Venue SC48 and Pro Tools LE

[emluper]

Paul,

You can't use both cards at once, it's either or. The other issue with what you are describing is that you will need two laptops that are synced through MTC to make it work with the 002 interface. LE only supports one interface at a time.

Erik

[digidesigner]

Can M-Powered PT be used?

[emluper]

The software could, but not the interfaces. The FWx card is the only interface that the SC48 can send information to and the PT software cannot see multiple interfaces in PTLE.

[digidesigner]

Originally Posted by emluper

The software could, but not the interfaces. The FWx card is the only interface that the SC48 can send information to and the PT software cannot see multiple interfaces in PTLE.

What I meant was if M-Powered could be used instead of LE?

[emluper]

Don't know if that would be a problem or not. If M-Powered is set to look for specific M-Audio hardware then it could be a problem. Sheldon?

[BradLyons]

TO BE CLEAR..... the limitation is NOT and I repeat is NOT because of firewire or firewire bandwidth. This is a limitation withinin ProToolsLE that was imposed by Digidesign a long time back with the original Digi001 interface. There are reasons for this, because Digidesign wants you to upgrade to ProToolsHD. Maybe someday this will change, maybe it won't...but either way there are many more benefits to going HD besides more tracks at one time. This is no different than companies such as Steinberg doing CubaseLE and the full version, or Apple's Logic Express v/s the full version.

[bobwitte]

We have a similar issue with the 18 channel limitation. We have been doing many live recording into a multitrack - using an anolg board it was simply direct outs into an Alesis HD24. Then we transfer the track and use PTLE to remix for a live CD.

We want to move to a digital board and the SC48 would be perfect if we could record at least 24 tracks. Since this is a serious part of our business, not recording at least 24 tracks is a deal breaker for us. And we want to be in the $20k's price point.

This capability would be yet another marketable feature that would really set the SC48 apart from the competition - especially if you could record 24 or more tracks!

Bob

[SimonInAustralia]

Yes, we need more than 18 recording inputs from the SC48 to Pro Tools.

We were considering the SC48 as a mixer upgrade in our live sound venue, but having only 18 inputs to Pro Tools means we can't consider it as an option.

Please remove the Pro Tools LE 18 input limit, at least for SC48.

[emluper]

Guys could you point me in the direction of a board in this price range that sounds as good as the SC48 (sounds just like the Stage Rack systems), allows you to use TDM based plugins and lets you record anything at all directly into a DAW right out of the box (no external interfaces)? Not to mention that any other Venue system user has to pay $1,195.00 for a card that SC48 owners get for free! People saying that the 18 inputs into LE is a deal breaker are cracking me up! Unless you're going to add interfaces to your current setup, any recording system you get is going to be kludged together. Bob Witte has an economical solution, but he's not going to be able to pull that off with any digital board in this price range because analog boards will always have access to more I/O, and you can tell by his post that he's looking for something that will allow him to bypass the transfer step.

It's been mentioned here many times before, the limitation is imposed by the LE software, not the hardware. We've been frowning at the limitation since '05, and that's how long they've been lobbying for it. They know this is a problem, but it's kind of hard to upset the apple cart of an entire company because 500 people don't like the way something is implemented. There are about 1,000+ systems in the marketplace. Compare that to how many LE users there are worldwide (there are over 132,000 threads on the DUC from LE users vs. 727 threads from Venue users) and you see what an uphill climb it is to get the interface issue dealt with. They are working on it, but if the current 18 channel limit is completely unacceptable to you to the point of not being willing to purchase the console, then I think you are doing yourself and your audience a grave disservice.

Erik

[Sheldon Radford]

Hi everyone,

I think there's a bit of confusion about this topic that needs clearing up.

The channel count is not set within Pro Tools LE itself, nor is it an artificially low number that's been put in place to drive HD sales, as some have suggested. The truth is much simpler and less conspiratorial: the software driver used for FWx (which handles communication and audio transfer between the FWx card and Pro Tools LE) was originally derived from an existing driver for the Digi 002 - hence the 18 channels.

To increase this number requires an entirely new software driver, as the original driver tops out at 18 channels. Developing a robust audio software driver is non-trivial work. It's not a matter of flipping a switch within the software code to enable more capacity. If it was this easy it would have been done by now!

So like all other cool things y'all are asking for we need to prioritize this work against all other requests, and make sure we're doing the most important things first.

Sheldon