Musical Instruments

[chamille2010]

hello again i ordered protools 8 and now i need an usb interface (i was recommended 003 rack by digidesign good recommendation by the way) however i need something more affordable any other suggestions? I have windows vista 34bit by the way Also research states i need an extra hard drive to store my music all and any recommendations will be greatly appreciated thanx! Hope to hear from you soon!

[Kyle-BBY Community Connector]

Greetings again  chamille2010!

Which version of Pro Tools 8 did you buy: Pro Tools HD 8, Pro Tools LE 8, or Pro Tools M-Powered 8?

[chamille2010]

hi nice to hear from you i ordered pt 8 m-powered and i was also told i will need an extra hard drive to store my music any recommendations on that would be great! hope to hear from you again and thanx a bunch!

[Kyle-BBY Community Connector]

Okay good, I'm glad to hear it was the M-Powered version of Pro Tools 8 because that one has the lowest-costing interfaces.  Here are two of my recommendations for an M-Audio USB interface:

Depending on what you need for inputs and how much you need to record at once, one of those should work.  I'm sure you've clicked around the Pro Tools support site to see which interfaces are compatible but here is a link just in case:

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=3&langid=100&eid=7934

As for a hard drive, Pro Tools actually recommends some pretty beefy ones because they are not just for storage; they are actually used as a source destination for a lot of the recording files and actively accessed in real time while you record.  They recommend it connecting via Firewire 400 (which is tested to be faster than USB 2.0) and having an access speed of 7200 rpm.  You can view their specific recommendations here.  Since the requirements are pretty intense, some of the hard drives they recommend are specifically designed for Pro Tools; however, we do carry two third party hard drives made by Buffalo Technology that pretty much meet their requirements.  My disclaimer: I would encourage you to contact Digidesign to make sure they are qualified to work with Pro Tools before placing an order just in case.

I hope that helps!

Best of luck,

[chamille2010]

Thanx a million i truly appreciate your time and help being a newbie to this is quite frustrating but your expertise and recommendations is  making things a whole lot easier will do; maybe be back with more questions but until then Thanx again!!!!

[Kyle-BBY Community Connector]

Absolutely!  Any time!

[kvn]

If you're going for an external hard drive, I'd say get one that has an eSATA port, which has better transfer rates than both USB 2.0 and Firewire 400.

Here is one from Best Buy that fits the bill, though if you look around you can find more from other brands. The transfer rates that they show are a bit misleading as they should be using the small "b" for "bits" (i.e. Mb/sec) instead of the big "B" which is generally designated for "bytes." There are 8 bits to a byte, so the 480 Mb/sec speed for USB 2.0, for example, would translate into 60 MB/sec. eSATA, on the other hand, transfers at 375 MB/sec.