Ableton Forum

Question: Like many others, I am interested in using Protools to master my LIVE creations. I have rewired LIVE to Protools and then recorded a track to Protools...no problem. However, I would like to know if there is a smart way to record all the tracks at once from LIVE to Protools. Typically, being paranoid about quality, I was recording each track to Protools one at a time. (very time consuming). If I have 20 or 30 LIVE tracks, can I route all of them to 20 or 30 seperate Protools tracks and record the entire creation at once? Also in Protools you cannot directly record to a track so I had to bus the Protools Live Rewired track to another Protools track for recording. Is this a correct procedure?

Another issue I noticed. I had an audio guitar track that sounded good in Live even thought the WARP was set to Beats. However, when recorded to Protools, it was uneven and not good. I changed the WARP to Texture and/or complex and it made all the difference. Is this what I should have expected?

I fully expect someone to respond and tell me to do all my mastering in LIVE. I might.

Thank you....

www.myspace.com/rocketrichards

Also in Protools you cannot directly record to a track so I had to bus the Protools Live Rewired track to another Protools track for recording. Is this a correct procedure?

Yes.
Also, why don't you just render all of your tracks separately out of Live and open them up in ProTools?

My experience...

Try to avoid Protools Buses, My mother can notice the diference

If you have a mixer, use the mixer buses

Joey: Do you mean, render each individual track and then import each rendered track into seperate Protools tracks? I guess that would be faster than actually recording each track seperately.

PeReYrA: I need to meet your mother! I do no thave a seperate mixer...i am using the Protools software mixer versus a seperate outboard gear.

It looks like there is one option that i did not try..Setting up Live as the slave to Protools, I could setup something like 30 protools tracks with Live as an insert on each. For each track receive one of the LIVE outputs on individual buses matching the LIVE bus output to the specific Protools track. then in Protools bus the track to a new audio track for recording. So to record 15 Live tracks I would need to setup 30 Protools tracks and then delete the 15 that I did not need. this seems like a heck of a lot of work and I am concerned that LIVE inserts on 15 different tracks will probably bog down the CPU on my iMAC.

So far, it looks like I am still at a track by track method.

I may try Joey's trick next.

I Only said try to avoid them, not don´t use them

Your original question was I would like to know if there is a smart way to record all the tracks at once from LIVE to Protools? I don´t have n´answer for that

If your machine can support all the inserts you need, i recomend that,
Setting up Live as the slave to Protools, recording all the tracks at the same time

Or... LIVE to Protools and then recorded a track to Protools...no problem
In that way you can mix in live, and render in protools in a master stereo channel

Rendering the tracks in live, and then open them in protools, mix, looks like a double rendering, and a sure audio quality loss

ALe

You can just render each track from Live instead. I forgot if it was in 5 or 6 they added the capability to render each track individually, but at once. Then import them into PT.

If you are paranoid about quality, render in 32 bit float. Otherwise 24 bits will be fine.

But I have to ask the question: Why ProTools? If there are any plugs you have only in PT that you want to use, I can understand it. Or you have access to a HD system so you can go wild with the number of plugs.

But otherwise there isn't really anything magical about PT itself. Just a lot of work to change DAW, setting up compeletely new reverbs/delay/fx etc.

First off, let me say thank you to those that responded. Great to see a worldwide connection and sharing.

Re: Why Protools? and...no, it is not an HD system, just an LE system, and frankly, I am beginning to challenge why I continue to utilize Protools. I guess it is what I started with and felt like I knew the best. To Michael's point, I have been using most of the reverbs/delays etc in LIVE and usually only add more automation, EQ, compress and dither in protools when I work in this manner. The only other feature I utilize in Protools in this rewire manner is SampleTank for adding additional instrumentaion. Lately, i have been recording all my guitar and piano parts to Live becasue of the creative ability of utilizing scenes. I have been also using Reason as a slave to LIVE because of some of the cool devices in Reason.

Several individuals have suggested that "the farther I move away from Protools, the more free I will feel". Maybe I should be researching how to do better mixing and mastering within LIVE and eliminate the Protools component.

Good stuff guys. Thank you.

An update to Michael-SW. I just tried rendering each track, (but at once), and then imported into Protools. Worked very well with one small operator error. The 26 tracks that I had in LIVE, I recorded all as Stereo tracks. So, when importing, it took both a left and right and imported 52 audio tracks. Problem with Protools LE is the limit is something like 32 Audio tracks. So I guess next time, I need to pay more attention to my LIVE recording settings. The quality seemed to be AOK.

The only other thought is that, in LIVE i have setup some audio processing on the Master fader. (compression, EQ etc). I am guessing that rendering individual tracks will not include this processing. Either way, i learned a few new things tonight. Thks. Keith

Rocket wrote:
The only other thought is that, in LIVE i have setup some audio processing on the Master fader. (compression, EQ etc). I am guessing that rendering individual tracks will not include this processing. Either way, i learned a few new things tonight. Thks. Keith

I'm not actually sure about that. When you do a normal render it definitely includes processing on the master bus, but probably not when you render individual tracks. Compression would probably give totally different results when applied to each track separately compared to the whole mix.

interesting post but are there any more recent thoughts on this??