New Macbook, no firewire, and Pro Tools

[iamaracinghorse]

Forgive me if there is a thread for this on the board already, I tried to search for anything relevant to this, but the search function wasn't working for me. Which is weird.

Anyway, my quandary is as follows:

I bought one of the new aluminum MacBooks that has no firewire (2.4Ghz, 2 gig RAM, for what it's worth). I thought that the lack of firewire would be no big deal, as I hadn't done any recording for some time, and didn't anticipate getting back into it. Of course, that changed, and I've decided to track some stuff for later mixing at a studio. I have an original mbox (USB), and I would like to purchase Pro Tools LE 8, as my old 6.4 is outdated, PT is what I'm used to using, it's what the studio at which I'd like to mix it uses, and I like it. I'm wondering if anyone can definitively explain to me the hazards recording the internal drive, rather than the recommended external firewire drive, which is obviously not an option. Or perhaps you could tell me if I might instead be able to use a USB drive for the audio? Even though DigiDesign doesn't officially support that? It's been hard for me to find a straight answer on the subject, so any insight would be a great help.

Thank you for your time.

[tubetapexfmr]

I think this would all depend on track count. If you're working with 8 tracks or less and your songs are under 10 minutes, you should be OK with the internal drive or an external USB drive. However, if you're doing more than that, you will probably run into problems.

[iamthecosmos]

I've recorded 16 inputs to an old Powerbook G4 internal drive with no problems.

[John Jeffers]

Why not just try it and see what happens? Hook up your interface, set up a bunch of tracks, and start recording. You don't have to have any mics hooked up or have any audio going in. As long as the computer is recording, you're asking it to do the same amount of work. Throw some plugins on there and try again. Then add more until it craps out. After that, increase your buffer size and try again.

I think the reason you can't find a solid answer anywhere is because it would be pretty difficult to quantify the computer's limits since everyone has different hardware, plugins, and work habits.

BTW, if you don't already use it, I find iStat Menus to be extremely helpful. It allows you to put CPU/Disk/Memory meters on the menu bar so you can see when your system is hitting its limits. Since they live on the menu bar, they're always visible.

[iamaracinghorse]

Thank you all for the responses! This information is extremely helpful. I'm gonna go for it and see what happens.

And thank you, John Jeffers, for the link to iStatMenus. That is a great and useful little app!

[chris harris]

I record 16 tracks at a time to a USB2.0 drive all the time. I also mix projects with 32+ tracks from a USB2.0 hard drive all the time. I've never had a hiccup. The "HD" meter on my DAW rarely ever moves an inch.

[John Jeffers]

And thank you, John Jeffers, for the link to iStatMenus. That is a great and useful little app!

You're welcome! Also, I know it's been said a thousand times, but removing Firewire from the Macbooks was a really crappy thing for Apple to do.

[dsw]

The only bummer about doing things like recording to the internal drive and using external USB 2 drives is IF it doesn't work and you call tech support at Digi for help they will just say you are using a method that is un-approved and they can't help you.

But yeah, try it and see. No harm there.

[exalted wombat]

Forget the numbers, you can record a LOT of tracks to a laptop's internal drive.

[manager_bmr]

@iamaracinghorse

Im planning on getting a new aluminum macbook also, i just got pro tools with an mbox mini and my current computer is too slow to support it, how did it go for you? were you able to record on the USB drive?
Did you record with no issueS?

I also read on some forums that drives gets really wore since pro tools does a lot of hard drive saving and erasing and this makes the life of the HD shorter, im talking about internal drives, has anybody here heard the same or knows something about it?

[BlueMoonshine]

Apple just updated the $999 white plastic macbook to the approximate specs of the "aluminum unibody" macbooks but kept the firewire port! HOORAY!

As my G4 powerbook rapidly approaches death, I was getting stressed about no firewire on the newer macbooks versus the price of the mac book pros. The hardware upgrade makes the $999 macbook very appealing.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/s ... ly/macbook

[znort]

Anyway, you've got another option, wich is what I needed to do with my pre-2008 MacBook Pro: use the Expresscard port, you can find cards with Firewire 800 and 400, and USB ports (always with TI chipset; Sonnet is a good reference expresscard). This way you can expand the number of your ports.
Now I'm running my HD (firewire 800), my digi 003 (firewire 400), my LiquidMix (Firewire 400), my Ilock (USB), and a mouse (USB), with no problems... wow!
Cheers from Spain

[Nick Sevilla]

Forgive me if there is a thread for this on the board already, I tried to search for anything relevant to this, but the search function wasn't working for me. Which is weird.

Anyway, my quandary is as follows:

I bought one of the new aluminum MacBooks that has no firewire (2.4Ghz, 2 gig RAM, for what it's worth). I thought that the lack of firewire would be no big deal, as I hadn't done any recording for some time, and didn't anticipate getting back into it. Of course, that changed, and I've decided to track some stuff for later mixing at a studio. I have an original mbox (USB), and I would like to purchase Pro Tools LE 8, as my old 6.4 is outdated, PT is what I'm used to using, it's what the studio at which I'd like to mix it uses, and I like it. I'm wondering if anyone can definitively explain to me the hazards recording the internal drive, rather than the recommended external firewire drive, which is obviously not an option. Or perhaps you could tell me if I might instead be able to use a USB drive for the audio? Even though DigiDesign doesn't officially support that? It's been hard for me to find a straight answer on the subject, so any insight would be a great help.

Thank you for your time.

I just saw the 17" MacBook Pro.

It has one FW 800 port and two USB ports, on the left side.

And the 15" one:

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/features-15inch.html

HAS A FW800 PORT TOO.

So, how in the heck do you state they have no FireWire?

THere have been soooooo many rumors about this, and no one just goes over there and look at the damn things. Just look, it's right there.

Cheers

[Bro Shark]

Macbook Pro has firewire.

The new aluminum Macbook (not Pro) does not have firewire.

[ballpein]

Forgive me if there is a thread for this on the board already, I tried to search for anything relevant to this, but the search function wasn't working for me. Which is weird.

Anyway, my quandary is as follows:

I bought one of the new aluminum MacBooks that has no firewire (2.4Ghz, 2 gig RAM, for what it's worth). I thought that the lack of firewire would be no big deal, as I hadn't done any recording for some time, and didn't anticipate getting back into it. Of course, that changed, and I've decided to track some stuff for later mixing at a studio. I have an original mbox (USB), and I would like to purchase Pro Tools LE 8, as my old 6.4 is outdated, PT is what I'm used to using, it's what the studio at which I'd like to mix it uses, and I like it. I'm wondering if anyone can definitively explain to me the hazards recording the internal drive, rather than the recommended external firewire drive, which is obviously not an option. Or perhaps you could tell me if I might instead be able to use a USB drive for the audio? Even though DigiDesign doesn't officially support that? It's been hard for me to find a straight answer on the subject, so any insight would be a great help.

Thank you for your time.

I just saw the 17" MacBook Pro.

It has one FW 800 port and two USB ports, on the left side.

And the 15" one:

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/features-15inch.html

HAS A FW800 PORT TOO.

So, how in the heck do you state they have no FireWire?

THere have been soooooo many rumors about this, and no one just goes over there and look at the damn things. Just look, it's right there.

Cheers

Wow... defensive apple fanboi with poor reading comprehension... is this a new class of troll ?

(I'm kidding - we all have our brainfarts).