Mbox Vs. Digi 002 Rack Options

[bjkiwi]

one thing to be aware of when using an M-Box on a mac...

"When you record into Pro Tools LE Mac there is a latency of 164 samples. All tracks recorded into Pro Tools have 164 samples of latency, but you will not notice this with the first track unless you have a MIDI click, or a recorded click to play along with. Thus, when you record the second track/pass, you will hear latency when the two tracks are played together. After recording your second track/pass into Pro Tools LE Mac, adjust the newly recorded audio track to compensate for the 164 samples of latency.
Select the second pass of audio with the Grabber Tool. Edit Menu > Shift. Click "Earlier" and type in 164 in the "Samples" field. Click "OK". Now, Pro Tools will locate the audio 164 samples earlier.
"Shift" each track or recorded pass back by 164 samples immediately after recording. If you are stacking up tracks, you definitely want them all to be in sync as each new one is recorded."

you can find the full article here http://answerbase.digidesign.com/detail.cfm?DID=7868

there has been a lot of discussion about this on the digidesign user forums and the main bone of contention is that there is no mention of it in the manuals, so untill you chance upon it in a forum your overdubs will end up 164 samples behind your 1st tracks.

if you ask me, the failure to inform users is unacceptable and I have let digidesign know that I am PISSED OFF!!

bjkiwi

[arvidtp]

Yeah - what's up with that??? It is weird that that happens in Pro Tools, with it trying to be so "Pro" and all. Is it just LE systems? It seems that even if they can't fix it to be in sync, they could at least have an automatic function that pushed everything back the said 164 samples immediately after recording is turned off. [i like how the sad face on this forum is actually an angry one] That would be a nice Preference Dialog addition, next to the "Correct the rest of Pro Tools' nagging problems" button.

It seems this has been a needless issue for a long time. I heard something about it being fixed in the PC version but not in the mac. That is SO silly if it is true.

Or do most DAWs / sequencers have similar time offset issues? For instance Logic? Or Cubase? How about Digital Performer?

[bjkiwi]

this is only an issue with the MBox on the Mac. I emailed digidesign support (asia/pacific as I am in Australia) and got this reply:

"This is a common sence. If you do any hard drive recordings, you can not avoid latency. This is not just ProTools issue. It's the same on all other HDD recording devices. Please research the web about the latency. Visit www.google.com and type in
LATENCY. If you are using Mbox. Here is the work around for latency. -Mute the recoding track and set the Mix knob on Mbox to blend input source and the playback sound."

to which I replied:

Thank you for your reply but you've missed my point. I'm not talking about monitoring latency as I do understand that is a given with computer based recording. What I am refering to is the fact that once a track, or tracks, is recorded it ends up playing back 164 samples late. It appears it is only an issue with Macs.

they replied again with:

"This is the latency anyways but this one was considered as a bug, and had been fixed in PTLE6.4. Please check the update information here.
http://www.digidesign.com/support/cs
Sorry about the inconvenience.

so in the end they've admitted it was a bug that has been fixed in 6.4