Please Help....THE REBEL...WHICH PROTOOLS DO I USE???

[Boogottinyc]

Hi...I wanted to ask a favor.I am looking to run protools on my imac and digi 002 and wanted to know what version I needed.I have a imac 24 inch early 2009 4gb 1067 mhz DDR3.NVIDIA GeForce 9400256 mb
Running on 0SX 10.9.5 (13F10808)

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Darryl Ramm]

Whatever you do you are likely going to want to upgrade the memory in that iMac, just max it out. Which I suspect is 8GB, that is the bare amount of memory I would try with Pro Tools 11 or 12. Ideally I would look for 16 GB. What disk drive (make/model/spec) is in it? What external disk drive do you have? You are supposed to have a dedicated proper spec audio drive (so two disk drives in total)... Nowadays just get a good SSD if you have to add a disk.

What CPU is in that iMac? It is a core 2 duo right? That is under-spec and going to limit you from doing a lot with virtual instunents and plugins. If careful you should be able to record some basic stuff/work simpler sessions with the computer.

You have to work out how to be mostly be able to answer your own compatibility questions...

Look at the minimum system specs for each version of pro tools, and this...

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...tibility-Chart

You need to check what drivers are available for your interface and what versions of OS X they are supported on. You can google Avid driver downloads and find that info. The driver and OS compatibility matrix define what is officially supported on what OS X release.

Understandin OS compatibility is critical, sometimes officially unsupported stuff will work, but only go there if other folks are reporting here it works great.

Avoid upgrading to El Capitan. Too many problems for too many people.

What version of Pro Tools do ideally want/need? Nobody here has a clue. What are you doing? Need backwards compatibility with old RTAS plugins you need Pro Tools 10 or earlier. Doing heavy virtual instruments work, you want to be on Pro Tools 11 or 12 because they have 64-bit memory. Do you need session/plugin compatibility with collaborators? What third party plugins go you need if any? Are they available in AAX-64 format for Pro Tools 11 or 12? It would be need to just say "get the latest Pro Tools 12" but currently Pro Tools 12.5 and 12.5.1 are a bit of a mess with bugs/crashes affecting many users. 12.4 or a late 11 release may be better.

Depending on what you want to do you may need to faster/more modern Mac to run Pro Tools well. Certainly do stuff like try the free Pro Tools 11 trial or buy a one month subscription to Pro Tools 12 to test out stuff before committing. If that is not an option you might also want to look at other DAWs that are more efficient, including Garage Band and Logic Pro X. There is "free" Pro Tools First, I would not inflict that pox on my worst enemy.