User manual M-AUDIO PRO TOOLS M-POWERED BASICS GUIDE V7

[. . . ] ­ and ­ · Installed Pro Tools M-Powered software and the pre-authorized iLok, as described in the appropriate Windows or Macintosh installation chapter of the Pro Tools M-Powered Getting Started Guide. Introduction 1 Getting Sound In and Out of your M-Audio Interface To hear audio recorded into a Pro Tools session, you will need to connect headphones or an external sound system (such as powered monitors or a home stereo) to your M-Audio interface. Sound from your M-Audio interface cannot be played through your computer's speakers or your computer's sound output. To connect headphones: · Connect headphones with a 1/4-inch stereo connector (or an adapter) to interfaces that have a 1/4-inch Headphone jack. ­ or ­ · Connect headphones with a 1/8-inch stereo mini connector (or an adapter) to interfaces that have a 1/8-inch Headphone jack. Connecting Headphones Depending on which M-Audio interface you have, there will be one or more headphone jacks on the front or back of your interface. [. . . ] If your source is stereo (such as a stereo keyboard or the stereo output from a mixer), connect the left channel (often the white plug) to the first input, and right channel (often the red plug) to the second input. Mic/Line selector on the front of a FireWire 1814 3 Set your instrument's volume to its optimal level. For example, the optimal level for most keyboards is between 80% and 100% of maximum volume. 4 If your M-Audio interface has a Signal Gain Input 1 (left channel) Input 2 (right channel) control, carefully turn the control for the input to the right to increase the input level of your microphone signal. FireWire 1814 configuration for stereo input Analog In 1 (left channel) Analog In 2 (right channel) Audiophile 2496 configuration for stereo input Connecting Instruments 7 Recording a Pro Tools Session Before you record with Pro Tools M-Powered, you first create a Pro Tools session, then prepare an audio track for recording. To create a Pro Tools session: 1 Verify the connections between your M-Audio interface and your instrument or microphone. 4 In the New Session dialog, set the session pa- To prepare an audio track for recording: 1 Choose Track > New. 2 Specify 1 Mono Audio Track in Samples, if your source is mono, or 1 Stereo Audio Track in Samples, if your source is stereo. Creating a new Stereo audio track 3 Click Create. rameters as needed, or leave them at their default settings. (For details on New Session settings, see the Pro Tools M-Powered Getting Started Guide. ) A mono instrument uses one input on an M-Audio interface, and a stereo instrument uses two. Creating a stereo track in Pro Tools will not make a mono instrument into a stereo instrument. If a mono instrument is recorded on a stereo track, one of the sides of the stereo track will show no signal. 4 Make sure the Mix window is open by choos- ing Window > Mix. 5 In the Mix window, click the Audio Input Path selector on the new track. Input Path selector New Session dialog 5 Choose where you want to save your session. 7 Click Save. Choosing an input in the Mix window 8 M-Powered Basics Guide 6 From the pop-up menu, select the interface in- 2 Choose Window > Transport to display the put you want to record. For example, select Mic/Line 1 if your audio source is plugged into the first input of your M-Audio interface. Transport window. Click Return to Zero to go to the beginning of the session. Return to Zero Rewind Online Stop Fast Forward Play Go to End Record Enable Routing an input to a mono track 7 Play the instrument or sound source at the volume you will record. Transport window 8 Use the Signal Gain controls on your M-Audio 3 Click Record Enable in the Transport window to arm Pro Tools for recording. The Record button flashes red to indicate that Pro Tools is ready to record. 2 Click Play in the Transport window to begin playback. 3 Click Stop in the Transport window or press the Spacebar to stop playback. Importing Audio from a CD 11 Creating an Audio CD from a Pro Tools Session Pro Tools does not create audio CDs directly, but you can create stereo audio files from your Pro Tools sessions that can be used by most CD burning software. 2 Choose File > Bounce to > Disk. Bouncing Audio to Disk Use the Pro Tools Bounce to Disk feature to combine all your audible tracks into a single "master" audio file. After the new audio file has been bounced to disk, you can burn it to a CD. If you are bouncing down audio from 24-bit resolution to 16-bit (CD resolution), you should use a dither plug-in on the main output. (For details, see the Pro Tools M-Powered Getting Started Guide. ) To bounce audio to disk: 1 After you have finished recording and mixing Choosing Bounce to Disk from the File menu 3 In the Bounce Options dialog, choose Outputs 1­2 as the Bounce Source. 4 Choose BWF (. WAV) for the File Type. 6 Choose 16 for the Resolution and 44100 for a session in Pro Tools, select the length of the session in the timeline ruler (or on a track), plus an additional amount of time to avoid cutting off any reverb tails that might continue past the end of the last region. the Sample Rate. Session audio selected and ready to bounce 12 M-Powered Basics Guide 7 If you are changing the sample rate of the bounced file, choose a Conversion Quality setting. (For details, see the Pro Tools M-Powered Getting Started Guide. ) 8 Choose "Convert after Bounce, " and click Pro Tools begins bouncing to disk. Pro Tools bounces are done in real time, so you hear audio playback of your mix during the bounce process (though you cannot adjust it). . Bounce. Bouncing to Disk dialog Burning a CD After the bounce is completed, you will have an audio file that is ready for burning onto a CD. Quit Pro Tools and launch any common CD burning application to burn your bounced mix to CD. Bounce options for creating CD burnable tracks 9 In the Bounce dialog, give the bounce tracks a name and choose where they should be saved. Make certain that you configure your CD burning application to create an audio CD rather than a data CD. Entering a name for the bounced file 10 Click Save. Creating an Audio CD from a Pro Tools Session 13 M-Powered and MIDI What is MIDI? MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) data is not audio, and has no sound. MIDI is data that can trigger a MIDI device (such as a keyboard or software synthesizer). In order to create or play a MIDI recording, you must have a MIDI controller or sound module (real or virtual) connected to the computer through a MIDI interface. [. . . ] 2 Choose the buffer size (in number of samples) from the H/W Buffer Size pop-up menu. 3 Click OK. Computers with slower CPUs may not be able to use the 128-sample buffer size without encountering performance errors. If you are monitoring the recording source with an external mixer, before it is routed to Pro Tools, you will not hear any latency. M-Audio Control Panel Mixer If your M-Audio device has a Control Panel mixer with a direct monitoring feature, it is possible to use this feature as a low-latency monitoring path while recording in Pro Tools. To use the M-Audio mixer direct monitoring feature while recording: 1 In Pro Tools, record-enable the tracks you Pro Tools Hardware Buffer One factor contributing to latency is related to the Hardware Buffer Size in Pro Tools--the larger the buffer size, the larger the latency. You can reduce the amount of monitoring latency for Pro Tools systems by reducing the Hardware Buffer Size. [. . . ]