Configuring Pro Tools Academic - DigiDesign Mbox 2 Academic Getting Started Manual

Configuring
Pro Tools Academic
Pro Tools System Settings
Pro Tools Academic lets you adjust the perfor-
mance of your system by changing system set-
tings that affect its capacity for processing, play-
back, and recording.
In most cases, the default settings for your sys-
tem provide optimum performance, but you
may want to adjust them to accommodate large
or processing-intensive Pro Tools sessions.
Hardware Buffer Size
The Hardware Buffer Size (H/W Buffer Size) con-
trols the size of the buffer used to handle host
processing tasks such as Real-Time AudioSuite
(RTAS) plug-ins. The H/W Buffer setting can also
be used to manage monitoring latency.
Lower Hardware Buffer Size settings reduce
◆
monitoring latency, and are useful when you are
recording live input.
Higher Hardware Buffer Size settings allow for
◆
more audio processing and effects, and are use-
ful when you are mixing and using more RTAS
plug-ins.
In addition to causing slower screen re-
sponse and monitoring latency, higher
Hardware Buffer Size settings can increase
the latency caused by RTAS plug-ins, and
affect the accuracy of plug-in automation,
mute data, and MIDI track timing.
To change the Hardware Buffer Size:
Choose Setup > Playback Engine.
1
Playback Engine dialog for Mbox 2 Academic
From the H/W Buffer Size pop-up menu, select
2
the audio buffer size, in samples.
Click OK.
3
RTAS Processors
The RTAS Processors setting determines the
number of processors in your computer allo-
cated for RTAS plug-in processing.
With computers that have multiple processors,
or that feature multi-core processing or hyper-
threading, this setting lets you enable multi-pro-
cessor support for RTAS processes. Used in com-
bination with the CPU Usage Limit setting, the
RTAS Processors setting lets you control the way
RTAS processing and other Pro Tools tasks are
carried out by the system.
A higher number of processors reserves more
◆
CPU processing capacity for RTAS plug-in pro-
cessing. This is useful for sessions with large
number of RTAS plug-ins.
Chapter 4: Mac Configuration 25