My east west/pro tools/computer brainstorm

[charlie2]

I'm thinking of getting the east west samples, and there's three possible roads I can take to do it.

1. I can put it on my xps400 dell computer which has 4 gigs of memory. The os is media center. I use pro tools 7.3 on it. I was told that structure could be used to make pro tools and east west work together. Anyone know anything about that?

2. I'm not sure that would work so I researched new computers.

I priced sweetwater's creation station, audiodaw (i think their name is) and pcaudio's roxbox. The roxbox had the most bang for the buck. From what I understand they were all similar computers and the rox box was around $1000 less.

Anyway, this new computer which has east west and 8 gigs of memory would be connected to my old one which has pro tools 7.3 on it.
I'll be able to keep the 7.3 and record just like i always do on my old computer, but with the added east west samples and the 8 gigs of memory. Is this possible?

PS. I heard linking the two computers is extremely difficult and then I heard it isn't. ????

3. Another possible way to go is to use just one computer (either mine or a new one) and change my DAW to a 64 bit to make it work with east west. If I do this, I might also have to get rid of my M box2 because I'm not sure that it could be used with other daws. Anyone, know if it can?

I'm thinking of taking this possible route because I heard that pro tools will never be 64 bit and you need 64 bit for memory and you need the memory for the big east west type samples. Anyone know if this is true?


What do most pro people use besides pro tools...sonar, cubase, logic which is mac,...what are the pro DAWS? Is that it in the pro league?

but if I do that, I wonder how long it will take to learn and get up and use a new daw.

PS. I'll most likely also add addictive, or another drum program to the mix, plus a decent drum pad.

Anyway...thanks again for all the help.

[jlizerbram]

Hi Charlie,

This is a topic that can go on and on. Personally, I am getting by fine using Sonar on a quad-core PC with 4GB (really, 3.25 GB in reality) RAM, using 32-bit. I use EastWest A LOT in my music, and the PLAY engine runs fine in 32-bit. I haven't made the move to 64 bit yet, but it seems I haven't run into any latency, performance or workflow issues. Also, my Presonus Firestudio Project audio interface really connects all my analogue, midi and digital equipment well. I know one day I'll move to 64-bit, it's inevitable, so you might as well get there now.

It's funny, now that I described my setup, it sounds REALLY antiquated!! It's gotten me some forwards, though!

Jeff

[t4mh]

Charlie, are you having a problem running your Pro Tools and E/W on your present machine? I believe you said this was a Dell XPS with 4G of ram. What OS are you running? XP? Vista? Vista 32 or 64bit?

I think you are confusing some things in this thread. As far as I know, both Pro Tools and E/W are 32 bit applications which means they "want" to run and can run inside of 4G of ram. Additional ram is a good thing for them to be able to access. You can have more audio tracks and more E/W instruments playing at one time if you have additional ram on your computer. However, you will have to have a 64bit Operating System ( OS ) like Vista Business 64 bit or Windows 7 to be able to "get to" the ram above 4GB.

A 32bit OS will only "go up to" 4G of ram.

Hope this makes sense to you
Keith

[mojobone]

Connecting two computers isn't difficult; merely complicated. If you use a 64-bit OS sample playback machine and record with a 32-bit machine, you just need a way to send MIDI data to the sampler and audio output to the recorder. It becomes complicated because there are several ways to do each task. You could run MIDI out from your sequencing/recording machine and digital audio back in through the same interface, depending on the number of digital inputs and MIDI outputs your interface has. You could also connect the two machines via Gigabit ethernet and send the MIDI over LAN, bringing the audio streams back through the audio interface on the master machine. It should also be possible to run both MIDI and digital audio bi-directionally over Ethernet; not sure about that, you might have to use ReWire or another third party app to do it. (would save you a lot of money on an interface or two, so probably can't be done, heh) There may be a few more ways I haven't thought of, too, but much depends on your interface(s).

[mazz]

Actually it's supposed to be possible to send audio and midi over ethernet via Vienna Ensemble Pro. The thing is, apparently Play doesn't run on the latest version of VE!! I'm sure it will eventually, though. You're supposed to be able to send something like 64 channels of audio over the ethernet network.

I actually stream 3 computers back into my master mac pro and I do it with a combination of old school (MIDI and digital audio via lightpipe), and MIDI Over LAN, which works quite well.

It does get a bit complicated, but once you've got it set up it works fine. I've seen over and over where people get hung up is they conceptually treat the computer as a computer and not as simply a slave sample player. On the slave machine, you simply need to get MIDI in and audio out. How you do it is really dependent on how you work. If you need tempo synced effects, arpeggiators, etc., then you need to run your VIs in a host DAW that can slave to MIDI sync coming from the host machine. If you're simply triggering samples, you can use a stand alone application such as Kontakt, which will receive 64 MIDI channels and output something upwards of 24 stereo audio outputs. Once I've booted up my slaves and have loaded the samples into the templates I've set up (a necessity when working with this stuff, IMO), I don't even need to look at them anymore, just send MIDI over and enable the corresponding audio input on my master and compose away.

If you've never done something like this before and you're just beginning in all of this stuff, it's going to be a steep climb, though. Just a fair warning. It's totally do-able, but it's probably going to take some time to get it all functioning unless you can afford to hire someone to come over and get it set up and show you how to use it.

Good luck!

Mazz

[charlie2]

Right now I have a dell xps 400. The os is media center which has been treaked up the gazoo to make it work with my 7.3 pro tools.
I didn't know that east west is 32 bit! In fact I know very little of this stuff to begin with.

The guy at pc audio mentioned the vienna ensemble to connect my computers, but I didn't know it didn't work with the east west play thing. Play means east west...correct?

ok. here's another 4th idea. Maybe I should just buy the east west and try it in my dell computer. I think I might have to upgrade my Pro tools to 7.4 and also I might have to use structure, which I already have. Does anyone know about using structure with east west?

If all this doesn't work, then I'd look into another computer.

Does this sound better then my other 3 options?

"As far as I know, both Pro Tools and E/W are 32 bit applications which means they "want" to run and can run inside of 4G of ram"
If this is true then option 4 may be better, but you guys know a lot more than me about this stuff.

All your suggestions are very helpful...

[charlie2]

New development. Just spoke to a techie.

I could put my east west in my dell xps, but I'd have to upgrade my pro tools above 7.3. This could be a problem because my computer may not be able to handle it.

My os is media center and it's not supported by PT, even though I been using PT 7.3 on it for the past year. Upgrading PT may flip it out.

This is a chance I have to take, because PT software is not returnable once you use it.

What should I do???????????

Thanks for all the help....

by the way...I found out I don''t need structure to use east west.

[monteverdejon]

i just wanted to add a potentially unhelpful vent...upgraded to the newest version of PLAY (v2.0.9) this afternoon in hopes it would work better in Pro Tools, only to have it start crashing my Ableton Live when I try to export a mix! (i didn't actually get a chance to see if PT worked better under Play 2 because it sort of worked under PLAY 1.2.5 and worked well in Live under PLAY 1.2.5.)

i consider myself not a tech guru, but able enough to figure out computers etc. on my own, and i'm used to being vigilant before attempting upgrades, but eastwest really takes it to a new level of DIY research to try and figure out if any given version will work or not with a piece of software.

back on-topic, I'm on PT LE 8 with PLAY 1.2.5 on a Mac, and it's between so-so and not-very-happy in the stability department...to the point that for now i'm mostly using Live as my DAW when i want to use PLAY instruments.

[t4mh]

My os is media center

Charlie, buddy, this doesn't make any sense to me. Media Center is an application for playing a variety of media that comes with several Microsoft operating systems, like Vista and Windows 7, but is not an operating system by itself. So which OS are you using? Until we know this answer the rest is largely irrelevant.

Keith

[mojobone]

I'm on a Media Center XP machine, myself, and running (among other things) Gigastudio, which is (technically) not supported on Media Center PCs. So far, so good; it works for me, knock wood. I run Tracktion native, and could give neither a fig, nor even a date for ProTools. One man's opinion, heh.