New MBox owner - Workflow questions

[mortalengines]

I just bought an Mbox because I could use some decent inputs & outputs for recording (and it was too good a deal at the guitar center's memorial day sale). 99.9% of what I do however, is Virtual, using mostly Reason or Reaktor Session. I also recently bought Ableton live to use as a "live" instrument but haven't really used it as of yet. I guess my question is..."What's the best way to get the most out of these 3 applications? Does anyone currently using these three have any suggestions? Do you use Pro Tools' sequencer to control the other two apps or, does Pro Tools mostly serve as a master clock & rewire mixer with all of the sequencing done in the rewire slaves applications (if this is even possible, I don't know)? - or is it just easier to render one's favorite reason/ableton loops as wav files & slice & dice from there? No need to get technical, I am just curious to get some insights on Pro Tools' workflow. Any links to tutorials or previous postings on this forum would be welcome. I have a 1.5GHZ G4 powerbook with 512MB of RAM running OS 10.3.4.

[pk_hat]

I personally find Reason to work best in PT in ReWire mode, and even then, I prefer it standalone.
Live has been my main writing tool for over 2 years now, and again, I prefer to use it standalone, then render the tracks when I need the use of PT, which, besides using for final mixdown, I rarely need to anymore. I track everything in Live, midi, audio, vocals, gtrs, bass, outboard synths, etc...

[the_chopper]

I would suggest getting some more ram, at least 1gb. i have a 1.25 powerbook, and had to bounce my reason files to .aiff, import as audio into PT to really be able to run additional tracks with low latency, and even then it was 512. edits required re-opening reason, re exporting, etc. a pain in the workflow butt. rewire would just eat up everything.

i'm now at 1.25g ram, and everything is running MUCH smoother. the system itself even seems to boot up faster!
Crucial has a 1g ram dimm (samsung) for under $200 with free shipping (at least they did)... do it now.
the apple store still wants $500 for the same (i know, i know, apple only "officially" supports THEIR ram, but if i'm not mistaken, their ram is samsung.) also an external HD running the oxford chipset and 7200 revs.

personally, i'd also jump to 10.3.8 (i'm at .9 and everything runs fine, knock on aluminum)... and get the newest core audio driver. with PTLE 6.4 this has been extremely stable for me. if you are running 6.7 you might want to get some additional input.

now make some music!

[mortalengines]

Thanks for the info. One more question for PK Hat...do you monitor Ableton in stand alone mode with the MBox, or just using the mac's core audio & output?

[mortalengines]

Hey, thanks for the info- by the way - RAM upgrades are fairly cheap- even Macs - It will cost only about a 100 bucks to upgrade from 512M to 1.25G here in good ol' portland oregon- I thought about doing it myself & even checked crucial's website & then realized that even with my teeniest screw drivers (#S 0 & 1 Phillips), I couldn't open the RAM door so... rather than strip my screws, I am going to pay the extra 33 bucks & let someone else give it a shot (they at least know how to get in there somehow). And yes, after this posting, I swear....I WILL MAKE SOME MUSIC.