Frustrated - PG Music Forums

Frustrated! I love PowerTracks. I use it daily especially to edit midi files. I had been running an older version on my old PC with XP that crashed. So, on the advice of my musician friends, I bought a MAC - PowerTracks doesn’t work on Mac. So, I purchased a laptop with Windows 10 and upgraded PTs ; Windows 10 + PTs sucks. Did I say I love PowerTracks? BUT, can someone tell me if there’s a PowerTracks-like program available for use with my (expensive) Mac. Thanks

Originally Posted By: JerryT

Frustrated! So, I purchased a laptop with Windows 10 and upgraded PTs ; Windows 10 + PTs sucks. Did I say I love PowerTracks? BUT, can someone tell me if there’s a PowerTracks-like program available for use with my (expensive) Mac. Thanks

The "Windows 10 + PTs sucks" part of your post is kind of vague.
Can you point to specific issues? Maybe then we could help solve those.

Sorry, I can't really hep with the Mac part,, as I'm not a Mac user .. but PT is not available for Mac, as you know. You'd need a Windows machine to run it on. Regardless of upgraded version.

Originally Posted By: JerryT

...can someone tell me if there’s a PowerTracks-like program available for use with my (expensive) Mac. Thanks

REAPER is good, else you can put PowerTracks in a WineBottle http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/ to run on your (expensive) Mac.
I have made many WineBottled Win apps for Mac, here's one http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=415703
(Right click SamplingWorkshop.app > show package contents.)

**EDIT you actually need to go to User/Application Support/com.yourcompany.yourapp_*** and copy pt and edit CompactAutoRunner.ini there.

you can just copy the PowerTracks folder (PT) from Win and put it in the winebottler folder then just add this in the CompactAutoRunner.ini, or edit the Menu manually to add the ptw.exe.

Code:

[Button6]
Button.Caption=PowerTracks
Button.ToolTip=PowerTracks
Button.Top=288
Button.Left=167
Button.Width=145
Button.Height=32
Button.Font.Size=12
Button.Type=1
Button.Launch=<APP_PATH>\PT\ptw.exe

Here's a Mac app creation guide using WineBottle:

Attached picture Mac-PowerTracks-1.png

Update:

In WineBottle give the Identifier a name like com.pg.powertracks as it goes
in User/Application Support/com.pg.powertracks.

To get your BB track into PowerTracks Export then then give the a simple name like Drums, Fiddle etc..

You can save files to User/Application Support/com.pg.powertracks/drive_c/pt/songs, as PowerTracks will open in the pt folder.

1. Save your BB song again as song-powertracks.SGU then after save rename to MGU.

2. PowerTracks File > Open song-powertracks.MGU (this will give your chords).

3. Now select the first track > File > Import > Bass.WAV, next track Drums.WAV etc..

4. You can Import the RealCharts Midi as well, in RealTrack Prefs check Save RealCharts in Midi file/BB Song MGU

5. File > Save Special > Midi > File on Disk.

6. PowerTracks File > Import song-powertracks.MID ** Don't import Chord from the Midi file !!!

Attached File

BB-Mac-To-PT.png (510 downloads)

Originally Posted By: JerryT

Frustrated! I love PowerTracks. I use it daily especially to edit midi files. I had been running an older version on my old PC with XP that crashed. So, on the advice of my musician friends, I bought a MAC - PowerTracks doesn’t work on Mac. So, I purchased a laptop with Windows 10 and upgraded PTs ; Windows 10 + PTs sucks. Did I say I love PowerTracks? BUT, can someone tell me if there’s a PowerTracks-like program available for use with my (expensive) Mac. Thanks

Yeah---I still use PTs to edit MIDI. Reaper is now my primary audio DAW but PowerTracks really does rule for quick and easy MIDI editing, especially GM. I did recently have to use a Reaper-PTs combination to edit a medley with more than 48-tracks limit of PTs but only used Reaper to write Type0 files for sections of the medley to reduce them to single tracks before dragging and dropping them back into PowerTracks. All of the detailed editing was still done in PTs because I'm not familiar/comfortable with Reaper's MIDI editing because it has been an evolving feature that I haven't been keeping up with. If someone here tells me that Reaper now does MIDI as quickly and conveniently as PowerTracks, I'll revisit the feature.

I'm using Win10 and PT2017 and it's running fine. What issues are you running into?