Specifications

Chapter 5: Configuring Your Pro Tools System
27
Configuring MIDI Setup
If you plan to use any MIDI devices with Pro Tools, do one
of the following:
 On Windows, configure your MIDI setup with MIDI
Studio Setup. See Appendix A, “Configuring MIDI Stu-
dio Setup (Windows Only)” for details.
– or –
 On Mac, configure your MIDI setup with the Apple
Audio MIDI Setup (AMS) utility. See Appendix B, “Con-
figuring AMS (Mac OS X Only).”
Backing Up your System Configuration
After configuring your system and Pro Tools, you
should save an image of your system drive using a
backup utility such as Norton Ghost. By doing this, you
can quickly restore your system configuration and set-
tings if you encounter any problems.
Optimizing a Windows System for
Pro Tools
(Windows XP Only)
Before configuring your computer, make sure you are
logged in as an Administrator for the account where
you want to install Pro Tools. For details on Administra-
tor privileges, refer to your Windows documentation.
Required Optimizations
To ensure optimum performance with Pro Tools LE,
configure the following settings before using Pro Tools
hardware and software.
Enabling DMA
Enabling your computer's DMA (Direct Memory Access)
frees up CPU bandwidth so the computer can do other
Pro Tools tasks.
In most cases the DMA option will already be set cor-
rectly, as Windows XP detects and activates DMA mode
by default.
To enable DMA for any IDE hard drives:
1 Choose Start > Control Panel.
2 In Classic View, double-click System.
3 Click the Hardware tab.
4 Under Device Manager, choose Device Manager.
5 In the Device Manager window, double-click IDE
ATA/ATAPI controllers, then double-click the Primary IDE
Channel for your IDE hard drive.
6 Click the Advanced Settings tab.
7 For each device, set the Transfer Mode to “DMA if avail-
able,” and click OK.
8 Repeat steps 5–7 for any additional IDE Channels.
9 Close the Device Manager window and then the Sys-
tem Properties window.
To optimize a Mac system for Pro Tools, see
“Optimizing a Mac System for Pro Tools” on
page 30.
When you are finished changing Windows sys-
tem settings, restart your computer.