or M-Powered rig is absolutely sufficient. LE only runs with Digidesign audio interfaces, M-Powered only runs with M-Audio interfaces (hence the name).
The really cool thing is that LE or M-Powered can open PT HD projects and vice versa! That means, for most projects you can easily use a LE rig (i.e. for sound mixing and film post pro) and then give the whole thing to a large mastering house for the final touch.
LE and M-Powered are both very affordable and are a very good way into the world of Pro Tools. While we firmly believe in Logic for composing and recording, for post-production there’s just nothing better than PT.
Ok, so now we know that PT can be pretty affordable, but it gets even better!
You need a computer to run it on, right? Well, what about a nice slave PC that sits around in the corner if you are not composing with your template right at the moment? Right!!!
We fortunately had an old M-Audio interface lying around unused, so what we did was to hook it up to our Dell Slave which usually hosts our composing template and installed PT M-Powered. That way, when the Slave PC is not used for its slave labour, it serves as a PT rig.
To make this kind of „second DAW“ as pleasant to use as possible, there are a few nice things you can do:
- The PT rig can use the big studio monitors by connecting the audio interface’s SPDIF Out with a SPDIF In of the interface of the main machine. No sound quality is lost and you can additionally use the DSP power of your main machine! And you don’t need any additional gear.
- Master keyboards usually have both an USB output as well as a MIDI output. One of these can be hooked up to the slave = you can use PT to record MIDI data.
- Euphonix Artist controllers can control several workstations at the same time. If your main DAW is a Mac (as in our case) you can use it as a EuCon server, even if your second computer runs Windows. This is undocumented, but it works. Just install the Windows workstation drivers from the Euphonix website and make sure there’s a network connection between the Mac and the PC (there will be automatically one if you are using VE Pro on the slave). Then you can use the controller to control Pro Tools or any other DAW on the PC.
- If you log into the slave with Microsoft Remote Desktop or another RDC client (we use CORD), then you don’t even need a keyboard and mouse on the slave. Just tuck it somewhere safe where it is out of the way and noone will ever see there’s _yet_ another rig there :)
All this gives you a perfect Pro Tools rig, which can use all your studio hardware, including MIDI keyboards and hardware controllers!
And all you need to invest in is an audio interface (if you don’t already have one) and a license for PT.
Hope this helps :)
Since the original post, Avid has released Pro Tools 9, which no longer requires a Digidesign/M-Audio interface! You can now use any audio interface with PT, so some of the information in this post is outdated. The general way of using your slave with a second audio interface still holds true, though, only you can now choose whichever interface you like.
This is sort of an idea for all those monetary challenged people out there (like me), who nonetheless want to have a Pro Tools rig at their disposal.
As you might know, we use Logic Pro as our Main DAW, a choice which we are pretty happy with, but which sometimes leads to format problems, i.e. when we need to work on films for making the soundmix. The industry standard in this area is Pro Tools. But Pro Tools is sooooooooo expensive. No, it isn’t. Pro Tools HD is. But there’s more.
If you have your project ready as a Pro Tools file, with a certain certainty everyone can open it. You might know that there are cut-down versions of PT, namely LE and M-Powered. Besides the name, there is _no_ difference between LE and M-Powered and with Version 8 the differences to Pro Tools HD have shrunk, too. For most projects, an LE or M-Powered rig is absolutely sufficient. LE only runs with Digidesign audio interfaces, M-Powered only runs with M-Audio interfaces (hence the name).
The really cool thing is that LE or M-Powered can open PT HD projects and vice versa! That means, for most projects you can easily use a LE rig (i.e. for sound mixing and film post pro) and then give the whole thing to a large mastering house for the final touch.
LE and M-Powered are both very affordable and are a very good way into the world of Pro Tools. While we firmly believe in Logic for composing and recording, for post-production there’s just nothing better than PT.
Ok, so now we know that PT can be pretty affordable, but it gets even better!
You need a computer to run it on, right? Well, what about a nice slave PC that sits around in the corner if you are not composing with your template right at the moment? Right!!!
We fortunately had an old M-Audio interface lying around unused, so what we did was to hook it up to our Dell Slave which usually hosts our composing template and installed PT M-Powered. That way, when the Slave PC is not used for its slave labour, it serves as a PT rig.
To make this kind of „second DAW“ as pleasant to use as possible, there are a few nice things you can do:
- The PT rig can use the big studio monitors by connecting the audio interface’s SPDIF Out with a SPDIF In of the interface of the main machine. No sound quality is lost and you can additionally use the DSP power of your main machine! And you don’t need any additional gear.
- Master keyboards usually have both an USB output as well as a MIDI output. One of these can be hooked up to the slave = you can use PT to record MIDI data.
- Euphonix Artist controllers can control several workstations at the same time. If your main DAW is a Mac (as in our case) you can use it as a EuCon server, even if your second computer runs Windows. This is undocumented, but it works. Just install the Windows workstation drivers from the Euphonix website and make sure there’s a network connection between the Mac and the PC (there will be automatically one if you are using VE Pro on the slave). Then you can use the controller to control Pro Tools or any other DAW on the PC.
- If you log into the slave with Microsoft Remote Desktop or another RDC client (we use CORD), then you don’t even need a keyboard and mouse on the slave. Just tuck it somewhere safe where it is out of the way and noone will ever see there’s _yet_ another rig there :)
All this gives you a perfect Pro Tools rig, which can use all your studio hardware, including MIDI keyboards and hardware controllers!
And all you need to invest in is an audio interface (if you don’t already have one) and a license for PT.
Hope this helps :)
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