[Carl Z]

I use a MBPro Dual 2.5 with 3 Gigs of RAM. I was using a Dual 1.8 G5 prior to this. Before I bought the Mac Book I went to the Apple store and compared what Logic 8 can do on it vs the G5. They pitched it as super fast but it was no faster than the G5 (I confirmed this further when I brought it home)

I can bring this computer down in Logic with SD2, True Pianos, Scarbee bass on Kontakt and two instances of of waves GTR and 5-7 instances of a waves compressor/EQ.

I find the same in PT8 using 1 proc @99% and a buffer of 512. I used to use PT many years ago but moved to cubase and then Logic 8. I decided to get back into it (MBox Pro) when my brother and I decided to write music together and he wanted to use Protools.

I've comitted to finishing a song in PT8 (mainly because i want to use Elastic Audio - both to tighten parts and to mess with the tempo). I find EA works well - way better than the cubase version. In order to work as I have in Logic though I've made stereo stems for every track I have. The tracks are bussed to the stems through a pre fader buss. When I run into cpu problems I mix down the tracks I'm not focused on and then make them inactive.

This process works well especially when you take advatage of colors and groups. Since the MIDI editing is now up to snuff I've gotten as close as I can to how I work in Logic with this setup. Though I must say, nothing quite beats hitting that freeze button in logic and have it automatically write the file for you (faster than real time).

Bottom line is, even if you have worked through all the troubleshooting, you can bring a Mac Book Pro down pretty easily with certain plugs and VI's.

If PT8 can build in some type of freeze function I could see myself using more often in the future.

Carl