Author Archives: Tamas Dragon

Some thoughts on the upcoming Pro Tools 11

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Anger, frustration, trolling, baseless bashing, rare real critic, hype, amusement, excitement. If I want to summarise the last few weeks about Pro Tools 11 in one sentence. Of course we better get used to the fact that we unlikely to see any new products which wouldn’t generate the same diverse response. This post reflects my own opinions.

First of all, it never cease to amaze me that many already bashing a software which is basically not exist yet. Yes, we saw the announcement, know that it will come, but let’s be honest for a moment, the vast majority of us have no idea how good or bad it’ll be. The only thing we know that it is supposed to be a amazing upgrade. Let’s see some of the new features.

Features

  • Offline bounce: the long awaited feature, which honestly doesn’t make a big difference at all (at least for me). Don’t get me wrong, it is a very useful thing and I can see that I would use here or there, but honestly I am not that brave to hand out a final mix without listen to it from start to end realtime! And honestly with all due respect I don’t know any serious professional who would… So while I agree it’s a nice feature which can help us to make certain things much faster, it’s far from being the most important thing. For many of us, the good destructive record to track still has many advantages over offline bounce.
  • 64bit architecture. Now this is a much more important thing in my opinion. Hopefully gone are the days when we get memory related error messages, not to mention occasional crashes with huge sessions.
  • New video engine. Oh I prayed for this one. Cannot really comment on this until I try it, but I’m very glad they reworked it, or imported it (from Mediacomposer).
  • Metering, gain reduction meter, etc. Although it’s not breakthrough I consider these as highly supportive features. I’m sure I’ll like these
  • New audio engine. Glad they ditched DAE forever. It was high time to do it and make some serious effort to build one from scratch.
  • Only AAX. Honestly I don’t really want to say/write anything about this. We know till Pro Tools 10 has been released. No argument here as I take this as inevitable.

Avidaae

Efficiency, speed and power

For me the biggest promise is that compared to Pro Tools 10, on the very same machine we’ll get much more power with Pro Tools 11. Of course we don’t have any tangible proof of this, but if it’s true, I’ll upgrade. I know that the supported or recommended computer list is somewhat narrower than before, but remember that at Avid if something is not on the list, it does not mean it won’t work. They cannot possibly test every configuration.

For a short example, I daily use Pro Tools HD 10 on a dual i5 MacBook Pro which is not supported, still working rock solid even with big sessions. I don’t encourage anyone to use computers which are not in the Avid list, though you should know that there are laptops and desktops that works flawlessly with PT10, without any Avid qualification. For the record, the main rigs are all supported machines, but frankly many times I use not supported machines at different places, and they’re perfectly working. My experience based on mainly Apple computers regarding this.

I wonder how much more power we’ll get, as a few weeks ago I had to finish a mix on my laptop (i5 dual-core MBP) and the whole session ran smoothly. The session comprised of 134 tracks, 8 effects (reverbs, delays, etc.), 42 buses, about 160+ plugins, including eq, comp., tape saturation, etc. This was not a small mix session but the little laptop handled it. I don’t say that with ease, but without errors, about 60 % cpu load. At the end I recorded the stems into the same session with destructive record.

Upgrade path

Recently Tim Prebble wrote an excellent summary about the possibilities/needs of our future computer rigs and I couldn’t agree more with him. Take the example above. That is only a small laptop, nothing really special about it, yet it handles a mix large enough to “kill” even a few years old tower. And this is only a dual-core i5. Now you can buy for example a Mac mini server with quad-core i7, 16GB of ram, etc. It’s already powerful enough to handle a really large super-session with loads of tracks, plugins and stems in the very same session. So the question is very valid: do we need the huge workstation towers?

I agree there’s a market for those too, but I’m not really convinced that audio, even audio post production would need them. I very well know the advantages come with a dedicated tower, but if you just think it over and calculate a bit, you might end up with multiple Mac minis (just for the sake of a example), some Sonnet expansion, and you spent half the money, yet has more than enough power at your disposal. All this with the probability that PT11 will be much more efficient than PT10 could ever be.

One thing where the big towers has enormous advantage is serviceability and expandability. I’d been building computers for many years and know that how easy and painless a memory or hdd upgrade/change can be with a proper tower. These things are much more complicated in a laptop or in Mac minis, not to mention the the iMacs. But if we consider the price difference, we may face a quite easy decision as from the price of a Macpro, you can buy 4 Mac minis, or two with the Sonnet expansion box. With this you also has some backup if something goes wrong. I’m not completely against the huge towers, but honestly at this point I cannot see why I would choose that upgrade path. Of course anything can happen.

Summary

So, what is my plan? I am certain that I will upgrade to Pro Tools 11, probably as soon as it will come out, as it can co-exist with PT10 on the same machine. On the computer side though, I’m not sure I am interested in a new MacPro anymore. And I’m very determined, because these minis/laptops and other little machines are not only “good for the money” or “good enough for my needs”, but they are already powerful enough for serious work. In the long term (like with the Sonnet box) it’s makes more sense to replace the Mac mini than to buy huge and pricey towers again and again.

Favourite sound of the week #7

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As I promised before, here’s this week’s favourite sound of the week, which is a poor old Digi002’s fader pack in its last days of existence.

I’ve recorded this last year without any serious purpose. One morning when I switched on the unit, I heard these strange, very interesting sounds and I couldn’t help but record them. The files were backed up and only a few days ago I found them, listened to them and again, immediately fell in love with the weird, mechanical, rhythmic clickety-clack.

I managed to “force” the unit to make these sounds again by using its own utility menu in standalone mode, testing the faders with step fader and with vegas mode. As it really was an old unit I had to make multiple takes as sometimes it didn’t want to even move the motorised faders. Finally, before the unit died, I was able to record the faders.

The first part is the step fader mode with obnoxious noise from the unit, which is good for us. The second part is the “vegas” mode when the faders supposed to move like a snake. The nice mechanical clickety-clack accompanied by the not so usual noise of the motors. The third part is while the poor faders are acting-up, struggling with the necessary movements.

Without the intent to restrict your imagination, these sounds are good for many mechanical, electrical, industrial effects. Mangle these as many ways as you would like to, pitch them up or down or both, cut, use only the noise part of it, etc. Have fun with them!

Plug-in cleanup day

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At least for me, and I recommend the same for you too. Wait, don’t stop here, there are benefits, really. The necessary, highly used ones stay right where they are now, I only intend to remove the few which has no real value to me.

I don’t say that they are not good plug-ins or they are useless. It’s simply a practical thing, if you don’t use it for long months, probably you don’t really need that particular plug-in. I try to keep my list short and tidy. Many times we got plug-in envy, have to try, buy all the new shinny gadgets, which is not a bad thing at all as we learn and discover new things, new companies and possibilities, but sooner or later (rather sooner) we end up with a huge list of plugs, and be honest, most of them sitting in our folders/lists unused.

This is why sometimes it’s a good idea to browse through your plugs folder and clear out the items you don’t need anymore. If you don’t want to delete them permanently, then at least drop them into the unused plug-in folder, so Pro Tools (or any other DAW) don’t have to scan through all the unused stuff.

The benefits

I know I promised that there are benefits. First, you’ll have a much tidier list, which isn’t contain all the unused plug-ins, so you’ll find the necessary ones faster.
Second, your DAW won’t have to scan and initialise all the stuff you don’t use, therefore it can be more stable. If you don’t use some plugs for a long time, it’s unlikely you updated them properly which can cause trouble with any DAW, so removing these can actually help you keep your DAW “in-shape”.

The last benefit is the reality check we all need sometimes. Who needs 30 different brands of eq or 200 different compressors? I agree that variety is good in many areas, but there’s a point where the plug-in count or variety will be detrimental. Stick to those what you really use and throw out the rest.

Probably the easiest way to find the plug-in folders is to go to MAC HD/Applications/Avid/Pro Tools where you can find two symbolic links:

  • AAX plug-ins
  • DPM plug-ins

Be honest, be cruel, do it!

Lack of sounds and time

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In the past few months longer posts and field recordings are missing from the blog as many of you mentioned in the emails. Yes, it’s true, let me explain this a bit.

As you might know that from january I relocated to Budapest as I accepted a job offer there. I thought it was going to be quite busy at the start but frankly I underestimated the magnitude of it. Literally from day one I happen to fall from one predub/final mix into another, so I really didn’t have time for anything. I tried to keep the pace of at least one post per week but not always succeeded with this aim. I’m still in the process of catching up with the frantic world around me, but the good news is that it seems to getting better now. Or at least with the help of some focused planning it seems that I will be able to handle my schedule better.

Due to this busyness I terribly neglected a few things, such as:

  • my contribution at the Sound Collectors Club
  • my contribution on some forums
  • reading good articles/blog posts
  • go out and record sounds
  • write blog posts

But now I found place for my little trusty Sony D50 in my backpack, so from now on it will accompany me to almost everywhere and if I encounter some fascinating sounds, and will be fast enough to grab the recorder, I’ll record it and just as it was the practice in the past, will share it with you.

Regarding the usual mini series like the “favourite sound of the week” will be continued shortly and I try to make some clever plan to eschew these huge downtimes. And as always I really appreciate the feedback and suggestions about the blog. Thank you for all the readers and followers.

Shortcuts for our pleasure #9

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Today, a real practical one, especially if you’re mixing something. It’s all about automation and the speed of switching on and off various things that can be automated.

Let’s start with the basic in-built things. I guess you all know that in Pro Tools we can change the track view to show the volume automation or the send volume, etc. But there is a faster method for displaying the chosen parameter rather than going through different menus.

CTRL+CMD+Click on the the volume/pan/track name will show their automation view on the track. Clicking with the this key command on the track name restores the original waveform view

automationpm

The method remains the same if you would like to see some plugin’s automation parameter on the track, CTRL+CMD+Click on the parameter. If for some reason the chosen parameter is not ready for automation,

CTRL+ALT+CMD+Click on the parameter and enable it for automation

This is a much faster method for enable/disable any parameter than to use the automation window to define what shall be in the list. Using this key command will display a little menu adjacent to the parameter/control offering two choices:

  • Enable/disable the parameter for automation
  • Open plug-in automation dialogue

plugparameterauto

It’s very easy and fast, but there’s even more. If you want to very quickly see the volume automation of one or more tracks,

Select the track/tracks and hit – to see the volume automation.

In the heat of automating everything, don’t forget that sometimes it’s a good idea to disable or prohibit things so that you won’t accidentally overwrite any previous thing.

CMD+4 on the numeric keyboard brings up the automation window where you can define globally what can be automated in the session.

autowindow

That’s all for today, hope it helps you to speed up your automation workflow.