Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

[Robert S.]

I have never had an issue with my G5 and now that I have an issue I find that I am not quite syre what to do.

I bought a new keyboard and updated my software to OS X 10.4. I had no issues with 10.3.9 other than with the funtions of the new board. Everything is working well except for one thing which is my primary use for this machine which is my recording software.

Now when I fire up my ProTools rig I get a series of messages that I don't know how to deal with. This is the first:

The original disk allocation for this session cannot be used. One or more drives could not be found or are invalad for this session. As a result, disk allocation has been modified. Would you like to verify the new disk allocation?

This comes with 2 buttons, "check disk allocation" and "no".

After I get to the session I cannot que up the record funtion and the messages I get state that Macintosh HD is not an audio volume or that no record volumes are designated.


All my wav files are intact but it seems that I have caused the volumes to change with the installation of OSX 10.4 and I have wiped out my file paths. What do I need to do to restore my volumes and file paths?

Its not a fatal error and everything seems to still be on my hard drive but it seems I need to restore some settings, create a new volume, change a volume status or something along those lines.

Any help would be greatly appriciated. I have not had issue 1 with this machine in over 3 years and as a result I am not familiar with the inner workings of a Mac. My Mac dealer has a killer staff of guys that could straighten out this machine for me but it's a 4 hour drive and I just don't have the time to take a ride across state or sit on the phone during business hours.

Help!

 

[ParameterMan]

Re: Mac guys - need help!

Re: Mac guys - need help!

It sounds to me like it's primarily a ProTools issue, or I should say should be fixable from within PT. Looks like the update altered a directory name slightly, and now PT is looking in the wrong place for your files. I would wonder if other PT users have experienced this problem- I looked around a bit at the DUC, but I'm not a user so was a bit lost.

It may be a matter of either figuring out what changed, or telling PT to look in a different place. In PT, can you trash all volumes and start over?

 

[Gamera]

Re: Mac guys - need help!

Re: Mac guys - need help!

Yep, my guess is it's a ProTools issue. And I'd further speculate that by hitting "check disk allocation" that it may be able to sort through everything by itself. I'm not a PT user but just the act of "checking" doesn't sound like cause for alarm nor should it mess up any files. Maybe make a backup of the WAV's just in case but I really don't anticipate a problem. Just click it.

 

[CapoFirstFret]

Re: Mac guys - need help!

Re: Mac guys - need help!

it is a pro tools issue. See during the installation of protools, it setups your harddrive up for optimal audio recording speeds...well when you updated your OS, apparently you messed some of those things up and pro tools needs to do it again.

It's a long messed up process...check out digidesign's website for more in depth help but it is a pro tools issue, and not a mac issue.

 

[Robert S.]

Re: Mac guys - need help!

Re: Mac guys - need help!

It is a ProTools issue.

I found out how to relink to my wav files in the digibase guide but I am still getting messages that my "Macintosh HD" is not an audio volume or some sort of nonsense. I guess I can call my Mac guys and see if there is a fix for that or I will probably need to get ahold of a good ProTools guy.

It's not a huge issue and I can see that the fix is right in front of me but it's still frustrating. This is the first time I've added software and/or hardware and it caused any type of issue.

At least I'm really digging the new keyboard!

 

[Robert S.]

Re: Mac guys - need help!

Re: Mac guys - need help!

Turns out that by upgrading my OSX that I no longer can use the ProTools v6.9 and I may need to upgrade to v7.x.

I found this off of the Digi site:

http://duc.digidesign.com/ubbthreads.php?Cat=

Looks like I have a lot of reading to do but it looks to be a very userful site for ProTools users.

 

[Robert S.]

Re: Mac guys - need help!

Re: Mac guys - need help!

How about the guys in here, any pointers?

 

[J Moose]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

This kinda thing is EXACTLY why I jumped off the Fool Toolz bandwagon years ago...

As soon I read the first post I knew the most likely solution was one of two things... update to newest version of Toolz or roll back to the old OS.

When the file allocation & path names get buggered sometimes the easiest/quickest fix is start a new session and reload the exisiting audio files into it...

Hopefully all the data is/was backed up somewhere...

Yeah. Ya gotta love Ditch-a-design.

Is your audio drive the "system" drive or other internal, or are you running a firewire drive for audio? How about starting a new session & getting audio? Is that ok or not? Probably not I'm guessing... the digi hardware is checking to see if the drive is "up to spec" for audio purposes and is getting a report that it isn't...

Any other gotchas?

Are you running Toolz HD or Toolz LE?

 

[innerdreamrecords.co]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

Logic Studio 8 is $499.00 for the Mac.

 

[J Moose]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

Logic Studio 8 is $499.00 for the Mac.

Well, that brings up the other issue...

With the rollout of the MacIntels and Apple's purchase of Emagic/Logic and ongoing collaberations with Apogee Avid/Digi is moving towards the PC/Microsoft world pretty rapidly...

http://makeyourmark.avid.com/

 

[Robert S.]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

All my data is intact and I can pull up my wav files on iTune or solo them in thr PT file transer software. From my reading at the DAC it appears that with OSX 10.4 I don't want to upgrade to PT v7.0 because that is only compatable with OSX 10.5 and I don't want to pay for a new OS again.

So it appears that I have the right OS for my PT software but when I installed my current OS I inadvertantly changed something that PT set up during the initial installation.

I am only using the internal drive that came with my G5 at purchase. I probably need to buy an additional firewire HD to keep my PT files on. That was suggested to me a while back but I didn't get around to it because loose funds for such things can be hard here at the house of Bob.

In my reading at the DAC I quickly realized that this is a common problem when changing operations systems and the first post in the LE section is pages long and addresses this exact issue. It doesn't appear to be a hard problem to correct and it isn't fatal to data but it is a general PIMA. I created the problem two nights ago and with yesterdays schedule of work, getting my daughters homework done after school and then rehearsal last night I just haven't had the time to really dig in and find my solution. Hopefully I'll work it out in the next day or two as I make more time to address the issue.

ProTools has served me well over the last 3+ years and with the Wavs platinium bundle and other software I have loaded up I am not really looking to change to another format. I was a Windows user since 3.x and after almost 4 years of trouble free service from this machine I am in no rush to go back to a Windows based machine. While my current situation is annoying it still doesn't get close to the nightmares that I lived with while dealing with Microsoft products.

Thanks for the input though. It seems that we are a bit short on ProTools experts on this site so I better brush up hard on this stuff to become helpful to the next guy that comes along with issues like these. The problem is that this is the first real issue I have had with this computer and recording rig so I have to start at the bottom of the learning curve. Up to this point all I had to do was install what I wanted and it always worked.

Live and learn!

 

[J Moose]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

I am only using the internal drive that came with my G5 at purchase. I probably need to buy an additional firewire HD to keep my PT files on. That was suggested to me a whikle back but I didn't get around to it because loose funds for such things can be hard here at the house of Bob.

One of the biggest rules of DAW work is have two drive and keep your audio drive and your system drive where all the software is installed totally seperate. Mixing the two, ESPECIALLY in PT land is asking for trouble...

Not only does it make the software & system 'unhappy' in general but if you get into the lands of high sample rates & 40-50+ tracks...run some plug ins and whatever, things can & will coming crashing down.

I've seen people loose all their data because the drive was overworked and froze or some other thing happened and they need to send it off to a data recovery $pecialist. With big external drives costing as little as they do these days... $150 or so... you can't afford NOT to have one.

You'll probably want to read up and get a "Digi aprroved" drive to save yourself further headaches down the line rather then buying brand "X". Chances are "X" will be fine but if you want plug & play... gotta go the Digi route.

ProTools has served me well over the last 3+ years and with the Wavs platinium bundle and other software I have loaded up I am not really looking to change to another format. I was a Windows user since 3.x and after almost 4 years of trouble free service from this machine I am in no rush to go back to a Windows based machine. While my current situation is annoying it still doesn't get close to the nightmares that I lived with while dealing with Microsoft products.

My problem with Toolz has really little to do with Toolz it's self... well, I still hate the tone of the converters & software but that's a whole other thing...

It has a lot more to do with the perpetual upgrade machine that is Ditch-a-Deisgn... The LE rigs or an MBox is one thing... but they have a long, long history of while not quite abandoning users, coming out with a new system or "must-have" compatibility upgrades that come at a massive cost or other little gotchas...

That 882 with a Quadra 800 and PT Project (8-tracks, forerunner to LE) cost me a good bit of money back in the day and support was dropped less then 2-years after I bought it. They offered to take it back on a "trade-in" towards a PT 4, Mix + system for I think $600 or so credit plus what was baiscally the cash equivilent of a really nice used car PLUS the cost of a new Mac etc...

You either get squeezed into doing it to stay compatible, get left behind with a legacy system that can't interface with clients needs... or move to another platform entirely.

I chose the latter option.

Screw 'em!

 

[Robert S.]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

I hear you Moose and I understand the issues that many folks, especially pros have with Toolz. Over the years I have recorded on Paris, PT, an Otari 2" tape and a couple of other rigs as well. I am not at the point where I am looking to anything other than deceint quality demo stuff here at the house because of the limitations of my room. When I get to the point that I am ready to record a "professional" album I will surely farm the recording work out to a reasonable studio with someone that is a real sound engineer.

The sad part of all of this is that all I really wanted to do was to replace my freakin keyboard for my Mac. I was more than happy with the performance i was getting from my machine and my PT rig.

Now for a $49 keyboard I get to learn a bunch of stuff. I will take the suggestion of buying a new external HD though. I am working a highly profitable job over the next couple of weeks and daddy hasn't bought himself anything fun in quite awhile.

I'm due to treat myself to at least one new toy/tool. Thanks for the input Bro!

 

[Robert S.]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

Hooray, I'm up and running again!

All I had to do was update to PT v6.9.2 to get compatable with OSX v10.4.10 and then run a repair permissions in Disk Utilities.

I still plan on getting an external HD as suggested this weekend.

Thanks guys!

 

[J Moose]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

Hmmm... I think Paris is one of the best sounding DAW platforms out there... still to this day. It's a shame that Emu dropped support & development on it. Radar's are great, my second favorite next a properly biased & maintained 2" 16 or 24-track machine!

So it was just a Mac keyboard and not a piano type keyboard that caused all this?!? That's CRAZY!

Agh. Anything digital sucks though! A couple years ago I decided that it was finally time to replace my old DAW rig... a P3 500 machine running Windows 98 & Logic... had milked it for a long time... maybe a bit too long but it still ran great & did everything it did the day I bought it. Matter of fact, the tower became my office PC!

Long story short, I was thinking of jumping to a Mac running DP with Motu hardware or go PC with Cubase & Motu. The MacIntels had been announced but weren't out yet and all the reports I read about future compatibilty with then current software & cards were grim at best...

Plus I had a bunch of PC apps including a Waves bundle that I figured I could port over or get an upgrade on right?

Wrong. Waves said my bundle was "too old" for upgrading! So my $800-900 software, roughly six years later was worth nothing and couldn't even be upgraded at anything approching a "resaonable" (IMO) cost.

On the flip side, the $1200 Speck eq I bought around the same time is still worth that... AND still works!

:soapbox:

 

[Robert S.]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

The last time I was in a "real" studio was maybe a year and a half ago and that was the Paris rig we recorded on. It did give us some nice tone. The guy running the studio mentioned that it was obsolete but he dug it so he kept it running.

I haven't dropped on to real tape in at least 10 years but analog masters do have a special warmth that digital just doesn't capture.

Since I have your attention I need a set of real monitors. Whats good in the $500-600 range or is there something solid in a better price range. I'm really weak in the room and speaker requirements and the speakers are something I can probably tackle fairly soon.

 

[J Moose]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

I haven't dropped on to real tape in at least 10 years but analog masters do have a special warmth that digital just doesn't capture.

Since I have your attention I need a set of real monitors. Whats good in the $500-600 range or is there something solid in a better price range. I'm really weak in the room and speaker requirements and the speakers are something I can probably tackle fairly soon.

What I love about the tape isn't even the tone so much as the implied & somewhat forced method of working that it invokes. Having only "X" amount of tracks forces decisions along the way... helps to get things done quicker & force better performances when the ability to stack up 30-odd takes of each vocal or other tidbit isn't even there.


Monitors are really personal... what works for one isn't nessacarilly going to work for anyone else. I always have at least two pairs of monitors around plus another "alt" like a 4" mono speaker...

A few years ago I had smackie hr824's and was always having problems with mixes translating... nothing was ever quite "right"... when they blew up for the 3rd time I listened to a lot of different things over about a month... ended up with passive Dynaudios... BM15's with a Hafler Transnova amp.

I was listening to the same handful of CD's... Some commerical releases some stuff I've done, both roughs mixes & final masters... The Dyn's I feel give me a nice "window" into the music... the differences between EQ's or reverbs are really clear...

Not a great "big picture" monitor though...

I like the old Event 20/20's too... the biamp ones. Some guys really love the Adam stuff... I always feel a little unlcear sometimes but they always translate well... I can't stand NS10's at all.

What's your room like? What monitors do you have now?

 

[Robert S.]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

The room is scarey. 25' x 17' cement slab floor, cement bock walls and an unfinished ceiling. Typical mostly unfinished basement nastiness.

I don't have real monitors, just a Sony 100 x 2 receiver andm a set of Canton 4' sats. I used to try and mix off of a set of MXR 12" 4 ways but I had to stand at the far side of the room to actually hear anything and even then it was next to impossible to get the bass and kick anywhere close to reasonable.

I am looking to work on the room as well but it's a funds thing. With 15,000 foreclosures in my area last month alone I am usually greatful and somewhat lucky to just keep the bills paid.

With the severe limitations of the room I would be fine with solid entry level or better monitors. The other guitar player I am working with has expressed interest in working on deadening the room down a bit and we are starting on looking to deaded down the walls and floors sometime in the near future.

 

[innerdreamrecords.co]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

In budget monitors my personal choice is KRK V6 - they make a Rokit 6 too http://www.zzounds.com/item--KRKRP6. They are real solid for the money. Next up the ladder for me are the Dynaudio's.

Re the upgrade path. I still run Logic 5 on a PC but have the UAD card for effects along with other third party plugins. I'm nervous to change because it is very stable right now. If I do upgrade it will be to Logic 8 or Sonar, Sonar because of it's audio engine.

 

[Robert S.]

Re: Mac/ProTools guys - need help!

Ther KRK stuff has been recommended to me in the past.

Thanks!