So around Christmastime I got a new computer, a shiny iMac. I think I’ve mentioned that I haven’t had a new Mac in over 10 years, since back in the says of System 7. But I was seduced by the image of hipsters on white backgrounds poking fun at hapless corporate types, and repulsed by the prospect of running Vista, so there you go. The plan was to make the Mac the new center of my home recording studio. I’ll bet you’re wondering how that’s been going, moving into the new machine and all. Well, let me tell you.
First of all, I’ve been really busy lately, working 60+ hour weeks for a product launch at work, plus a couple trips. So it’s been taking a while. I didn’t really have time to do much over the Holidays other than plug the computer in and tour some of the built-in apps. I don’t even have email on it yet! And then I was in the middle of a song (The Nine) which I wanted to finish before I switched my rig.
But a couple of weeks ago I finally got around to it. I successfully downloaded, authorized and installed PT 7.1 on the Mac. I use an MBox for audio I/O, and the ProTools upgrade was free, and worked just great, and the DigiDesign website was about as painless as you can expect that sort of thing to be. To give it a test drive, I recorded 2-track demo of She Came in Thru the Bathroom Window. Voice and piano, recorded live, which was kinda cool cuz I’d never tried singing and playing at once before; I usually overdub the vocal. I had the Rhodes in one input and the mic in the other, and it worked fine. With the wireless Mac keyboard I can start and stop the music sitting at the piano. Only problem is I have to turn around to see the screen, but for pressing play it’s great.
Now the current version of PT is 7.4, and I have no idea what’s new in last .3 revs. I’m told there’s a lot better MIDI support for things like time stretching. I wonder to what extent I can move files back and forth between my 2 machines now. Also, PT is officially not supported for OS 10.5, but it seems to work just fine.
Next I installed SampleTank, but PT couldn’t see it. I thought maybe it’s because I haven’t loaded any samples yet, or maybe I need to authorize it, I dunno. So then the project veered off to cruising IK Multimedia’s website and getting in touch with their tech support. After a couple weeks of back’n’forth, I learned that my version of SampleTank (LE 2.08) doesn’t work for Intel Macs, although it’s not clear what the issue is. IK want me to pay $300 to upgrade to a new version of SampleTank, and it’s not also clear how compatible it would be — how much work it’d be to import my old songs with the same patches and everything. So getting to the bottom of that and deciding if I want to do the upgrade is a whole research project.
I figured before I went too much further I’d see how the Mac likes my MIDI interface. It’s a MOTU MIDI Express XT, and MOTU’s web site says it’s plug and play for the Mac, and shawnuff I can see it in the list of USB devices. But when I bang on the keys of my synth, PT doesn’t get the events. So now the question is what software do I need to get ProTools to talk to my external MIDI interface? I’m pretty sure there’s no OMS anymore.
I found drivers for the XT for Mac OS on the MOTU web site, so that seem like a good place to start. Then I discovered the Audio and MIDI settings panel in the Mac OS. Unfortunately when I open the midi panel, it said it couldn’t load due to an error. It suggested I uninstall any recent drivers and try again. I did this but got the same error. Debugging this will be a whole nuther research project.
So in light of this I’m now thinking of installing Parallels or VMWare and running my whole music rig in XP, since I know everything works with that and I have all the software, drivers and everything. This kinda make the whole new Mac thing seem like a waste and failure, but I guess I can still cross over in time, once I get the MacOS issues worked out. Still it’s gotten to the point where it’s holding me back from working on new songs, so I just want to get back to making music. So for tonight I’m going back to my old laptop, and maybe I’ll be in XP via BootCamp on my Mac next weekend. At least I’ll be able to look at 24 tracks of faders on the widescreen display.