Pro tools se not doing well on my pc

[tomerikac]

Hello,
Am having problems with protools seon my Toshiba, i5 650gb processor, 6gb ram laptop. Not recording, losing tracks, white noise, error codes, etc. Protools manual says that computer needs at least 2.0ghz processor and at least 5400rpm driver, this meets those requirements. Any suggestions??? Thanks

 

[festerovic]

I am working on a similar problem for a friend. Can you give me some specs on your PC? I have some ideas...

 

[tomerikac_509]

Hello, festerovic.


dell 17R
pentium l5 2 duo core 750 gb hard drive (5400rpm)
8gb ram memory
windows 7 64 bit SP1

Yup, except for the 5400 (as opposed to the 7200) rpm should be just fine. (Although I've often read that an external 7200 rpm hard drive is ideal for saving recordings once they sart to stack up). About 10 days of horrible sounding tracks (fuzzy, white noise), error codes, forced shutdowns, unable to get recording levels to show while track in record mode, etc. Downloaded updated driver; no help. Contacted AVID tech rep and was given a long list of system modifications to put into effect. Result; no help. Was told to download Ableton software to determine if the dproblem was in the pro tools se software or in the audio interface itself. Ableton sounded just as bad. So today I happen to give the pro tools se one more chance and voila!! it works great. I'm not real confident that it will continue to do as well so will call the AVID tech and probably ask for a new interface and upgraded pro tools program. We'll see. What do you think? Thanks

 

[festerovic]

Well, to be honest we narrowed down a similar thing (distorted sound, not white noise but that might be coincidental) to the motherboard chipset. He was using Intel® Desktop Board DH55HC. On all other systems the problem wasn't present. Just playing audio on the affected machine from WMP was distorting, so we knew it was not protools specific.
So I had him switch motherboards and use a p55 chipset and everything is lovely now.
RE: avid's hardware - not sure which interface you have but they are pretty bulletproof IME. Since the software is so complicated, I would have to guess the problem lies there if you were choosing between bad hardware and something in the software. I would say this: if you are serious about recording, its in your best interest to dedicate a machine to the purpose. That means NOTHING else installed on it but the required software. I always do a reformat-reinstall of the OS too. Don't even browse the net on it. Only music. It's worth it, trust me.