You know, I just need someone to call me, and walk me through this. I'm
sorry, but this is horse meneuer. I'm not gonna do a sogga for you and go
off the handle, I promise on my mother's life, but, I'm really really really
really ticked at this point.
I will be recording a file with my Olympus and putting it up on Sendspace
for people to grab to listen exactly to what is happenning. I really don't
wanna type everything out as I'm so angry at the guy at Sam Ash Music that I
cannot see straight. I'm literally seeing red! You know it's bad when you
just wanna literally speaking bash your desk to the ground, not figuratively
speaking, either. OK, enough for my b***ing session. On to the meat. So,
I took you all's advice, got my godfather to take me to Sam Ash music,
traded in my Yamaha mixer for an interface. Here's paraphraising how the
dialog went. I wish I had recorded me there as frankly, I wanted to, but
then chickened out. God I feel stupid now!
Basically...
Whalen: Hi Chris, what can I do for ya?
Me: OK, I have this mixer you sold me a few months back, and the SB Live 24
bit. I'm using PT 9.0, as cannot seem to get the 9.1 dmg to update,
regardless. Don't know why, but, yeah, the dmg jsut won't open. Tried
downloading it about 5 or 6 times literally.
Whalen: Real sarcastic tone: Awe, that's a shame! Well, the creative card
isn't gonna work as it's not a PT authorized interface.
Me: Can I trade this mixer for an interface that would work, and not pay
anything today?
Whalen: Let me see what I have. Then goes in the back to look.
Whalen: I have an Alesis Multimix 4 USB interface I could do a swap for.
It most guaranteed will work with PT.
Me: OK, how do I configure it?
Whalen: Just plug it into your macbook, and launch PT. that's it!
Me: Wait. I'm no genious at this stuff, but wouldn't I have to go into
setup/IO and set the paths up and route things?
Whalen: Dude, you're making this harder than it has to be! I said no, and
no means no!
Yes, he literally said it that way. It's like... well, egg skeuze? me!
Mister, no it all, Punk?!
Whalen: Just plug the dang thing in for god sake! It'll automatically see
it, and just naturally work. It'll no longer see your onboard sound
internal mike nor your internal speakers or i/o port. It'll just ditch that
and map all through the interface.
Me: Do I need to go into system preferences and set my input to the
interface?
Whalen: NO. Just plug it in, and it'll go.
Me: Can you take me to the studio Mac you all have in the store, let's
bring up Voiceover and you plug it in and show me step by step what to do to
get it to see it both on the in and out, especially the in?
Whalen: It may be a while, but yeah, we can.
About 5 minutes later...
Whalen: Oh, deh... sawwy, we can't! The other recording guy who works here,
Tony, took the ILock thing home with him, so we can't open PT to show you.
Me: Well, just tell me then where to go.
Whalen: Um... you go to... stops and thinks... settings/audio/preferences,
go to the interfaces tab, then click the input/output button. I'm like...
Me: Dude, what're you talking about! That's not how Pro Tools is laied
out! Are you saying go under setup in the menu bar, then I/O?
Whalen: No, not setup, settings.
Me: There isn't settings. There's preferences under the options menu in
the menu bar, but that's it, otherwise jsut a setup menu.
Whalen: um, ok, maybe they changed it to setup, I dono.
Me: and you know Pro Tools well?
Whalen: Yeah, but I'm just not sure...
Me getting really hot by now, so was my godfather: Lookat! I want an
interface that works! If you can't promise me...
Whalen: I do, I do, it'll work. You just need to go to setup, then
playback engine, and set it to your interface.
Me: And then the input path button, what do I select?
Whalen: The Main input 1/2
Me: And the output?
Whalen: Same thing.
So, I very reluctantly said ok, and took the Alesis multimix 4 USB 4 channel
interface home with me.
I get home, plug it in, boom, Windows sees it, but Sonar won't communicate
with it, not through m m e, w d m, nor Asio. I asaid, well, never mind,
that's OK, I'm using it with PT anyway, just thought i'd try that. So, I
plug to my macbook, it comes up fine, I look at the playback engine. Hmm,
USB audio codec, and there are two instances and the second of the two gives
me no sound when i use it.
The first one was already selected after plugging the thing into the u s b
port. Now here is my thing... I go back and try to add an audio track mono
and stereo, I do both ways. In both cases, the input paths were said to no
input. I went in and vo+spaced on the button, and looked. 1/2, and
everything else in there under the interface sub menu said path N/A. Yay?
Hoo!... N'not? So I unplug my interface, restart Protools, I get no input
again. Everything says N/A. I had it working with the internal mike but
now it won't even do that. I went into the i/o settings window, but as i
said before that window to me makes absolutely no sense. I can't even add a
path or sub path in the input tab with the inteface either plugged or not.
The buttons're there, but they're both dimmed. They're not dimmed on the
output tab, but... I wonder if I screwed something when I did that i/o
window. I dono... nothing is working though. All i get is output. Same as
I did with the SB Live card. So, we're back to square one, and out a good
mixer. Needless to say, Im royally pissed off, and rightfully so! I'm
thinking the people at Sam Ash are idiots! I told 'em about the interfaces
you all suggested, if i"m not said so already, and he said they had none of
those nor carried them. i had a band who was gonna record today, paying me.
$300 mind you. They now can't even come as this thing won't work with Pro
Tools, nor can I get it interfaced with Sonar, and I have no mixer being the
other one's now gone! All I wanted to do was make music to help support my
poor mom now that my dad's gone... Chris wells up with tears. It's
hopeless! Just hopeless!
Just... forget it! I want the help, but this is too much work! I know it's
gonna be rewarding when we get it straightenned out, but I'm at my wits end,
and I don't have the energy to argue with S A Music any longer. They
swendled me out of a good mixer, $300, and almost a full 2 days of pure crap
trying to figure things out. If anyone can call me, and just help look at
my settings over the phone, and see if we can get it to work at all...
Normally I'd not put this on a public list, but I'm absolutely desperet!
My home number is: 704-910-1581
My cell is: 704-737-1911.
I'm in eastern time, in Charlotte NC.
Any time of the day except for 9:00 to 11:00 this morning is fine to call.
I'll be here all day literally up till midnight tonight. Otherwise e-mail
me back and let's try to figure something out.
BTW, Sam Ash's number is:
704-522-9253
So if any of you wanna call and talk to not me, but another guy there named
Chris, Whalen, or tony, they're the 3 people who work the technology
department.
Maybe one of you can set them straight sense they dont' seem to get what I
need/don't need. I'll tell you one thing I don't need, that's more of their
I'm not sure BS!
I'm sorry for the tone in this mail, but I'm incredibly frustrated beyond
words!
Chris.
