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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 19, 2014 13:57:07 GMT -6
I wish I was that smart.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 19, 2014 11:31:53 GMT -6
Hi John, I hope this post can help you and give you another option to mull over. It's more in line with the big ass monitor solution you originally brought up. The issue I've had with the TV as the monitor is that it still scales as essentially 1920 by 1080, so you don't get more desktop space, you just get bigger icons. Here it is: Dell U2913WM
The desktop space you get is 2560 by 1080, so its a significant increase in desktop space. It's like have two older less wide monitors side by side. It's spec'd fine for the Mac Mini display port (from 2011 and later). The tradeoff is that you'll be pulling GPU performance from the CPU, but I wouldn't think you'd be pulling any more then you were when running 2 1920 by 1080 monitors. A smarter computer person then me would be able to tell you if you'd get less of a CPU hit on this then you would running two monitors. Then again you could always go with a Magma Thunderbolt Chassis and a new PCIe video card with enough on board processing if you are really worried about CPU hits running big monitors on the Mac Mini.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 19, 2014 11:14:22 GMT -6
How is the EQ on the API strip? Similar to the Waves I assume? I demo'd the waves and didn't like the control. It was hard to use with a mouse I though. Similar with the UAD or does it seem more fluid? API channel strips are hard enough to use in the real world for me. The plugin just drove me nuts. Dual concentric knobs should be outlawed in plugin form.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 18, 2014 18:33:34 GMT -6
I've got to say that a day after I ordered my Octo Card, I'm in the same boat. I'm basically married to the Lexicon, and I want one of the channel strips. I'm leaning towards the Neve, but the SSL is really attractive. I probably have the exact opposite issue with the plugs then most, as I shy away from precisely modeled signal paths, opting rather for the simply modeled curves. So all the Analogue classics like the 610, 670, 1176. LA2A are more preferable to me than the updated ones with more "character". That's why I'm leaning towards the Neve. At the end of the day I'll probably spend the next two months demoing everything before making a decision.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 18, 2014 12:07:33 GMT -6
...Also, practically speaking, shouldn't this be for google glasses? I need both my hands to position some of them heavy mic/stand combos! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Maybe there can be an app like this for performers too, so they don't have to learn proper mic technique. That wouldn't be distracting at all.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 18, 2014 11:58:22 GMT -6
I found the design inspiration!
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 6, 2014 13:20:19 GMT -6
Here's a very even-handed article on the current state of Avid: Create Digital Music talks about AvidInteresting details about a company fighting for survival in a changing marketplace. I think the good news is that the old draconian way of dealing with their user community finally appears to be gone, and replaced with a more collaborative approach. I hope it's true. Not holding my breath, however. For me, the surest signal would be to provide a direct software-only upgrade path to HD Native, somewhat like CPTK was. Or just bring CPTK back. Anything other than requiring a very expensive hardware dongle to get HD. It's my understanding that CPTK has been replaced by PTHD which you can select to work with PT hardware or PT aggregate i/o. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. AD
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 6, 2014 13:17:47 GMT -6
Just saying', Digital Performer 8 runs in either 64 or 32, and supports AU and VST on Mac. Don't know about windows, probably VST. I still use 32 until plugs I like go 64. DP8 runs on either 64 or 32 today. That won't last too much longer though. AD
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 5, 2014 12:12:07 GMT -6
I think an MP3 is a perfect example of the problem with software modeling. Yes, you can get it to pass a blind test but only with some material, some people and no further signal processing. Our productions are going to have the grunt processed out of them long after they are mastered and they leave our hands. From a financial viewpoint, the last thing we need is overly-fragile audio unless we hope to use it for copy protection! I agree with your point, but my understanding of mp3 is that it is not modeling anything, just shrinking file sizes. Basically working on the ones and zeros that repeat and that don't sonically fit into the range of human hearing. High end audio compression like FLAC or Apple Lossless even goes further with their ability to recognize duplicated and identical extra bits and getting rid of them...but that's getting off topic. My point is (and I'm hoping to put a positive spin on your main point) that with the continual advancement of compressed audio delivery one day (hopefully soon) we won't have to worry about getting the grunt processed out of the audio you put out there. And with luck, by that time the production end of mixing will be able to utilize tools that won't make the audio overy fragile as well. My question is when (and if) VMS hits the streets, will it be a small step towards this, or away from this? AD
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 5, 2014 11:57:02 GMT -6
Well, it's copy protection. And more useful, IMO, than machine authorizations. That said--ilok is so the VHS to eLicenser's Betamax....nothing but tech issues with iLok...never a single eLicenser issue. It seems to me the best would be for a compnay to offer your choice. ProTools folks can choose iLok, since they have to use it for their host--and I can choose eLicenser, which I"m gonna have to use for Cubase and VSL. It would make more sense if you're gonna need a dongle to simply let us choose which dongle we use. I feel for companies, but I also wonder how much money they'd really lose to go serial number like Sonar and others. Sure...it's easier to "steal"...but, not really all that much easier. As an IT guy...I'm just saying--I helped Slate fix some iLok/Win7 issues early on--I have the skills and tools to do so. You shouldn't NEED to be able to do that to get stuff to work. The Machine auths are the worst. I need to be able to wipe my machine at will. Last time I did, I think IK is the only machine auth I put back...and BFD2...fuck'em. They'll solve this soon by making the DAWs and plug ins app store purchases...watermarked to your machine...have to be an IT guy to actually find the install files...indefinitely linked to your Apple ID...trackable... Let me say that if you think dealing with Avid and iLok is bad, that is a walk in the park when compared to dealing with their machine licensing workflow they use with Media Composer. The amount of time I've been down because Avid just forgot that I have a serial number that works is astounding. Thank GOD Pro Tools uses the iLok in that case. I'd be eating bullets if I had to file a ticket with Avid support every time there was an update.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 4, 2014 13:19:25 GMT -6
...Maybe if they offered a way for owners to create "impulses" by plugging in a U47 or some such into the pre and have the box run analysis/modeling software against the mic as specific audio files are played... I like they way you are thinking on this Matt. I could see a great workflow involving the on set mixers on a film delivering impulses of their signal path along with their files. I know that this would mean getting post involved earlier, but I believe that's always a good thing (because the next sentence I'd say to them would involve them giving me reverb impulses of their interiors). If VMS offered that sort of workflow option I would be very happy.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 4, 2014 12:11:28 GMT -6
For me the VMS is simple. If the price point is 2K and the hardware is good, then you get a good deal on a clean condenser and mic pre. The fact that it comes with what are essentially eq presets makes me interested only so far as the kinds of presets offered. If they only model the high end stuff, then I'll say give them credit for the engineering feat and never use them because it's not something I need for what I do. If they offer things like matching a sennheiser MKH60, 416, 415, MKH80, sony body mic systems, sennheiser body mic systems etc, that I COULD use and it would be a no brainer for me to pay top dollar for it. If they offer mods of the mic pres used in the field of film shoots (and yes the Mackie 1604 would be included here), I'd be even more interested. Especially I'm not in the business of capturing great sounds all the time, but rather matching to sound recorded in often horrendous circumstances and any tool that would help me more easily match that is welcome.
The reality is though, that Slate Digital has a rather poor track record of updating and supporting its products and a good track record when it comes to overpromising.
AD
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 4, 2014 12:00:48 GMT -6
1. In the beginning, god created music. 2. And the music was without form, and void of loudness, and low bitrates were upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of vinyl. 3. And God said LET THERE BE COMPRESSION, and there was loudness. 4. And God saw the 1176 and it was good. Am I to take it that this is the reason why every time I hear Joni Mitchell or CSN sing the chorus to "woodstock" I dream of blue stripe limiting amplifiers.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 4, 2014 11:54:58 GMT -6
A poem for the circle of (gear) life
Like a dog losing its pelt in spring, I shed off all my extra gear. deep down I know that this time I will be happy with what I have and what I use every day. I really don't need those extra 8 channel pres I don't do tracking...ever I need one or two for a loop group, or ADR or foley... I don't need to track drums... Though I hear that the Aurora GTP8 Absolute is amazing and now with all my extra channels gone, maybe I can make an exception especially for some really good ones... a dual channel eq wouldn't be a bad thing either... and compression....
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 3, 2014 16:20:52 GMT -6
First off Cowboy...I respect your wildcats immensely, but I am myself a Cardinals fan so we are starting from a place of total disagreement. Secondly, I regularly use PT Native. I just mixed a full 5.1 feature on it, maxing out at 183 tracks, including 5 5.1 busses, 4 reverb 5.1 busses, 16 stereo busses for elements. Every track had the channel strip on it. Every bus had Pro C, every master bus had a Pro MB as well as loads of Pro q, cedar sends, 4 different interior verbs, 4 exterior effects verbs (all reverberate) and all constantly automating (All my VIs were printed to tracks in the prep stage so I wasn't dealing with them for the final mix). Also I ran a 20 gig 1080p video reference from the same machine. For the final mix I offloaded the video and print bus onto a separate machine. I feel as if I maxed out the capability of PT Native 10.3.7 on that show (PT 11 is more fully optimized for stuff like this). This worked better for me the the old TDM based HD systems running at their best. After that I am fully confident that with a few systems running satelite I could handle much larger projects without having to go full on HDX. And yes, there were flames shooting out the back of my 2009 mac Pro by the time we were printing, but as to a great test of PT Native's abilities I couldn't have been happier, especially since this wasn't even the most complicated musing matrix I've had to come up with for a mix on PT Native (that would be the ones allowing for simultaneous print stems of the shows I mix for Discovery or WEtv-all meeting the CALM act specs). I'm sure Nuendo could handle a large mix like this, and maybe Logic could as well, but in my experience with those programs (which is limited to the stuff I had to deal with in the '90s and/or stuff I play with on the side categories) they could not handle the complex internal routing and bussing I need to use on a regular basis. Reaper and Cubase , not a chance (and I treat grouping and busing differently). Now, to prove (what I believe is) your point, many of the composers I work with use Logic, Reaper and Cubase and there is nothing in the world I could say to them to make any of them believe that their favorite program isn't THE best program for what they do. So I guess at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. As long as the programs we use stick around (please don't cock this up Avid) then it's all good. AD Reaper has made a name for itself for it's routing and bussing.. Which is much more flexible and friendly than PT or the others.. Not sure why you think it can't handle significant track counts and bussing. That's good to know. I still haven't seen it do such a thing, and even though I only played with it during the 30 day window, I was completely flummoxed on how to do anything in reaper. Staring into that routing matrix alone was like looking into the heart of Cthulu. Maybe I've been spoiled over the years with PT. 5.1 seems a bit wonky in Reaper, but that can be said about most DAWs. I couldn't figure out how to do an AAF import without a bit of research, only to find the best way to import an AAF was to use Pro Tools as a bridge. Not sure if they added that feature recently. If they did I'd be happy to give it another go. AD
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 3, 2014 11:44:13 GMT -6
Yes, but Reaper does not offer any sort of DSP. Let's say you want Native, well PT Native costs more then reaper, but you get a fully featured DAW that handles virtually unlimited bussing and in-session printing. When delivering to a network 17 different mixes, all with unique elements, I can make a single session in Pro-tools and route everything internally and do the print of all the mixes in a single pass. Quite frankly, there is no other DAW on the planet that can do that.
Logic, Reaper etc are great for smaller scale projects, but they don't have the ability to scale in a workflow environment like Pro Tools does. If I am wrong about another DAW's functionality in this post, PLEASE correct me. I like to know these things.
Best,
Aaron
Aaron Your right of coarse. This was kinna my point in a previous post. PT is geared more toward post and video work than to the smaller studio guy I think. Big budget work for big budget rigs. But if you came and took a spin on PT Native in my tiny studio, bet you'd want to throw rocks at it by the end of the day. Even though your used to working on the platform. It's bottle necked bad on native. Maybe 11 addressed some of these issues?? I'm still on 10 because I've decided not to go down the Avid road anymore. But still no hate. Just easier for me on Cubase. First off Cowboy...I respect your wildcats immensely, but I am myself a Cardinals fan so we are starting from a place of total disagreement. Secondly, I regularly use PT Native. I just mixed a full 5.1 feature on it, maxing out at 183 tracks, including 5 5.1 busses, 4 reverb 5.1 busses, 16 stereo busses for elements. Every track had the channel strip on it. Every bus had Pro C, every master bus had a Pro MB as well as loads of Pro q, cedar sends, 4 different interior verbs, 4 exterior effects verbs (all reverberate) and all constantly automating (All my VIs were printed to tracks in the prep stage so I wasn't dealing with them for the final mix). Also I ran a 20 gig 1080p video reference from the same machine. For the final mix I offloaded the video and print bus onto a separate machine. I feel as if I maxed out the capability of PT Native 10.3.7 on that show (PT 11 is more fully optimized for stuff like this). This worked better for me the the old TDM based HD systems running at their best. After that I am fully confident that with a few systems running satelite I could handle much larger projects without having to go full on HDX. And yes, there were flames shooting out the back of my 2009 mac Pro by the time we were printing, but as to a great test of PT Native's abilities I couldn't have been happier, especially since this wasn't even the most complicated musing matrix I've had to come up with for a mix on PT Native (that would be the ones allowing for simultaneous print stems of the shows I mix for Discovery or WEtv-all meeting the CALM act specs). I'm sure Nuendo could handle a large mix like this, and maybe Logic could as well, but in my experience with those programs (which is limited to the stuff I had to deal with in the '90s and/or stuff I play with on the side categories) they could not handle the complex internal routing and bussing I need to use on a regular basis. Reaper and Cubase , not a chance (and I treat grouping and busing differently). Now, to prove (what I believe is) your point, many of the composers I work with use Logic, Reaper and Cubase and there is nothing in the world I could say to them to make any of them believe that their favorite program isn't THE best program for what they do. So I guess at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. As long as the programs we use stick around (please don't cock this up Avid) then it's all good. AD
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 2, 2014 1:22:57 GMT -6
Black Lion does a great job doing mods on so so gear and transforming them into something great. The best thing is that you can buy the gear first, save your pennies and when you are ready to pull the trigger on the mod, send the gear to Chicago and wait a month. Cue, Tom Petty's "Waiting is the Hardest Part". AD
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 2, 2014 1:19:50 GMT -6
My mind is spinning. I thought this was a post about ADR. LOL. Don't you all love acronyms?
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 2, 2014 1:16:13 GMT -6
how much does hdx cost? reaper and 32 channels of latest and greatest converters only cost $3.5k Yes, but Reaper does not offer any sort of DSP. Let's say you want Native, well PT Native costs more then reaper, but you get a fully featured DAW that handles virtually unlimited bussing and in-session printing. When delivering to a network 17 different mixes, all with unique elements, I can make a single session in Pro-tools and route everything internally and do the print of all the mixes in a single pass. Quite frankly, there is no other DAW on the planet that can do that.
Logic, Reaper etc are great for smaller scale projects, but they don't have the ability to scale in a workflow environment like Pro Tools does. If I am wrong about another DAW's functionality in this post, PLEASE correct me. I like to know these things.
Best,
Aaron
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 2, 2014 1:05:12 GMT -6
My hated for PT's developed when they'd no offline render. The hybrid guys might not have cared, but I've worked on 40 minute long peices of music for an installation. Wasn't exactly sympathetic to my plight. That and things like setting up tracks, headphone mixes etc. just takes longer than it should. In Reaper we can be tracking and I can be naming and organizing audio tracks while listening. No pause in playback for creating new tracks or inserting an EQ. This doesn't make Reaper great - but it means the workflow makes sense for us. It's fast and painless. None of the plugin formats Pro Tools have introduced have ever demonstrated superiority over VST2 or VST3. And indeed people such as Dave from GForce has stated that their SDK is a pain to use. He actually stopped developing for it altogether when they changed over from RTAS. My other major gripe is the additional overheads that came with all their stuff from it being proprietary. And I know we can say "Oh well a lot of that's gone now" but it's too late. It was a cynical, elitist policy and it kept the cost of making music artificially high. The market is having to deflate as our product devalues and this stuff is a very delayed reaction to it. It hurt the users, it's hurting the employees and it definitely hurt the product. What a stupid tragedy for people to lose their jobs for the sake of a company wanting to look cool. I'm not a hater in that I don't hate the software - I'll use it any day of the week. But I hate the culture it brought with it. I'd see that dead before the software any day. Good news mate. PT 11 is the only DAW that can do a null bounce faster then real time.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 2, 2014 0:56:33 GMT -6
They are all like that there. Good thing for me is that they are a 10 minute drive away. LOL.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 1, 2014 12:26:43 GMT -6
I like Pro L, but also use FLUX Elixer, Pro MB. I don't like to hit any of them particularly hard though.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 1, 2014 12:24:14 GMT -6
To celebrate this auspicious occasion, does anybody have any good first viewing stories to share? I recently had my fiance (who loves documentaries) watch this with me. And yes, I told her it was absolutely real. My punishment was that I can never get her to believe that "Anvil: the Story of Anvil" IS real. AD
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 1, 2014 12:19:09 GMT -6
I will weigh in with RSPE. Even when I don't buy from them, they are really good at offering up advice. Fab Filter, Blue CAt audio, Pro Tools PC are also top notch when it comes to customer service.
Bad Customer service- AVID, Steinberg, Apple, and Vienna.
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Post by adogg4629 on Mar 1, 2014 12:14:07 GMT -6
From what I've heard Apple is railroading all mac developers into 64 bit versions of everything for the next generation of macs. In the case of older software like Pro Tools, this meant a complete rewrite. If you're doing that, it makes perfect sense to also update everything from twenty years ago. Even more plug-ins have never made it to VST3 and 64 bit VST after quite a few years. Those that did took forever. AAX by comparison is in much better shape. My experience with bridged VST plugs in Samplitude which I use for mastering has not been pretty. There has been massive instability, extra latency and CPU overhead. I'm really glad digiAvid didn't go there. By the way, Avid bought digidesign in 1994! They only rebranded it recently as part of a major reorganization to get rid of a lot of corporate redundancy. Great point here! Very soon, Macs and PCs won't be able to run anything other than 64 bit programs. When that happens, will anybody out there be cranky about RTAS 32 bit plugs anymore when the purchase price of a new computer would mean upgrading ALL your pro software to 64 bit versions? AD
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