When you buy new external drives for Pro Tools be aware of three things.
USB is not supported. Pro Tools won’t allow you to record or playback off USB drives. They can only be used as ‘transfer drives’.
Firewire drives should have Oxford chipsets. Most drives that have Oxford chipsets do advertise the fact. Most cheaper drives don’t, so be careful. Although firewire drives that don’t have Oxford chipsets will work with Pro Tools you can expect problems with both performance issues and even data loss so my advice is don’t go thee, it isn’t worth it.
When you get your new drive home re-format it. For all Mac users use Apple’s Disk Utility as all drives attached to Mac based Pro Tools rigs must be formatted ‘Mac OS Extended (Journalled)’. For more help see the free help guide on my web site.
New Macs
Also remember that the new Macs announced yesterday have only have one Firewire 800 port and no Firewire 400 ports. If you go for a new Mac you must buy a Firewire 800 to 400 adaptor cable if you are going to use any of Digidesign’s existing hardware, although remember that Digidesign have yet to announce support for the new Macs so you will be in unsupported territory until Digidesign get their hands on some of the new machines and put them through their exhausting test procedures, but don’t expect a quick answer. If you want to be safe then do a deal on an existing approved model.
Mike is Pro Tools genius and an award winning ‘audiomeister’, defined as ‘a person of great skill and authority in sound’. His vast array of credits include music (from classical to rock), drama and documentaries across all the BBC Radio networks, as well as audio post production for video and TV, ‘new media’, live sound, commercial CDs, DVDs and podcasts, helping clients tell their stories with sound. He has been described as "an oasis of calm in a stormy creative world"; "quick, creative & easy to work with"; "always going the extra mile"; and "invests himself in the success of your project"’.show me less content in the footer
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Seven radio producers – all based in the north of England – have joined forces to launch a new co-operative venture – ‘Radio Wizards’. It’s equally remarkable that their aim now is to work together on every kind of sound production... except radio!
"It’s taken over a year to get to this point," says ‘wizard’ Mike Thornton, "but now we’ve got a viable business plan, we’ve launched our website and we’re already starting to attract commissions. As a facilities provider we decided to facilitate this partnership and set them up with a web site to help kickstart this excellent partnership."
