Recording with the Venue to LE and TDM

[Jeff W.]

I am thinking of purchasing an Mbox2 that I can use with a Powerbook for on the road editing/recording. I have seen someone use a Powerbook interfaced via firewire directly into the Venue, which gives them 32 tracks avaialbe to track straight into pro tools LE. Is the version of Pro Tools LE that comes with the Venue at all different from the version of Pro Tools that comes with an Mbox or a 002 making it possible for me to use the same LE software between the Venue and the Mbox?

A Second Question would be, if the Venue is being used to output to a TDM system, can I plug my Powerbook into the Venue using firewire again and record the same tracks both onto LE and TDM at the same time without them interfering with one another?

[Sheldon Radford]

Hi Jeff,

The same version of Pro Tools LE is used for VENUE and MBox2 (and all other LE peripherals), so you can record a show using VENUE and then edit it later using MBox2, all on the same computer.

If the Venue is being used to output to a TDM system, can I plug my Powerbook into the Venue using firewire again and record the same tracks both onto LE and TDM at the same time without them interfering with one another?

No. It's not possible to use both the TDM option card and the FireWire option card at the same time on VENUE, becasue the two cards share a commmon connector internally. One card must be disconnected in order to connect the other.

Sheldon

[dstagl]

So, is 32 track record ability availble for the Venue now with the LE option? I thought it was only 18.

Dave

[Sheldon Radford]

Hi Dave,

18 is the magic number.

It's important to distinguish between the number of I/O to/from VENUE and the number of tracks within Pro Tools, because they are treated separately. There are 18 I/O connections between VENUE and Pro Tools LE; however, up to 32 tracks are available within Pro Tools LE (expandable to 48 tracks with the Music Production Toolkit), and these tracks can be mixed down to 18 or fewer busses using the internal Pro Tools mixer before being passed to VENUE via the 18 I/O connections.

So to sum it up: it's possible to record up to 18 tracks simultaneously from VENUE, but playback up to 32 (or 48) tracks, via sub-mixing within Pro Tools.

Sheldon