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Hi, my name is Alex, I\'m a Reason user on Mac, and I\'d be glad to share impressions and ideas on this forum... First thing I can do, is describing my gear: Mac mini 1.42ghz O.S. tiger Dedicated external audio drive 300Go M-audio Ozonic Protools M-powered 7 Reason 3 & recycle 2.1 Live 5 Absynth 3 To me, that\'s a great & stable configuration that I\'ll keep for some years.. \'Wish u a merry musical X-mas

That sounds like a great setup! Out of curiosity, how does Ableton Live fit into your workflow? do you rewire Reson into Ableton, and themn use Ableton for sequencing and recording?

In actuality I use Protools as the main sequencer, and I rewire Ableton Live into Protools. I do the same for Reason. Ableton Live isn\'t my main sequencer, I prefer link all my softwares inside Protools. But still, I\'m not an expert(even far from being one..) so this may not be the best solution.. To tell u the truth I\'m afraid this consumes a lot of CPU. When I use both Live & Reason, this begins to be hot for my Mac.. Right now I still have 512Mo of memory, that does not help.. But I plan to upgrade it up to 1Go

[quote:7252]Ableton Live isn\'t my main sequencer, I prefer link all my softwares inside Protools ... To tell u the truth I\'m afraid this consumes a lot of CPU. When I use both Live & Reason, this begins to be hot for my Mac.. Right now I still have 512Mo of memory, that does not help.. But I plan to upgrade it up to 1Go[/quote] You should checkout the Activity Monitor utility that comes with your Mac (spotlight it). the main window shows some important info, notably how much RAM each application is consuming and how much of your hard drive is being used for \"virtual\" memory. This is a segment of the hard drive that is used as \"virtual RAM.\" if an application is using a lot of virtual memory, it will chug. While you are there, goto the window menu and enable the floating CPU meter ... I have this enabled as a start-up item on my mac ... you\'ll learn a lot from it. If you know ableton Live well, take pro tools right out of the mix. Try sequencing directly through Live and you\'ve got one less application in your RAM chain. It\'s worth a shot, and if it speeds up your production ... :) A bit more RAM will certainly allow you to process more instruments in reason and live, so that\'s a great investment. Particularly when it comes to sample-based instruments that load audio files into RAM for playback.

If I follow your advice, What\'s the utility of protools??! I use Protools to take advantage of the plugins( Amplitube, compressors ect..), does Ableton Live offers an equal quality of devices? I record some bass lines in audio in Protools, then I complete it with Reason & Live rewired; can Ableton Live substitute Protools? ( I mean, properly) You\'ve got point when you say : [quote:1002]Try sequencing directly through Live and you\'ve got one less application in your RAM chain. It\'s worth a shot, and if it speeds up your production ... :)[/quote] That\'s appreciable to take full advantage of the performances of the computer, there\'s no problem with this.. ;) So what Protools offers that Ableton Live is unable to provide? & what Ableton Live offers that Protools is unable to provide?

I spent 3 hours experimenting what you proposed... That\'s huge. Really. I\'m really impressed, I just tried to use effects on a bass line & Reason rewired to Live. I even added an absynth track; the consumption of RAM is lower than in Protools. (You were right..) [quote:7252]So what Protools offers that Ableton Live is unable to provide? & what Ableton Live offers that Protools is unable to provide?[/quote]

Yeah, that comes from making music in the early 90\'s ... imagin having only 4 tracks to work with ... that\'s all my first copy of cubase allowed, and at the time, it was revolutionary. Back then we did all sorts of stuff to save CPU power ... like sampling a 33 RPM record at 45 RPM and then slowing it down at playback, just to save those extra few seconds of sample storage. Your Mac Mini is already more powerful than my entire studio back then, but nonetheless, there\'s probably a lot you can do to \"Optimize\" your workflow. It\'s really hard for me to comment on the deifferences between Pro Tools and Live, as I\'m a Logic guy. However, Pro Tools is generally recognized as a multitracking tool that\'s great for mixing, but lacks sequencing power. I\'m pretty sure you can do everything in Ableton that you can in Pro Tools, and a whole lot more, actually. Once you get deeper into Ableton\'s time stretching and pitch shifting abilities, it can be quite powerfull, indeed. It\'s all about experimenting to find what works for you! :)

That\'s exactly what I gonna do... Thanx for all guy!

ahh, the good ole days eh martin? we have got a whole studio each now!