So I have been running VMWare Fusion now for PC duties on my MacBook, and it’s working like a charm.  Loving it.

I also just upgraded my Mac to Leopard – more on that later.

 A couple of new additions to the kit that I forgot to mention:

• Apogee Duet (MAN THIS THING ROCKS)
• Virtual Guitarist 2 (runs on the Mac unlike its predecessors)

I’m also generally not using the US-428 – I just don’t need it.  I did need to install my Virtual Instruments on the Fusion Windows XP install – so I could use them to dump tracks from my PC projects to my Mac projects.  They work just fine, no issues at all.

I also did a lot of research on Firewire devices, Pro Tools, Macs and audio recording and production.  Even though almost everywhere says “Don’t use your ProTools MBOX with anything else on the bus” yada yada, I am having some nice success.

I was running into the issue of simply not having more than a single FW port – I have the LiquidMix, MBOX2 Pro, Duet and a Powercore FW.  Even though Digidesign says don’t use the extra FW port on the MBOX2 for anything while you’re using the MBOX, I was running the Powercore off of it.  The Powercore has three ports on the back, but for some reason I can never get a FW device that’s plugged in to one of them to work right.  I wonder if I don’t have a very early unit that had some issue with these ports.

So – I have a 23″ Cinema Display and I ran the FW off the MacBook to that, giving me two ports (yes this is effectively a hub) – ran the MBOX and Powercore off one port and then the Liquid Mix off the other.  No worries at all!  When the Duet got added into the mix, I was worried I would have to just use it for tracking, then disconnect it for mixdown (the Liquid Mix doesn’t have but one FW port, either – just like the Duet – so they couldn’t be daisy chained).  But!  On a lark I got a Belkin 6 port FW hub (from MicroCenter, in the Mac section) – and believe it or not, I could run all the devices off of it!  No problems at all.

To test the theory, I ran mixes with 20 total externally-driven plugins or more (10 on the LiquidMix, 10 on the Powercore) out through both the MBOX and the Duet, with no problems.  I was actually pretty suprised.  I suspect that if my plugin counts get too high, I will start to see some issues, but right now everything runs smooth as silk.  Chalk me up as a permanent Mac convert, this is amazing.

Now if I could only convince the wife that I needed a new Mac Pro…

Well, I recently did a session with a great local singer (Megan Fong) that sealed the deal for me – I am moving my recording and production chores from the PC to Apple Macintosh. 

 While were were able to cut some rough guitar / vocal demo tracks, we had a few problems with the PC and eventually switched over to ProTools on my MacBook and things went flawlessly.

Even installing all the right firewire patches, etc. on my PC didn’t make it run smoothly – I would still get blue screens from time to time when running firewire devices during both recording and playback.

 Therefore, here’s my new rig:

•  Apple MacBook 2.0Ghz Core Duo, 80GB HD, 2GB RAM
• 2×500GB Maxtor OneTouchPlus 4 FW/USB 2.0 HD (one for audio tracking, one for libraries and instrument files)
• 1×750GB Maxtor OneTouch Plus 4 FW/USB 2.0 HD (for backup)
• ProTools MBox2 Pro Factory Bundle w/ProTools LE 7.X
• Steinberg Cubase 4
• TC Electronic Powercore Firewire
• Focusrite LiquidMix
• Event Studio Precision 6 Monitors
• KRK RP-5 Powered Monitors w/RP-10S Powered Subwoofer
• Alesis Monitor One Monitors

I have a pretty nice selection of mics and a couple of decent pre-amps, but need to add more in this category, especially the pre-amps:

• Neumann TLM 103 Studio Condenser
• Blue Dragonfly Studio Condenser
• Shure KSM-42 Studio Condenser
• Rode NTK Studio Tube Condenser w/Pre
• DBX 586 Dual Tube Pre w/Digital I/O Option
• Tons of miscellaneous dynamic and lower end condenser mics

I also have some interesting outboard gear, some of which isn’t in high utilization any longer but I’ll list it here for information purposes:

• TC-Helicon VoicePrism Plus
• Electrix WarpFactory
• 2x Alesis ADAT-XT20
• Sony PCM-500 DAT
• MOTU Midi Timepiece

This is the stuff that only works on my PC and thus probably won’t get used much anymore:

• MOTU 2408 MKIII Core
• Sonic Foundry Acid Pro 6.0
• Sonic Foundry SoundForge 8.0
• Tascam Gigastudio Orchestra 3 (might use a PC to run this as it sounds great)

Some other audio interfaces I have lying around:

• Tascam / Frontier US-428 (remember this?)

Software Synths and Instruments (some Mac, some PC, some both):

• Steinberg The Grand
• Steinberg Virtual Guitarist
• Steinberg VG Acoustic Edition
• BFD
• BFD 2
• Spectrasonics Stylus
• Spectrasonics Stylus RMX
• Spectrasonics Atmosphere
• Spectrasonics Trilogy

Finally, I am experimenting with VMWare Fusion – I think I will be able to track into Acid on my Mac, then send the files over to ProTools for mixdown and production.  I will update you more on this as I learn more, as it sure would be nice to be able to do this so I can still use my cool Sony software and my Gigistudio.  Gotta figure out how all the disk stuff works though.