Some basic Mbox questions

[didger]

I've had various large & small PT systems over a period of many years. Lately I'm spending about half the year away from my studio and I've been using a Powerbook with Free PT and a lot of other music software to work on things while abroad (India). The biggest limitation of Free PT is only 8 tracks, so I'm thinking of an Mbox with my G3 333Mhz Powerbook and a 7200 RPM fire wire drive. With this and and Mbox, can I run 16 tracks at once and also several plugs?
Secondly, what are the limitations of PT LE? Are the automation features for click/drag of pan and volume levels the same as full PT? What are the LE frustration aspects if you're used to full PT?
Thanx

[orage]

You shouldn't have any problems running up to 24 tracks on your MBox/G3. Plug-in count is dependent upon processor speed and plug-in choice. Since your plug-ins are native, they tap into CPU performance...some plugs eat up more CPU, like Reverb...Sans-Amp is also pretty hungry

I run LE on my 667 TiBook/MBox with 24 tracks, multiple EQ/Comp inserts, a delay or two on auxes, Ren Verb on another aux and sometimes L1+ on my Master.

Your G3 will probably see slightly less performance...

As far as I know, automation click/drag are the same...but I'm primarily an LE user...

Hope this helps!

[Ken Davidson]

Well, just so you know, I don't think the Powerbook G3 333 is supported by Digi. With that said, I just bought an mBox and am using it with my Powerbook G3 333.

It works and is well worth the upgrade from PT Free (e.g. the tab to transient feature, stereo tracks, more tracks, etc.), but the processer speed is definitely limiting. You can fiddle around with the buffer sizes, add RAM, increase CPU allocation, etc to compensate, but 16 tracks with several plug-ins might be a bit taxing. Especially if you're using some of the more demanding plug-ins (after adding a few of the Waves plugs on different tracks, I found that things started getting very sluggish). I'm pretty sure that these problems go away with a G4.


As for the automation limitations, I think it's pretty much the same except there's no "Trim Mode," "Manual Write To," or "Auto Write On Stop" in LE.

Hope that helps.

-K

[didger]

Thanks for the incredibly quick replies!! Ain't the internet just amazing? Not too long ago India was beyond the edge of the world, now it's as close as anywhere else to anywhere.
Thanks for the tip about "a G4 would solve the problems". I've been playing the equipment upgrade game for about 25 years (started with big modular analog systems and primitive super expensive computer control stuff, then Synclavier, now Macs, PT, Propellerhead, etc. I'm not upgrading as fast and as expensive as I used to. I'll see how the G3 and Mbox works. Even a dual 1.25 g4 would only solve the problems for a little while, and then you'd have to have a g5 and terabyte drives and then a g6, then...g10 teraflop ultramachine etc etc etc. Never ends. In any case, for MBox,lots of plugs are not so important for me. I need the tracks. The final mix will be on my TDM system anyway. Again, thanks.

[Ken Davidson]

I know... technology and upgrades are inevitable and often the bane of my bank account. I bought my g3 in mid-'99 and it already belongs in a museum.

the mbox is a great investment though. if plug-ins aren't a big deal, you should be fine with 16 trks.

One last point: As you probably already know, I've found that varying the buffer sizes seems to really help with these antiquated dinosaurs.

Good luck with the project,

K.