TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
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The Pro Tools PC DEDICATED PRO TOOLS PC PLATFORM Mike Aiton takes a look at the machine built to provide the perfect Pro Tools experience.
AS THE owner of a Pro Tools HD3 system in a Mac Pro 3Ghz dual core (from 2007) I have, like many, been pondering my upgrade path from Pro Tools 10 HD to the dizzy heights of Pro Tools 11HD, to grab a piece of that 64-bit action. Regardless of whether I decide to go HDX or Native or what interface I buy, central to it all is the studio computer. The Pro Tools PC (PTPC) is the brainchild of Neil Hester of The-Pro-Tools- Expert Blog and Robin Vincent of Rain Computers UK, who together have over 30 years of audio computer experience. They have designed this computer from the ground up to be specifically optimised for running Pro Tools. The PTPC is a formidable
4U rack-mountable chassis with an overclocked Intel Core i7 quad core processor with four hyper-threaded virtual cores that is water- cooled for both temperature and noise control. The ram is super fast 1,600MHz DDR3 and you can fit up to 32Gb. It comes as standard with a 120GB SSD system drive and a 1TB media drive. There’s
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also enough room for up to eight 3.5in, two 2.5in, and two 5.25in hard drives when not using extra-long PCIe cards such as HDX. Graphics duties are taken
up by a discreet NVidia GT 610 as standard and also the on-board Intel HD4000 – the same as the current top of the line Mac Mini – to give up to four screen outputs. There are two Thunderbolt ports as standard and internally there is a single Legacy PCI – which works for PCI-X devices – and six PCIe slots (one is used for the graphics card). Mac gurus have I got your
attention yet?
THE DETAIL The black chassis is admittedly not quite as dashing as my drilled aluminium ‘vintage Mac’, but suitably pro looking. It actually requires 5U of rack space as there are two large, slow-moving fans on the bottom of the computer so a 1U space is required for ventilation (PTPC can supply a 1U vent panel). I can testify to how efficient the dust filters are and how positive internal air pressure is due to my lack of hoovering over the
“PTPC… was powerful, stable, and solid.” Mike Aiton
two-week soak test. I can also happily report that the fans run slow and very quiet. There are three full-length PCIe slots (a mixture of x16, x8 and x4 speeds) and three x1 length/speed PCIe slots (the one full length x16 is used by the GFX card). The x8 and x4 slots are suitable for Avid full-length HDX cards or gangster-type ‘sawn off ’ length Avid Native cards (for the ‘audio Guy Ritchies’ out there) as well as Magma PE6R4 PCIe to PCI-X Expansion Chassis. The x1 slots are also perfect for Avid HD3 PCIe cards. There is a PCI/X slot should you wish to pop in a Magma P7R4 PCIx to PCIx chassis card if you have been mopping up the plethora of cheap PCIX cards and second-hand chassis ‘on the ‘bay’. The boot drive (a fast 2.5in SSD) is housed above the optical drives where there is space for a second 2.5in drive. There is space for another five 3.5in drives even with long HDX cards fitted, or
eight with normal length cards. All drives are SATA III (6Gbit sec) so you can replicate and improve on your Mac Pro classic drive configuration with ease. The icing on the cake for me is the rear eSATA port. The plethora of drive
options is further increased by four USB3 and two USB2 ports (adding to the two front USB3 ports). The two Thunderbolt ports can be used for interfaces, drives, and/or monitors, or, rather helpfully, converted to Firewire 800 ports by the Apple Thunderbolt-to- Firewire adaptor. There is also a Firewire 400 port. The graphics I/O on the
NVIDIA card consist of dual link DVI, HDMI, and SVGA for the analogue queens out there. The onboard GFX I/O gives you another set of Dual Link DVI, HDMI, and an SVGA output. The on-board 7.1 audio output connectors are on 3.5mm mini jacks and there is an optical toslink stereo output too. A lone 3.5mm microphone mini jack caters for the audio input side. I was a tad disappointed not to have an optical toslink stereo input like on my Mac Pro.
Ethernet is covered with a single gigabit port. Simple. I wanted to explore Pro
Tools 11 so Eastwood Sound & Vision very kindly loaned me an Avid Thunderbolt Native box and Avid Omni. I confess to being a ‘Mac-
head’. I originally opted for a Mac and OSX out of fear that I would otherwise become drowned in a morass of viruses and the Russian Mafia would raid my child’s piggy bank. I was also under the Cult of Apple belief that Pro Tools only runs nicely on OSX. However, five years running ESPN’s audio suites on Windows XP convinced me that I wasn’t going to die of viruses and Pro Tools can run well on Windows. I ran the first tests on
Windows 7 with Pro Tools 10.3.6 (32-bit) and 11 (64- bit) co-installed connected to an Avid Mojo, Sync I/O, and my ProControl. Audio connection was to the Avid Omni. After installing the software and plug-ins and running PT 10.3.6, the Mojo was tested connected running to both the internal Firewire 400 and via the Apple Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adaptor – it ran on both flawlessly with Avid MXF
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