MacBook Pro Not Recognizing Eleven Rack

[Archalen]

Hello! I am brand new here; I am not particularly knowledgeable, but will try to provide as much information as possible as requested in the "Help Us Help You" thread.

A few years ago, I bought the ProTools 8 Le/ Eleven Rack bundle, and used it for a long time on an old Vista laptop. Now, I bought the ProTools 11/ PreSonus AudioBox bundle. I am trying to use the (old) Eleven Rack with the new ProTools 11, and I am using these on a new MacBook Pro OSX Version 10.8.3.

My main problem I believe is that the MacBook Pro is not recognizing ElevenRack. I installed all of the drivers that came on the Avid Audio Device Drivers Version 11.0, including the Eleven Rack driver.

When I open a session, I use "Create Session From Template: Eleven Rack" and choose Full Session. Here is what is happening, what is working, and what is not working, I may be missing something simple because I have never owned a MacBook:

*I keep the Eleven Rack turned off until the MacBook is booted up, then I turn the ElevenRack on, then I book up ProTools 11.

*When I go to the "Window" tab on ProTools, Eleven Rack is listed at the bottom but is greyed out so that I cannot click on it. This happens while Eleven Rack is on and connected to the computer.

*The Guitar track has Eleven Rig L/R as the input; however, it is not lit up, it is dark. When I try to hit record on that track, it gives me "the track could not be record-enabled because it doesn't have both an active input and output assigned."

*If I plug the guitar into the Eleven Rack through the Guitar Input, I get the guitar sound through the monitors. If I change the tone setting on the Eleven Rack, the sound correctly changes the guitar tone.

*I have ElevenRack hooked up to the MacBook via a USB cable to the computer

*I have my Yamaha MO8 keyboard hooked up via two MIDI cables (one is going from the keyboard's MIDI IN port to the Eleven Rack's Out/Thru port; another is going from the keyboard's MIDI Out port to the Eleven Rack's In port).

*I have two behringer TRUTHB2031A monitor's hooked up to the Eleven Rack. I have two XLR cables going from the Eleven Racks main XLR Output ports to the two respective monitors.

*If I record the keyboard via MIDI, ProTools correctly senses and records what I am playing (I can tell by looking at the wave, it only records when I press a key); however, when I play back I cannot hear anything.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

[Archalen]

Also, I should add that I went to System Preferences, and selected "Avid Eleven Rack" under the "Output" tab, and did this as well under the "Input" tab. When I select "Avid Eleven Rack" under the "Input" tab, is says "The selected device has no input controls."

When I play music on Itunes, it plays through the monitors. Also, the metronome sound comes out of the laptop speakers, but no other sound does.

[Darryl Ramm]

Did you install the (correct for your OS X and Pro Tools version) driver for the Eleven Rack? Unlike with Pro Tools LE you need to manually install drivers for interfaces you use.

www.avid.com/drivers

Is the Eleven Rack selected as the playback engine, under Setup>Playback Engine or by holding down 'N' as Pro Tools starts and keep holding down until you see that dialog panel.

If that is not it, what exact model/date code MBP. Are you connecting to a USB 2 or USB 3 port on the MBP?

[Archalen]

After reading this post, I made sure to install Eleven Rack driver 1.1.1 from the Avid website. I have a MacBook Pro 10.8.3 so it looks like that is the correct driver. I restarted my computer and Eleven Rack was still greyed out and not clickable under the "Window" tab.

Then I went to "Setup" and "Playback Engine." It turns out that Eleven Rack was not selected so I selected "Avid Eleven Rack." I restarted Protools and got an error message for the I/O, it asked me if I wanted to save the error report and I did. The error report reads,

__________________________________________________ ______________
"Your I/O setup has changed since the last time this session was saved..."

"Missing Stems"
"The input path "Guitar In" was made inactive because its stem is missing."
__________________________________________________ _______________

The same was said for "Eleven Rig L/R," "Mic In," "Line Input L/R," and "Digital In L/R."

These inputs are still greyed out under the I/O window.

My MacBook Pro has 2 USB 3.0 inputs. I am running in to one of those.

Under "About this Mac," it says 13-inch, Mid 2012. Software: OS X 10.8.3 (12D78).

[Darryl Ramm]

Go to Setup>IO and on the input, output and bus tabs click the default button.

Then set the track inputs and outputs if needed.

Or once you have the playback engine set to the Eleven Rack just create a new session using one of the Eleven Rack templates.

Darryl

[Archalen]

Unfortunately that did not work as well. Still when I try to arm a track that uses Eleven Rack as its input, I get an error message saying that the track could not be armed because either the input or the output was is not active. Since the output is bright on the tracks but the Eleven Rack input is greyed, I can assume it is the input that is not active.

Just to check, I uninstalled the Eleven Rack driver, then restarted, then booted up ProTools. ProTools does the same exact thing when the driver is installed as when it is not installed. It's as if the Eleven Rack software is not installed. I reinstalled it, rebooted, and it is doing the same thing.

I know for sure I am using the right driver, because my MacBook is 10.8.3, and my ProTools is 11.0.0, and the driver I installed is for MacBook 10.8 and ProTools 11. Also, I have used two different USB cables to make sure it's not a problem with the cable.

Thanks a lot for your help so far, is there anything else I can try?

[Archalen]

Is it possible that I may need to co-install ProTools 10.3.6 with ProTools 11, and use 10 to use Eleven Rack?

[Darryl Ramm]

Did you so exactly what I suggested?

0. If an input is inactive you normally just need to go to the input selector and reselect that input to make it active. Try that first then.... (think about what Pro Tools is telling you, if its greyed out it is inactive, you need to make it active before it can record, etc.) If not....

1. It just sounds like the IO did not get defaulted correctly. Did you do exactly what I said, for each of the three tabs?

Also make sure that "Sessions overwrites current IO when opened" in the Setup<IO page is *NOT* checked.

2. Every time you restart Pro Tools make sure the Playback engine is still "Avid Eleven Rack". (and don't use aggregate IO, just in case you were trying to)

3. Once PT is started then create a new session from one of the Eleven Rack templates (if you do that you should not be needing to reset any inputs). I want you to try this first not try an existing session.

[Archalen]

I did it again and now the Guitar and Mic tracks are working!!! Thanks so much for the help. The only track I have yet to get working is the Keyboard/ MIDI track.

I am recording through the MIDI ports on the keyboard and eleven rack, with a Yamaha MO8. ProTools is picking up the sound, I can see this because it is recording correctly on the wave. However, when I play back, no sound is coming out. I've tried all of the outputs so kind of stumped on this one.

The input on the MIDI track is "All," the output is "Eleven Rack, Rig," "channel-1."

The input on the "Keys" track is "Eleven Rig L/R (Stereo)," the output is "Main Out L/R (Stereo) - > Front Left / Front Right"

Both are recording, as I can see by the wave, but I cannot hear playback while recording or while trying to play back.

[Archalen]

I should add that all inputs/ outputs seem to be active now, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.