Why do I need MBOX Control?

[MightyT]

I’ve been messing with MBOX Control for my MBOX Studio for a while. That said, I recently got Pro Tools Studio and am wondering, do I need to bother with MBOX Control? What would be the point if I have Pro Tools.

Again, please forgive me, I am admittedly a novice playing with home audio.

[Darryl Ramm]

You use MBox control to do... all the things that MBox control does. Have you really read the documentation played with Control enough to know what it does? Like really play with it, you should be able to set up hardware mixes etc.

MBox Control is not a DAW and can't record anything. They do very different things.

The big slab of features in software like MBox Control is low latency hardware monitoring, where here you set up low latency monitor mixes in MBox Control, aka "hardware monitoring" vs. the high-latency software based monitoring you get thorough a DAW like Pro Tools aka "software monitoring".

What the latency is with software monitoring depends on the DAC/ADC conversion latency as well as H/W buffer size, (and how small you can set that and still run reliably... which depends on your computer, the audio interface quality, the audio interface driver quality, how well you have everything setup and optimized etc.) and any plugins you are running in the software monitoring signal chain that add latency. Hardware monitoring typically is just almost all DAC/ADC conversion latency.

And the hardware mixer aspects of Mbox Control may be more important here than with some other interfaces because the MBox Studio is really annoyingly crippled to only 8 DAW return outputs, even though there are up to 22 physical outputs, so you have to route those DAW return outputs to the range of physical outputs using the hardware mixer configured in Mbox Control. Bit of a pile of porky pies from Avid marketing.

The other area of features is just basic hardware setup. Most of which you can't do from Pro Tools or any other DAW.

Hardware monitoring especially is pretty basic stuff in audio recording, if it's completly new to you you should grab a book or two and do some reading. Bobby Owsinski's Handbook books are a good start. Even if you don't intend to hardware monitor you should get familiar with this, because some day it will get turned on if only by accident, and will bite you in the ass.

[albee1952]

Well said^^^ and you could simply uninstall Mbox Control and see what happens. Its easy enough to reinstall it

[tope d]

Great explanation Darryl, Thank you!

[MightyT]

Thanks VERY MUCH for the detailed reply Darryl!

Clearly I am still learning and at times waiting for the light bulb moment. I have yet to find a book specific to MBOX Control, but easily found a couple of Pro Tools books. That said I’ve been trying to understand the MBOX hardware and software first. I managed to get all my hardware and software inputs setup and hardware outputs. I don’t know enough to mess with much else. Have been setting up Presets and Action Buttons. But that’s pretty much it.

I have tried finding MBOX Videos, but most just tell you what the hardware buttons are and what to plug in where. Few give you minimum insight into MBOX Control.

Wish there was an online MBOX Control Class. I bought a 3 hour Pro Tools class and found an older 10+ hour free Pro Tools class, but professional ones are very costly for a mere drummer wanting to learn some audio.

I appreciate your suggestion and will try and decipher and take advantage of them.

Thank you again for taking the time to reply! It’s very helpful!

[albee1952]

I think there are some video tutorials available, either on Avid's website or youtube. Check those out as they explain things much better than I could ever do.

[MightyT]

Thank you! I will search Avid’s site though it’s a bit hard to follow. Hopefully I can find a video that would give me a lightbulb moment.

[Bruce Paine]

Originally Posted by MightyT

Thank you! I will search Avid’s site though it’s a bit hard to follow. Hopefully I can find a video that would give me a lightbulb moment.

I added a sticky thread to the top of the MBOX Studio forum with some links to info on the main Avid website.