Pro Tools

Posted by admin on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Pro Tools

Apple (Logic) To Withdraw Support For Pro Tools Hardware?

There's a rumor Apple (Logic) are to stop support for Avid's Digidesign products (Pro Tools). This is a massive kick in the teeth for Avid who I here are struggling a bit at the moment. Neither rumor surprises me; I cashed in my (digital signal processing) chips a long time ago when Apple brought out the G5. The chips I cashed in were a Digidesign HD 3 (before excel) and a 192 interface. I could see the end for the need of processing power on PCI cards.I thought I should get as much money for my Digidesign Pro Tools HD system as I could, I already liked the sound of Apogee interfaces so I bought a Rosetta 800 and made do with a G5 dual 1.8. It was a bit sluggish but I knew bigger beasts were ‘in the post'. And in the post they were beyond my wildest dreams because I had no idea about the intel chips they were going to load them up with. I have to say also that I thought the Rosetta sounded much better than my 192 I had. Engineers often criticise Apogee stuff saying it sounds a bit sheeny. If they do then I like sheeny!

I hated the way Digidesign's upgrade system worked. I spent a fortune upgrading my Mix system to HD and it seemed only months later HD Exel came out. It's part of the reason I sold my HD system when I did; I wasn't about to fork out All That money AGAIN! Here (http://bit.ly/atJq8W) is a recent letter they sent out to their customers telling them that they are building a website and dropping the Digidesign name if you're interested. All those brand names were a bit confusing; Pro Tools made by Digidesign and Digidesign is owned by Avid. I don't think many users even knew about Avid.

I do feel sorry for all those Logic users now lumbered with a HD rigs but soon will be unable to upgrade Logic. I don't know why Apple are withdrawing support, I know that Avid and Apple have never been the best of friends but this really feels like kicking them when they are down. I wonder how much my Logic using pals will be able to get for their HD rigs now. I've been native for a few years now, I'm running 2 x 2.8 quad intel xeon, a load of ram and I can't even get the beast to break into a sweat. I use an Apogee Ensemble interface now. I swapped my Rosetta 800 for the Ensemble because I wanted the lightpipe i/o when I ran Gigastudio. The stereo sp/diff i/o still comes in handy.

I can see the Mac Pro doesn't break into a sweat because I use islayer's iStat: http://www.islayer.com/ It's a neat app which lets me know what's going on in my mac; from the temperature of my processors and disk drives to how much processing power I am using and from which processors, handy when you want to see how your individual plugins use your processors. There's even a handy ethernet bandwidth counter! All the stats appear at the top of the screen and look great; there are drop down menus of everything for more detailed statistics.

My advise to any Logic users with a Pro Tools rig is to come and do a Pro Tools course at www.musicproductioncourses.net with George or get shot of those cards and interfaces NOW!

About the Author

Dave Garnish is the founder and owner of Garnish School of Sound.

http://www.musicproductioncourses.net/

<a title="Dave Garnish's boutique music production school" href="http://musicproductioncourses.net">Dave Garnish's music production courses</a>

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http://musicproductioncourses.net/2010/04/apple-to-withdraw-support-for-pro-tools-hardware/

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Dave Garnish

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