Customer Reviews

Digidesign Mbox 2 Mini Portable USB-Powered Pro Tools LE Audio Workstation

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I normally do not write reviews; however after seeing the negative reviews on here I felt I should write about this product.

First, It is imperative that you do research before you buy this piece of equipment. This is Pro Tools, in case you didn't know it is the recording studio standard across the world. It is not designed as a personal computer application and is very finnicky when it comes to operating systems. For example, when I purchased it, I knew that it would not run on Windows XP Media Center Edition. Because I did my research and reading, I bought it anyway and was able to run well but not without some pretty technical changes in the way that my computer operates.

Second, if you are new to computer recording; there is a huge learning curve associated with it. Alot of people hear Pro Tools and go out and buy it without any knowledge of how to record or what computer requirements are. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to read. Read the amazon reviews, get some recording books and recording "theory" books, Pro Tools guides, (futureproducers.com has great forums for questions) and everything until you are going strong. Then after you know what you need and what is overkill, buy on an informed decision. Once you get it up and running its a pretty good solution.

Since getting the MBox 2 Mini I've recorded about 30-40 tracks and they've come out sounding really good, but beware that it is not compatible with VST's and will only run RTAS plug-in's unless you get a VST to RTAS wrapper. Since I've got a host of them it worked out well for me.

Pro Tools is great for recording and pretty good at MIDI sequencing as well. Its not hard to tell why this is the recording standard. I definitely give this product 2 thumbs up.

First of all. People who rate this product poorly are rating it for the wrong reasons. If you do you research then you should not have any problems getting it to work with your computer or with your equipment. I bought this used after some research. I am using it with both a mac and xp however I prefer the mac. Very solid, good sound quality when used properly.

All I could say is know what you are buying and why you are buying it. Protools is not easy to used and it will take a while to get use to recording and manipulation.

One book I recommend for singers/songwriters/musicians that are beginners with ProTools is "Pro Tools for Musicians and Songwriters" this is a beginners book that I came across. I am not advertising just trying to help people out. It is right to the point for beginners. I have used ProTools for a long time and it is nicely done. The rest is up to you to figure out and play around with. Help sections, online tutorial searches and putting in time is a plus.

If your new to sound editing or using Avid systems your going to either LOVE ProTools, since its largely considered industry standard and you'll happily know your using a real audio editing system, or HATE ProTools because you dont know how to use it. Either way, know what your getting into before you buy it. It took me 6-8 months before I felt comfortable using the software. Been using it since film school, (2005), this is my second MBox. Previously owned the MBox1 (upright model) with no problems for 3+1/2 years.

MY BIGGEST COMPLAINT... on some computers, seems to happen to iMac computers more often, when your MBox mini is plugged in it will crash your CPU, and its really, really annoying! So do your research before buying this!!! This unit is not hot swappable so you must shut your CPU down before plugging/unplugging it. And even then, it will still crash your other applications (Safari, FCP, etc)esp. if you have your MBox routing your CPU audio through it. It will also cause tons of Permission Errors (Disk Utility had to correct around 100. Most I've ever seen.) Some people have no problems at all, but those CPU seem to be dedicated machines to strictly sound editing. If your like me and have only one main CPU youre going probably going to have issues as I and many other have.

YOUR FOREWARNED!!! IT DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY!!!! Some people blame the sound driver created by Digidesign. EITHER WAY, IF DIGIDESIGN/APPLE could get together and fix this problem I would actually be a satisfied customer!!!

iMac 2009
10.5.8
2.66 GHz Core duo
4 GB memery

I consider myself an amateur at audio recording but not new to it. The M-box 2 mini is awesome. First off, the build quality of the unit is exceptional. Knobs are smooth. Jacks are solid. I won't go into specs or features, as you can read about them everywhere.
Sound quality is excellent connecting mid-range AKG and Sennheiser studio mics. Haven't connected any instruments to it, as I use it primarily for vocals.
Now what can i say about Pro tools that haven't already been said? The cost is well worth the program itself, and the extra included plugins. This is my first experience with PT and now it is my audio studio of choice. Before I was using software by Adobe and Cakewalk Sonar so it didn't take me too long to learn PT.

Warning: If you are new to audio recording software this is a pretty steep learning curve for starters. Good thing is they include a really helpful DVD tutorial covering most of the basic functions of PT LE to help bring you up to speed. I also recommend going to other websites and downloading the trial versions to familiarize yourself and to get an idea of what you are getting into.

Note about my installation experience: Pro tools did not work on my laptop running XP Media Edition SP3. After some research on Digidesign's support sites, it seems the problem is with MS Explorer 8 update. After following instructions to uninstall Explorer 8 and rollback to Explorer 7 everything worked just fine. (Nothing great or needed about IE 8 anyway)
No probs so far on my desktop PC running Vista home premium SP2 even with Explorer 8 update installed.

Truly a pro product, great support, great resources online. I see why it is an industry standard.

Firstly do your research before buying this. Fairly steep learning curve for beginners. The hardware is solid with smooth knobs. The bundle I got came with a instructional dvd to which I flip flopped back and forth between the studio and living room for 3 days till I finally got things working right. I would also recommend pro tools le ignite books. There is a beginner and advanced guide for whichever version of pro tools you are using. I would recommend the beginner's guide and the rest is self taught if it's something you want to learn. If you gave more for your computer than this system then you're probably gonna have problems. If you buy all your patch cables at radio shack then you'll probably have problems. People have assumed that just because you get a lot for your money that this is a crappy product just because they can't get it working right or have bad quality sound. Not so... the plug-ins are where you start shelling out the dough. I can assure you that if you have good quality cables and equipment that it will work right and then some. Also if you don't have a decent pc/mac solely dedicated to music production/recording then I would say go with something else for recording because it does use lots of processing power at times. When I first got mine I called digidesign support and spent about an hour going through and deleting processes and such to make it run its most optimal.. I would suggest using a cheap laptop for internet or downloading and put everything on a usb drive/external or cd that u need for your music computer. Basically if you're not too serious or lack patience then go with something else. But once you learn the program and all the short cuts I promise you will be stuck on it as far as recording and editing go. On the down side the MIDI department seemed to be lacking. It does take the place of whatever sound card that is in your computer as well. Other than that I would give this 3 thumbs up if I had a third hand. :D

Simply to reassure you viewers, that the quality is fine to me, I don't know what the other people are talking about. Since I don't get to spend a lot of time at home with my Mbox 2 Mini, I am going to complain that, or remind you that Pro Tools LE, though it is industry standard, is not portable for music creation. You need to connect to your Mbox product in order to use Pro Tools. It is just the design of the product

I purchased one of these in 2006. It took me a few weeks to figure the software out, but the hardware was easy. I ran it on an HP Compaq with 3.0 GHz Pentium 4, 1 GB RAM,and a 140 GB HDD. I too had a problem with the CPU crashing, but only when I had too many tracks open at once. If I had a better CPU and more RAM, there wouldn't have been any issues. The best setup for me was to rum a mixer into the MBox then the MBox to the PC via Firewire. If you have some general knowledge about computers, you shouldn't have a problem with this product.

I was using an eagle tone mic and no preamp and still got a preddy good sound out of the mbox, protools on this was easy to use, only problem i had was it not being compatible with my windows 64 bit vista or my windows 7 OS even on xp mode, had to buy a whole new computer with xp

I've been recording semi-professionally in my home studio for years. I rarely (if ever) do more than one track (mic or line) at a time so the unit fit me quite well. It comes with ProTools which I have always wanted to try. I ended up not using PT much - maybe it's just a personal thing, but although it is indeed very powerful but certainly not the most intuitive piece of software in the world, in my opinion. As far as M-Box 2 Mini goes I must say, I like it. It's solid, dead quiet, produces very clean sound, is fairly easy to use. Not an eye-sore either. Two major flaws: it's built with PT in mind so if you plan on using it with some other recording software - be prepared to go through some pains with drivers - you're going to need standalone drivers from Digidesign and they are not always up-to-date with them. Mine works fine (with a couple of twists) with third-party software on my XP desktop (although it's the one where PT is originally installed). It worked like a charm on my new iMAC with Snow Leopard - after I downloaded Digi new Standalone Core Audio driver, which they had only released recently. But it refused to work with the same software on my Vista laptop - just wouldn't recognize the damn thing despite me getting the latest drivers. So again, it's great quality unit but if you go standalone (without PT) - watch out for the drivers!

This was perfect for the price as well as for what I need it for. I use it for school and side projects. I have nothing close to a home studio, but this is all I need to operate ProTools and that's all I need right now.
Great for the price.