Pro Tools 6 with Mbox tips

[Dale-c]

SoundWrangler, how is the overall performance compared to 5.2 on your machine? The performance of OS X if just fine, it isn't really slow at all. The video speed for PT 6 isn't the greatest but I am hoping that this will improve once my memory upgrade arrives.

[SoundWrangler]

Honestly, I've only been using that machine for pretty simple tasks: under 16 audio tracks & under 5 minute durations. If by "video" you mean graphics performance in general, yes, it's slightly sluggish even w/640MB, but acceptable. (Graphics controller on iMac G3/400 seems to be much slower than a B&W G3/400 desktop anyway.) I actually haven't run QT video in a PT session w/ver. 6 on that machine yet; it wasn't too bad w/ver. 5.xx, although I generally was only running 6 audio tracks or less in those particular Sessions.
You will definitely run into performance limitations per number of tracks a lot sooner than folks with a G4 (duh), & FYI reverb plug-ins significantly hammer your system (maybe reducing your potential track count without playback glitches by 3 or 4 tracks?). But that's what Bounce to Disk, submixing, and the Save As command are for, right? Once you get used to the limitations of your system, you can definitely get work done (even if you DO grumble about some of the extra steps).
Depending on your "quality" requirements, I can tell you that 16-bit, vs. 24-bit sessions definitely lighten the load on your G3-based system. (Yeah, I know...) You need to be more obsessive than some users about optimizing disks, setting Screen Effects and Energy Saver to "never", turning Personal File Sharing off, & all that, too...

[Dale-c]

Thats good to know. I have never used more than 16 tracks at a time anyway. Most of the time 8-12 is plenty for me. I have opened my most demanding sessions in 6 and they do play, just the meters and such are a little off. I do a half hour radio program every week for my church and I only use three tracks for that and only an EQ or two as far as plugs go. The big thing for me is that you can't scroll with a wheel yet with PT 6 and that is a big deal for me.
I may still use 5 a lot until more bugs are worked out of 6. But I got the free upgrade so it is nice to be able to open a session without rebooting and everything else is fabulous with OS X.

[jamieoliver]

I'm running PT6 LE M-Box on a G4 876Mhz with 10.2.4 and am unable to record to a stereo track - I get DAE Error -9060.
On my iBook 500Mhz with 10.2.3 it records to stereo just fine.

[Dale-c]

I was dissapointed with the video speed (screen redraw and such) but I lowered the CPU setting and that helped. I guess I was taking to much away from the OS.

[J. Guerrero]

Hey, I have a little tip... I use ShadowKiller and MOX Optimize, following the advice someone posted last week. I LOVE those products! Here's why:
The only bug that PT6 has with my setup is that when I close the lid to put to sleep my laptop, and then wake it up after a while, if I wanna run PT I have to restart the laptop cause a DAE deck can't be started.
After I installed MOX Optimize, I can use PT, close the app, set my laptop unconscious, wake it up and use PT again with no problems.
Now, the following has nothing to do with the above, but because of a TDM forum topic, I tried today the MIDI Patchbay app that the manual says can be used to sync PT6 with Reason 2 and it works like a charm.

[marty martin]

Thanks for the tip there J.
Shadowkiller and Tinkertool both work great.
How do you get MOX Optimize to fix the sleeping thing though. Some of the functions on that thing look well scarey for the novice.

[Dale-c]

I installed Shadowkiller but now PT won't work. When I load a sesion I get an unexpected quit. And I did just repair permissions.

[J. Guerrero]

I honestly don't know what it did to fix the bug. I just tweaked it to let everything "bare bones", and a couple nights ago, I noticed that the sleep bug wasn't there anymore, and I haven't installed anything after MOX and ShadowKiller. Here are my settings for MOX, just in case it might work for somebody else:

STARTUP: Checked Optimize Finder, Dock and Windows, along with Quit when optimization is done.
FINDER: I checked all options, except for the "Add Quit item." I set the priority for the Finder between Normal and High, for the Dock Normal priority, and for the WindowServer I set it to Highest.
LOOK: All options are checked. Also gave a 300% boost to the mouse (which won't affect the trackpad speed). But when I hook up a mouse, the thing is fast, but a little erratic in behaviour.
DOCK: The only options I checked were the disable dock magnification, and disable animation when opening apps. The minimize effect is set to Genie, which performs better than the scale and the suck effect.

I didn't mess with the rest of the options and in the Preferences menu, I selected Use smooth resize and set a short delay for quiting. I also put MOX and ShadowKiller in the Startup Items menu so they kick in as soon as I log in.
That's all I did. Like I said, I don't really know why the bug is gone, but I'm not missing it.

[ronev]

jamieoliver, check the answer base for error -9060. It has to do with firewire harddrives, and their initialization. Had the same problems till I got a fw hard drive for macs, not pc's. Also, check your extension manager for third-party fw hd extensions. Usually you only need Apple's fw extensions.

Hope this helps.