Carlos,

Pro Tools is complicated. First, you have to get a Mac that is approved.
THEN, you have to get a SCSI accelerator card. THEN, you have to replace the
stock CD-RW with one that is approved as compatible by Digidesign. THEN, you
have to set up all the components you are using in your system (I believe it
is the DAI settings). THEN, you have to have Quicktime installed. THEN, you
have to set the buffers just right. THEN you have to install the Pro Tools
software. THEN, you have to tweak everything to optimize the system. I took
mine to a Pro-Tools expert who showed me things that optimize the Mac and
software that I otherwise never would have know. THEN, you have to install
the Plug-Ins and get them to run correctly. Now you are ready to record,
right? NO! THEN, you realize that you only have 2 XLR mic preamps, and they
are not very good at that. So you go out and buy 8 mic preamps with Phantom
power, and wire everything up. Now you have spaghetti all over the place.
Are we ready to make some music yet?

No. There are some extremely complicated screens with all kinds of
waveforms, and tons of buttons that most never need. And you must change
settings when recording and playing back, or you WILL get latency issues.
So...

THEN, you have to start reading the manual. You will find out that it is
crap, so you will then buy an aftermarket book of 350 pages to read through.
THEN, you will start to be able to understand the extremely complicated and
complex file structure used by Pro Tools. THEN, and maybe then, will you be
able to lay down a few tracks. And THEN, you can go through their
complicated means of exporting a file to WAV format. And when you want to
use it, or move it, you haul the monitor, mouse, keyboard, digi 001
interface, mic preamps, and Mac tower unit.

Now compare that to the Roland VS-2400CD. Get it out of the box. All wires
go into it. It has 8 preamps. Good ones, all with XLR. The burner is built
in. The effects are too. It is all configured. No horsing around with
compatibility issues. No worries about using too many effects and eating up
computing power. I made more music with my little old analog Tascam 4 track
than I ever did the Pro Tools system due to its needless complication. Some
call it elegant. I call it cumbersome.


"Carlos Alden" wrote in message
...
Jimmy:

I had a Roland VS-880 for years and really liked it. I could use it
pretty
much straight out of the box as a tape recorder-like device, but I
invested
LOTS of time in learning all the editing and effects stuff, too. I would
think that either the Yamaha or the Roland would be fine for a starter
unit,
but for more than that, be prepared to spend lots of time futzing.

Having said all that, however, I have since moved to a computer based
system. It takes MAYBE a few seconds longer to boot up and be ready to go
compared to my VS-880, and I have better sound and more flexible options.
If you purchased a dedicated computer with known compatibility with
ProTools, you shouldn't be having a mountain of problems, really.

For example, why are you having latency issues? Is it a USB input
interface?

After previewing the Digi 002R I finally bought a MOTU 828 MkII. Comes
with MOTU's no-midi recording program, AudioDesk, which is VERY much like
ProTools. After about three hours of initial messing around, I have it up
and running very easily. ProTools was like that, too. There is no
latency
to speak of, tons of great effects, and best of all, visual graphical
editing, which I really like for my radio productions I do with kids.

Sounds like you've made up your mind to move to an all-in-one unit. If
so,
I don't think you could go wrong with either you have chosen. But I'd
look
again at your system and figure out what's making it not work right. I'm
no engineer, and a computer based DAW isn't hard for ME to figure out.

Carlos