My Blog; Don’t expect much

How to get rid of Pro Tools forever!

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:09:28 -0500

I upgraded to Leopard, and found that Pro Tools would no longer work. The frustration begins. Tried staying at 10.5.3 and all that for about a week - no luck.
Uninstalled the Pro Tools and CoreAudio Manager software. I did a COMPLETE uninstall of only Pro Tools; I’ve still got Reason, Melodyne Essential, etc.
Updated Melodyne Essential to 1.8.3
Switched to an Edirol Audio Capture device. OS boots up and just, FINDS IT!!! That was a joy.
Go into the root library (in my case HD/Library/Application Support) and get rid of the ReWire plugin.
Don’t leave yet. Now, go into the ReWire folder within the Propellerhead Software folder and get rid of the ReWire shortcut AND the ReWire.bundle. This file will create ANOTHER ReWire plugin if you don’t get rid of it.
Empty trash, reboot and you should be stylin! If Garageband crashes, try launching again until you get the “Reset and Launch” option.

I am now running Mac OS 10.5.4 with Logic Express, Garageband, SoundTrack Pro, Reason, MeloDyne Essential quite happily using the Edirol FA-66. FCP Suite opens and runs flawlessly, and I feel very good. I hope this helps anyone who is looking for a way to remove the Digidesign elements of their lives. Peace.

Why I no longer use Pro Tools

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:32:16 -0500

As you can tell by now, I don’t blog unless I feel I’ve got something to blog about. Well, this time I feel that I do.

As an instructor at a technical college in Wisconsin, it is our duty to constantly be on the cutting edge with technology both with audio and video. As an example we recently upgraded to HD and are running the Final Cut Suite for video transfer and editing. We cover Motion Graphics and have our first course in Adobe After Effects starting this fall. That being said, there have been two main ongoing problems with the Pro Tools LE audio software we use that have caused me to reconsider the use of the program.

First, Pro Tools demands that it be installed and run at an administrator level. This causes all kinds of problems with our IT department due to security and network issues. The only way we were able to get around that was to create a separate user called “Pro Tools User,” give it administrator privileges, and then hide all but the music apps from that user. A kind of slick idea for a pesky problem, if you ask me.

Second, once installed Pro Tools is not very nice about upgrades to the operating system, QuickTime, (in our case) etc. Since 1994 we’ve had a mantra at our college; “You don’t buy a Mac, you buy PRO TOOLS that happens to be RUNNING on a Mac.” We had at one time invested almost $15,000 in an audio system, and were frantically looking around for a Mac QUADRA, because it was the only machine that still ran NuBus! The software issue turned out to be solved by adding administrative commands to remove the upgrade capability. That’s not a very good solution, but it worked.

Thirdly Digidesign, due to all of the various software that is out there and the stuff that comes bundled with it, needs to take such a long time before it upgrades and corrects problems, by the time they release a patch, a newer operating system is coming out that fixes a problem elsewhere in the system but causes a new one with Pro Tools. I can only imagine the agony that would exist if we were running Avid video software as well. Combine this with the fact that the M-Box itself takes so much power it needs to be plugged into a USB port that has the highest amperage output that the computer can provide. Now that sounds like a little thing, but if took a week before I figured it out, because the USB ports on the FRONT of the Power Mac do not have the same amperage as the ones on the BACK!

These problems are usually solved by a month or more long process of researching information, trying things, failing, trying again.... This has historically been my job in order to keep the machines running.

So it is because of this situation, along with the emergence of alternative software packages that provide comparable sonic quality, that I can no longer support Digidesign’s Pro Tools.

Next, I’ll tell you how I got rid of Pro Tools for good!

First Blog 2008

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:18:29 -0600

I wrote a beginning to a short video called “The Motivational Militia.” This was originally a mash-up of ideas that Sam Von Ruden and Jason Robertson had. I put it into Celtx, and offer it to you. Motivational militia.celtx