| Digidesign ProTools Mbox |
|
| Written by Mark Webster | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 01 July 2003 | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
Although impressed at the quality and the possibilities it offered, the drawback was having to cart the entire G3 system, complete with mouse, keyboard and monitor, between two houses and a shed (er, I mean, 'studio'). So when Protel brought the Mbox to New Zealand, complete with OS X software, I just had to try it (the Mbox also supports OS 9 and Windows). The Mbox is small, at about 8cm wide at base, 16cm high and 17 front-to-back. It just plugs into the Mac via a powered USB connection (no separate power supply), so it's incredibly portable and, in a sort of Clark Kent way, it's mild-mannered and simple to look at, but packs sublime audio quality and lots of sonic punch into its little frame. There's no midi interface but ProTools LE 6.01 (the software that comes with Mbox for OS X) does allow you to use midi data (for which you need a separate midi interface). It has two inputs, with their own faders, for input; both are suitable for microphone, line or instrument, cleverly using dual standard phone/cannon jacks on the rear, routed through a built-in Focusrite mic preamplifier (plus 48V phantom power for microphones if you need it). There are two headphone jacks (back and front) with dedicated headphone volume, and another fader for input/playback balance for mixing.
Because it's all digital, you can just keep on adding tracks as you need them up to 32 - to those of us staggered at the cost of 'real' (i.e., not virtual) multi-channel mixing desks and studio facilities in general, this verges on incredible. But the real shock of it all is the quality: it's sublime, and often way better than older analogue-style studios because of the complete lack of buzzing and line noise; that said, you might like to add warmth by a little processing using the plug-ins supplied with the software. Add to that full automation - it's magic watching the sliders rising and falling as the song plays through, tracks panning left to right, muting, unmuting etc - and you're spoilt for choice. Also, while you are mixing you can group tracks for global control, or solo tracks or groups for fine tuning. You can output your final song to DAT tape using the digital SPDIF jacks on the back of the Mbox, or 'bounce' (save) the song to your hard drive as a CD-quality stereo .aif file - or just export it as an MP3 and email to your mates. It's packed with features and will reward reading through the extensive .pdf documentation included - you can trim waveforms, reprocess regions of audio, pitch-correct, sync beats up, rearrange parts of songs, overdub to your heart's content, add reverb and use plug-ins to enhance your music. Not only that, once you've established your ProTools studio, your system is hugely extensible with different effects and audio plug-ins.
Pros
Cons
© Parkside Media 2004 Related Articles
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Comments (0)
 Write comment
This content has been locked. You can no longer post any comment.
You must be logged in to a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Updated ( Sunday, 25 December 2005 ) | ||||||||||||||||||||
After playing around with various recording set-ups over the years, from ancient Fostex cassette-based portable systems to full-on professional studios, a couple of friends and I borrowed a ProTools PCI card, installed it in a B&W G3 and did some recording, using its accompanying OS 9-only software.
This small device and its software gives you studio quality recording - teamed with Final Cut Pro or other software, that's a complete audio-visual system for the home operator that's breathtakingly classy in quality. So I bought one.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
The views and opinions expressed in articles, blog entries, posts and reviews are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of NZMac.com and its readers. Authors are responsible for the integrity of their article's content and must guarantee that its publication does not infringe upon the proprietary rights of others.
