There's not much to learn in order to take advantage of Rewire, as the system intelligently configures itself when you launch the two programs. Your main job is choosing the routing of audio and MIDI. I've been using Pro Tools 6.1 with Reason 2.5, so I'll describe the procedure based on this combination. Hopefully, these basic steps will translate smoothly to other programs.
Rewire inputs are brought into Pro Tools tracks via the Rewire RTAS plug-in. Step one: launch Pro Tools. The only rule to remember with Rewire is to load the Master application first, and quit it last. Pro Tools is pretty smart, though, and will warn you if you try to quit while a Rewire client is running. Step two: launch Reason. Reason will detect that Pro Tools is running and load up in such a way as to be immediately ready to run as a client. The Reason Hardware Interface module (see screen shot) will indicate that Reason is in Rewire slave mode.
Pro Tools MIDI tracks automatically see instruments in the Rewire slave program. Step three: create Rewire inputs in Pro Tools. Inputs are accessed from RTAS plug-ins inserted in standard audio tracks or aux input tracks. The use of RTAS means that Rewire is more flexible in LE, as TDM systems cannot insert RTAS plug-ins on aux input tracks. If you have LE, you should definitely use aux input channels, whereas TDM users will need to use record-armed audio tracks. The screen shot (left) shows an example. The plug-in is named simply Reason and has a pop-up channel selector to pick from the 64 available connections in Reason (I've picked channel 3). Step four: connect something in Reason. If Reason is fired up with the default song, you'll have a mixer module with the main stereo outputs connected to Rewire ports 1 and 2 (always labelled Mix L and R). When using Rewire it makes more sense to connect your Reason sound modules directly to the interface module so they are routed directly to individual channels in Pro Tools. Otherwise you'll end up with two mixers to deal with, and lose the advantage of Pro Tools's mix environment and plug-ins. In the screen shot above you'll see that the Subtractor and Malstrom modules each have their own channels in my Pro Tools Session.
MIDI & Transport Linking Connecting Pro Tools MIDI tracks via Rewire is so simple and elegant that it's hardly worth explaining! The screen shot above will probably tell you most of what you need to know. Here, I've created a MIDI track, clicked on the output selector, and by some voodoo all the instruments in the Reason song are presented for selection. Sweet. The Transport linking and sync are just as clever. As soon as you've made a connection between Pro Tools and Reason, hitting Play in either application will start up both. Sync between the Pro Tools timeline and Reason's sequencer is automatically handled without any messing about with timecode or Beat Clock. In fact I was amazed to see that even the left and right loop locators will follow each other when moved in either program, and looping can be switched on or off from either side. grüsse dB
