Pro Tools LE with Reaktor 5

Hi folks, I'm new here but have been lurking. It's a great community.

I recently received the M-Audio Axiom 49 along with the MBox Mini and Pro Tools LE and also Reaktor 5 with a nice set of monitors as a gift for my birthday, but don't get them until then, November. I'm very excited, but I'm also nervous.

First of all, I am running on a MacBook Version 10.4.11 Intel and the Reaktor demo works fine, but there are some clicks and glitches unless I turn up the latency a little bit. I imagine this will be fixed when I hook up the Mbox and the monitors. I'm not 100% sure what the Mbox is, but I know it is basically an audio interface. I'm pretty new to all of this, you might say. I've been using the Korg padKontrol and Reason Adapted for a while, and it was time for a change.

My main fear came up today when I found out that Reaktor 5 doesn't work great with Pro Tools, however, this occurred in threads from 2006 up until early 2008? My question is: has this been fixed? Is it impossible to work with? Does it work fine? I just want some explanations. Thanks.

 

welcome to the forum

the MBox Mini, is indeed an audio interface, with 2 inputs (including 1 microphone/quitar input) and 2 outputs. the problem is that it uses USB 1 not the modern day USB 2. it will work with your Macbook (i have one as well) but i think performance suffers a bit compared with other soundcards. btw, you have to have it connected to run Pro Tools.

check which version of Pro Tools you are getting, because you should update to version 7.4 which has the rather brilliant Elastic Audio.

ok, so on to running Reaktor with Pro Tools. firstly make sure you run Reaktor Standalone before you run it inside Pro Tools (or any other DAW). you also need to remember that Pro Tools strength is as an Audio Multitrack software, and less so when it comes to MIDI. so i would record Reaktor stuff as audio as soon as you can. if you try to run loads of MIDI stuff at the same time including Reaktor, you will get
stutters and glitches. if you are sensible and record stuff to an audio track, you will get less problems.

btw, how much Ram do you have for your Macbook? increasing that will help.

fwiw, there are loads of quite good video Pro Tools tutorials on Youtube and the Dididesign site, so that will help you when you get the package.

so you are correct to be a bit nervous, but the combination of Reaktor's brilliant Ensembles (especially those in the User Library) and Pro Tools audio editing, is a great combination

and as i am also learning how to use Pro Tools, i can help with your queries

sowari

 

Thanks so much for the post. It is good to know another person uses the two. I am slightly worried about the sound card because of the crackles and clicks I get sometimes when running the demo, but it seems like it can be fixed when I adjust the latency, even if that does make the sounds like a slight bit.

I do want to make sure you know I am running Pro Tools LE; I don't think there is a big difference aside from the number of tracks you can use and I really don't need more than 36 or whatever the LE limit is. I think 7.4 comes with the Mbox Mini that I got, but it can probably be upgraded for free, right?

As for Reaktor in Pro Tools, I have simply heard that it can be unstable: stalling or whatever, but as I have said, the problem seemed to have been fixed with the Reaktor 5.1 update, but I just wanted to be sure.

My MacBook has 1 GB of memory; or RAM? Thanks again.

 

i am also running LE. if you have just purchased Pro Tools, you will probably have 7.4 as it was released some time ago.

just to check when you say Soundcard are you talking about the MBox?
what gear are you using at the moment?

Reaktor as a plugin in Pro Tools can be jittery, but if you are sensible (not using too many plugins) and think about recording to audio, you should be able to get good results.

in terms of problems, they cannot be blamed on one product. the performance issues are a combination of Pro Tools, MBox, and Reaktor. but as i said before, if you treat Pro Tools as an Audio Multitrack more than a MIDI Sequencer, you will be ok.

1 GB of Ram, is the minimum requirements for using Pro Tools. you could always think of doubling that for better performance. and talking of that, NI have detailed information about Mac Optimisation:

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?id=niosxtut&L=1

sowari

 

Yes, I just picked out all this stuff at Guitar Center over the weekend and I don't get to use any of it until my birthday in November.

When I refer to the sound card on my Mac, I refer to the fact that the Reaktor demo occasionally makes clicky noises until I adjust latency. I thought this would have to do with the stock Mac Book sound card.

I was mainly just worried Reaktor wouldn't work as well in Pro Tools LE. I will look into to the RAM thing.

 

out of interest what latency are you using?

sowari

 

It really depends on whether I have to change it or not. The default is 10 mbs, I believe and for something like OSC-2, it seems like I have to change it to somewhere in the 50s in order to make the clicks go away. But this doesn't seem to work perfectly for each ensembles, as when I do this, it either doesn't do anything or seems to lag in producing the desired sounds for a very brief second or less.

 

i have mine set to 23, which is fine for everything. what is the Speed of your processor?

also have you optimised your Mac as suggested on that linked NI page?

sowari

 

It is 2 ghz; I am running on a stock soundcard.

 

ok, but have you optimised the running of your Mac?

for instance, in Energy Saver (System Preferences) you should make sure it is set to (at the very least) Better Performance.

there is more advice on the link that i gave a few posts ago, it is important that red it the info.

fwiw, it is very important that you optimise your Mac to run Pro Tools (Digidesign advise it), so doing it now is a good thing

sowari

 

It should be good: I did everything except setting all the sliders to never because I didn't want to wear out my display, but that shouldn't affect sound.