[Ben Jenssen]

This is what I'm experiencing these days, I hope you can find it useful:

I'll try to make it short:
Coming from 2008 Mac Pro with dual boot SL/PT10 and HS, I recently got a 21,5" 2017 i5 iMac used for about 700 pounds.

I have installed latest Catalina, seems to be a very solid version of the OS. And I installed Rogue Amoeba Soundsource, really only to get back one thing I had on my old system; the ability to control overall volume from the keyboard. OK.

I'm retired and I have no studio anymore so I wasn't really planning on having PT on it at all. But I thought WTH, I'll install a 30-day fully functional PT2020.3 trial just to check it out. After all I have my Dynaudio monitors and a couple of nice screens, and a big archive of PT sessions I can play around with. And PT friends I can colaborate with.

The iMac has only 8gb ram, and Avid system requirements says 16 or more. But I've been playing around with the trial for a couple of weeks now, and PT runs sweeter than I ever experienced! Of course, I haven't tried sessions with 100 tracks and 10s of VI's, but 10-20-30 audio tracks with plugins and a few VI's – it's no problem! And that's good enough for me. And With Freeze and Commit, which I didn't have in PT10, I can do a lot. Also helps to quit other apps.

And lo and behold; PT audio output can run side-by-side with system and other apps' audio seamlessly! Now, I'm guessing this is because of Soundstage. I'm not shure, because I installed it before PT, and I've not bothered to check without it, but I've not heard any mentioning of latest PT being able to do this.

Soundstage is really a fine little piece of software. It's a small menu bar item that lets you control core audio sound. You can route apps audio to different outs, set individual volume, and even insert AU plugins wherever you want in the path. I think, If I had more than one interface, it would let me route stuff freely. Fantastic stuff. And these guys make other great software also.

I must add that the internal spinner hybrid disk is terribly slow, but two fast SSD's on the TB ports, one for OS and one for audio, fixes that.

Now, if only Avid support would get their fingers out and complete the transfer of ownership request we submitted, I'll be buying PT2020 perpetual "used" for about 300 pounds.

Now, with a iMac with faster processor and more ram, it'd be heaven, but I'm happy.


Oh, and that lovely 003, I'm willing to bet that software like Soundsource will let you use it for years to come. Until I get something nicer, I'm running latest PT and latest OS on an ancient Maudio M-Track that Avid says is not supported. Soundsource is about $40 and can be demo'ed.


Good luck.