hi there smoove..iwas just gonna head out an get me a 1620 w fw for laptop connectivity..can yu tell me if your setup is peformaing smoothly..my laptoop's going to be 4200 rpm-5400 rpm of disk drive speed, maybe an external firewire card.
ijust want to know, can i hook it all up to get 16 ch of audio ito my laptop at a gig and hope to get thru it without any glitches in audio, or dropouts,..Thanks

Gucci

ProTools only ever runs with a very limited set of hardware. This means that it will only start if that hardware is connected and it will only use that hardware for inputs and outputs. (As for audio that is, more accepting for midi).

The list of hardware includes the "corporate" line as in "every-day-lorry-type-of-use". These are the only ones that run the REAL ProTools. All the rest runs the cut-down version called ProTools LE, not to say that LE is bad but just so you know.

The interfaces on the "citizen-use" level are the Digidesign MBox2 and 002R and thats it! Well there is the 002 without the R if you want moving faders. A few older variations as well, the 001 and the original MBox.

Then there is the new line also targeted at "citizen-use", well some are downright "student-level" from M-Audio where some cards are approved for use with a variation on ProTools LE, not bad as such either.

ProTools LE is currently strictly limited to max 32 channels, which probably is not a problem for most people. But it will also very soon start you longing for all kinds of very expensive (and good) plugins.

So basically if you want to run ProTools with your Onyx Firewire you are out of luck. You may use your nice mixer and send two channels into the MBox, or 8 channels into the 002R but in either case you have no use for the firewire connection on your Onyx. You might want to track things using another application and then mix it in ProTools LE, but I cannot really see the purpose of that.

You will also hear the "magic" words of beeing able to move your project easily to and from a professional studio. Well, it might be true at times, but part of what makes the professional studio are all those super nice, and super expensive, plugins which you will not afford at home. If they even can run on PT LE. A profession ProTools facility can also both export and import just about any sound files.

As for the MBox2 I know nothing more than what is written on the net. It looks very much like the original MBox though, and of that I own one and like it a lot for what it does.

You can probably find the original MBox at a slightly lower price and that one has some strong points and some weak points. The main weak points are that it is strictly 2 in-2out and that it for some uses has a bit high latency. It might also have trouble with some computer hardware, but that is of course true of any soundcard. The strenghts include good preamps and good converters. For the price that is. I would expect the Onyx to sport better of both, but I cannot really tell. And you can of course run ProTools LE to your hearts deligth, if that sort of thing makes you tick.

And that sort of concludes it.

Personally, I keep my MBox as a DA besides my computer as I haven´t got around to replace it yet. Very occassionally it is used for recording as well. But I stopped using ProTools LE a long time ago. Never liked that feeling of beeing locked into a specific hardware type. And I also got this suspicious feeling that it was all set up for me to spend enormous amounts of money on additional effects to get better EQ-s and compressors or what. So after a long evaluation I decided on another program instead that fits my needs better, Samplitude, but that is a completely different story. The MBox runs quite well with that program as well so no loss there.

Gunnar

Gucci........ i have the 1640 and i love it.....with the laptop u say u have and the 1620 u shouldnt have a problem i dont have any problems wit it......

I love cubase and the onyx firewire and i have no complaints........the only reason i would use protools is to become efficient in it because all of the major studios and artist i work wit use protools......do u suggest i stick wit cubase and just take the files to a protools based studio to get mastered.........is that efficient.....