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Post by sirthought on Jun 12, 2020 21:32:50 GMT -6
Tried Luna again all last night. It still has a long way to go. I just don't care for the work flow and layout. Finding bugs over and over.
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Post by popmann on Jun 12, 2020 22:10:56 GMT -6
Agreed, thanks to popmann for the messages. I don't know if anyone could "dumb it down" for the average reader. What is the main advantage of LUNA and HDX? Is it a realtime cue mix with plugin/DSP audio? What in simple audio engineer terms is the user gaining from these expensive systems? Simply put there's a single mixer UI....vs an Apollo with InsertAnyDAWHere. When you record enable (or input enable I assume) a channel in LUNA or PT, the software moves the routing to be ADC>HardwareDSP>DAC....when you change that status, it routes it through the latent playback mixer. Ensure a hardware level of latency THROUGH plug ins....no matter what ultra latent nonsense you have going on in the playback mixer. Avid has a proprietary but open format, so with HDX you can run Waves plug ins and such in real time on the input audio. It enables the only workflow that has EVER made records. Now--I say that knowing that you don't NEED that workflow...but, since the dawn of time you engineers could and have used console mults (and later hardware TDM mixers/plug ins) to give performers a feed that isn't recorded...or process on the way TO the deck...there was always printing of processing. For various reasons...so, with an Apollo+Luna, or PT+HDX, you can still do that only without racks of analog gear and the analog desk. TDM took that one step further because the ENTIRE mixer was hardware--the computer basically just provided a UI and file management. But, absorb that. Name a record...statistically speaking at least, it was recorded by printing processing AND being able to change the cue mix processing for the performer without effecting the signal "to tape". So, again...not that it CAN'T be done another way, but the attraction is this is how it has been done for 60 years. There's some weight to that. I hooked a buddy up with an Apollo system because he's a drummer--he can save all these tweaked Unison+compressor+room ambience+tape set ups and just scroll through them until he finds the one he likes for THAT tune. His bass player, I think plugs in and uses the Ampeg and they play together in the room. So, that's the advantage you liked about the Quantum-not having to mess with secondary mixer UI....this is less latency than the Quantum in a brand NEW project AND you can do it at the same low latency at any point in the process. As soon as you put a single tape sim onto say the snare drum track, your Quantum is 10-50ms more latent. This is exactly the same....even after you chuck some 200ms Elevate on the mixbus...still <1.5ms headphone latency THROUGH plug in processing. I know-that was a lot of words for "dumbing down"....you can ABOSLUTELY make a record without printing/sculpting on the way in, but it's more than a punt. Records are made (more or less) linearly, IME. The band plays. Overdubs are done. Strings or horns are maybe bought in. Vocals start going down. I don't mean it has to be exactly THAT order...but, they're built one thing on the last. And IME, when you don't print some amount of processing...it's hard to build an ornate house of cards. It's not even something you actively think about. Meaning--it's not like I'm thinking "I'll dial the guitar amp this way....or move the mic on it here...because the bass as a lot of 100hz...it's just that when you try to go out of whatever is order for your brain, shit just never sits together as well.
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Post by Guitar on Jun 13, 2020 7:47:33 GMT -6
Thanks, popmann for the extedned description, I'm starting to get it, even having never used HDX or Luna. Yeah I can see that workflow as a big advantage. I will tell you, when I'm deeper in a mix/project that's been building up, I sometimes do indeed have to disable a few plugins, for example Elevate, to be able to get the right cue latency. If I want to go back in for a new track/overdub/performance. Some native plugins are very low latency, but it would be very nice for ALL plugins to always be low latency. The Softube Tape I track through has a .1 ms of latency, that's extremely low. I'm assuming in LUNA however this would mean relying very heavily on UAD plugins, which wouldn't thrill me. And in HDX I'm assuming this means AAX plugins. This is very interesting to me. When I first bought my Apollo years ago, it was a, "Wow, this is better" moment. And then the Presonus Quantum was another "wow better" moment that I'm still in/on. No separate mixer window. But from what you're saying there's an even "better way" with these embedded DSP/hardware/DAW systems. I'm just wondering now about limitations with LUNA and Pro Tools HDX. I guess mainly, being limited to specific plugins, and being limited by the power of your DSP hardware. I guess using a low latency "regular" interface with only low latency plugins would be another answer. And obviously the big rig of analog old school gear / mixer that you alluded to.
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Post by craigmorris74 on Jun 13, 2020 8:43:48 GMT -6
I'm going to ask a potentially dumb question. I understand how LUNA and HDX make tracking with plugins feasible, and you don't have much outboard gear. Especially LUNA with their unison plugs. But it seems like most of the folks on this forum have piles of gear, so why not just use your sweet outboard, and your DAW becomes a the equivalent of a tape machine?
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Post by rob61 on Jun 13, 2020 9:38:12 GMT -6
Any Studio One users here? I'm still in the Nuendo camp since v2.0 but am looking at Studio One. How do you import CD tracks (from an audio CD)? With all the features Studio One offers, its hard to believe you can't import a track from an audio CD. Is it possible?
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Post by Guitar on Jun 13, 2020 10:35:11 GMT -6
I'm going to ask a potentially dumb question. I understand how LUNA and HDX make tracking with plugins feasible, and you don't have much outboard gear. Especially LUNA with their unison plugs. But it seems like most of the folks on this forum have piles of gear, so why not just use your sweet outboard, and your DAW becomes a the equivalent of a tape machine? I can answer this from my own perspective. Lets say I have 2 hardware EQs, a very simple mixing board (Midas DM16), 2 stereo digital FX, 1 stereo compressor. That's not really enough for a big project. If you truly want a piece of hardware for every single plugin you would otherwise use in a project. Every EQ, Reverb, Delay, Compressor, and etc, that's a ton of hardware gear. Some people like dr. Bill and maybe Ward are approaching this but a lot of us with smaller hybrid setups are a long way short of a full hardware tracking/mixdown.
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Post by craigmorris74 on Jun 13, 2020 11:02:44 GMT -6
I'm going to ask a potentially dumb question. I understand how LUNA and HDX make tracking with plugins feasible, and you don't have much outboard gear. Especially LUNA with their unison plugs. But it seems like most of the folks on this forum have piles of gear, so why not just use your sweet outboard, and your DAW becomes a the equivalent of a tape machine? I can answer this from my own perspective. Lets say I have 2 hardware EQs, a very simple mixing board (Midas DM16), 2 stereo digital FX, 1 stereo compressor. ...... Some people like dr. Bill and maybe Ward are approaching this but a lot of us with smaller hybrid setups are a long way short of a full hardware tracking/mixdown. I understand how this system would be amazing for tracking of you don't have a lot of hardware. If I were starting over again, I'm not sure if that LUNA wouldn't be the direction I'd take. But I have a 16 channel studio now (preamps, EQ, compression), so I guess I'll be rocking it until I retire and downsize. LUNA should be really amazing be then!
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Post by christopher on Jun 13, 2020 11:09:20 GMT -6
One thing I found very interesting this morning as I look around: It includes a demo project of Billie Eilish "Ocean Eyes". I downloaded that and took a look around, and it sounds exactly like the release. And does have the piles of vocal overdubs. What is funny though: not too many plugins, and where they are using them everything is using the stock Logic plugins. ZERO AFTERMARKET PLUGINS anywhere. The built in plugins do emulate everything you normally want though, so maybe its true? Seems pretty convenient for Apple to me.. what do you guys think? Her brother Finneas O'Connell wrote and produced that. They did the whole tune because a teacher at the dance school they both attended asked them for some music to use at a recital. It started everything for them. Logic is his DAW and he said he used all stock instruments and plugs on that song. So it's indeed pretty much how he produced it. It's both simple in structure, yet advanced in techniques used for a guy who is self taught. Really shows off Logic well. I'm guessing someone has changed colors and cleaned up some organization. He does use third party instruments and plugs, but I think both he and Billie use Logic exclusively. Apple shares a demo project with bigger updates, with the last one being Beck's song Colors. Back with Logic 9 they had a Lilly Alan song. Both of those were produced by Greg Kurstin, who is a long time Logic user. However, the Beck song must have been tracked in several different places with different DAWs. I'm guessing processing was not all stock, like it shows in the Logic demo. Lots of tracks (including almost all of the drums/percussion) is MIDI performed with the sampler plugin. Looking at the sample file titles you can see they lean on classic analog gear, vintage keyboards, and samples of their own drum kits. It fun to look at the stock reverb settings they use for the Beck tune. I know Greg and Beck work with Darrell Thorp a lot and I watched a Pure Mix video with Darrell mixing and he creates a verb with UAD Lexicon 224 and the settings are pretty much dead on what's used in Logic's Chroma Verb preset for Colors. I'm guessing it's a go-to setting he uses. It sounds great in both plugins, BTW.  Very Interesting, thanks! I did discover there were more plugin that I thought. Every vocal track had a chain of stock plugins, I was looking at the wrong place. Still nothing out of ordinary. He did an amazing job on lyrics and mixing. The biggest takeaway for me is wow: he got a superstar talent vocalist to supply him with ~20 perfect vocal tracks for this one song. Harmonies, layers, ad libs.. all perfect.
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Post by drumhead57 on Jun 13, 2020 23:39:51 GMT -6
Any Studio One users here? I'm still in the Nuendo camp since v2.0 but am looking at Studio One. How do you import CD tracks (from an audio CD)? With all the features Studio One offers, its hard to believe you can't import a track from an audio CD. Is it possible? I'm using Studio One, amongst others, and it is my default DAW. Full disclosure: I have never owned a copy of ProTools. Reading your post I knew that it could be done but did a quick Google and found this thread. Hope this helps. Importing CD tracks to Studio One
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Post by keymod on Jun 14, 2020 8:47:39 GMT -6
Any Studio One users here? I'm still in the Nuendo camp since v2.0 but am looking at Studio One. How do you import CD tracks (from an audio CD)? With all the features Studio One offers, its hard to believe you can't import a track from an audio CD. Is it possible? Steinberg are offering a pretty decent cross grade option to the current Nuendo version, including from Cubase. I am wondering if it is worth it from Cubase 9.5 ? Just to have availability in the studio.
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Post by rob61 on Jun 14, 2020 8:51:02 GMT -6
Any Studio One users here? I'm still in the Nuendo camp since v2.0 but am looking at Studio One. How do you import CD tracks (from an audio CD)? With all the features Studio One offers, its hard to believe you can't import a track from an audio CD. Is it possible? I'm using Studio One, amongst others, and it is my default DAW. Full disclosure: I have never owned a copy of ProTools. Reading your post I knew that it could be done but did a quick Google and found this thread. Hope this helps. Importing CD tracks to Studio OneThanks for link drumhead57! I'll give it a try again.
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Post by rob61 on Jun 14, 2020 8:59:51 GMT -6
Any Studio One users here? I'm still in the Nuendo camp since v2.0 but am looking at Studio One. How do you import CD tracks (from an audio CD)? With all the features Studio One offers, its hard to believe you can't import a track from an audio CD. Is it possible? Steinberg are offering a pretty decent cross grade option to the current Nuendo version, including from Cubase. I am wondering if it is worth it from Cubase 9.5 ? Just to have availability in the studio. Most feel Nuendo should be Cubase Plus... all the features of Cubase and then some. But they always seem to port newest features first to Cubase (a testing ground???) and then months later they might show up in Nuendo leaving Nuendo users feeling left out. They also will not give a Cubase license to Nuendo users... you still have to purchase a separate license to use Cubase. The pandemic has slowed up development too. They just released a minor update to Nuendo (free) and Nuendo now requires (or so they state) Windows 10 on the PC platform. For me and my workflow nothing beats Nuendo, but then I know it rather well. However, I'm quite impressed with the latest offering on Studio One. If you need limited video support Nuendo might be useful choice but for anything else audio, Cubase or Studio One seem to be a better choice and value. If you do want Nuendo for video, check first to make sure it supports your video formats.
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Post by subspace on Jun 14, 2020 10:04:16 GMT -6
I'm going to ask a potentially dumb question. I understand how LUNA and HDX make tracking with plugins feasible, and you don't have much outboard gear. Especially LUNA with their unison plugs. But it seems like most of the folks on this forum have piles of gear, so why not just use your sweet outboard, and your DAW becomes a the equivalent of a tape machine? If your DAW and interface provide direct monitoring together, then yes, it will work just like a tape machine. Plug your 24 inputs into your DAW, plug the 24 outputs into your console and when you hit record, your interface patches the inputs directly to the outputs for a latency free monitor mix. Rewind, take the drums out of record but leave the guitars record enabled, then play it back up to the chorus and the DAW monitors the recorded tracks until you punch record and just the guitar tracks switch back to monitoring the input directly, maintaining the exact same latency free monitor mix with the recorded drums and live guitar inputs. Punch back out and the recorded guitars come back seamlessly. Question is, what DAW/interface combos still offer direct monitoring together to behave like a tape machine? I saw the Logic/Apogee feature announcement but haven't seen it used in an analog monitoring set-up: Logic/Apogee Direct Monitoring
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Post by the other mark williams on Jun 14, 2020 10:42:18 GMT -6
Agreed, thanks to popmann for the messages. I don't know if anyone could "dumb it down" for the average reader. What is the main advantage of LUNA and HDX? Is it a realtime cue mix with plugin/DSP audio? What in simple audio engineer terms is the user gaining from these expensive systems? Simply put there's a single mixer UI....vs an Apollo with InsertAnyDAWHere. When you record enable (or input enable I assume) a channel in LUNA or PT, the software moves the routing to be ADC>HardwareDSP>DAC....when you change that status, it routes it through the latent playback mixer. Ensure a hardware level of latency THROUGH plug ins....no matter what ultra latent nonsense you have going on in the playback mixer. Avid has a proprietary but open format, so with HDX you can run Waves plug ins and such in real time on the input audio. It enables the only workflow that has EVER made records. Now--I say that knowing that you don't NEED that workflow...but, since the dawn of time you engineers could and have used console mults (and later hardware TDM mixers/plug ins) to give performers a feed that isn't recorded...or process on the way TO the deck...there was always printing of processing. For various reasons...so, with an Apollo+Luna, or PT+HDX, you can still do that only without racks of analog gear and the analog desk. TDM took that one step further because the ENTIRE mixer was hardware--the computer basically just provided a UI and file management. But, absorb that. Name a record...statistically speaking at least, it was recorded by printing processing AND being able to change the cue mix processing for the performer without effecting the signal "to tape". So, again...not that it CAN'T be done another way, but the attraction is this is how it has been done for 60 years. There's some weight to that. I hooked a buddy up with an Apollo system because he's a drummer--he can save all these tweaked Unison+compressor+room ambience+tape set ups and just scroll through them until he finds the one he likes for THAT tune. His bass player, I think plugs in and uses the Ampeg and they play together in the room. So, that's the advantage you liked about the Quantum-not having to mess with secondary mixer UI....this is less latency than the Quantum in a brand NEW project AND you can do it at the same low latency at any point in the process. As soon as you put a single tape sim onto say the snare drum track, your Quantum is 10-50ms more latent. This is exactly the same....even after you chuck some 200ms Elevate on the mixbus...still <1.5ms headphone latency THROUGH plug in processing. I know-that was a lot of words for "dumbing down"....you can ABOSLUTELY make a record without printing/sculpting on the way in, but it's more than a punt. Records are made (more or less) linearly, IME. The band plays. Overdubs are done. Strings or horns are maybe bought in. Vocals start going down. I don't mean it has to be exactly THAT order...but, they're built one thing on the last. And IME, when you don't print some amount of processing...it's hard to build an ornate house of cards. It's not even something you actively think about. Meaning--it's not like I'm thinking "I'll dial the guitar amp this way....or move the mic on it here...because the bass as a lot of 100hz...it's just that when you try to go out of whatever is order for your brain, shit just never sits together as well. This is a really good description, popmann. I have come to think of the DSP software mixers included with many hardware interfaces (in my case, Metric Halo, but plenty of others exist: MOTU, RME, Lynx, etc.) as kind of like an inline input mixer (sort of an old sidecar mixer + monitor mixer). One can quickly and easily adjust the volume or panning of any live inputs with the mix coming off the 2-bus. A few months ago, I started controlling the Metric Halo mixer with a Behringer MIDI control surface, and it's just been awesome - so easy to mix levels at input/record with what's already been included. Years ago, when I worked in a larger commercial studio, we took all the individual outputs to the hardware console, whether it was the Studer or the Pro Tools TDM rig. But functionally, using the Pro Tools mixer even without a console was the same thing (with subjectively worse sound quality than the console). But yes, this has always been the advantage of the Pro Tools DSP workflow. It is imitable with a DSP mixer on a hardware interface, but then you have two "consoles."
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Post by the other mark williams on Jun 14, 2020 10:45:08 GMT -6
Luna will have to have a very long burn in period over multiple Apple gaffes and OS's for me to seriously even consider it. It may be great. But it's got to kill a HDX2 system, be able to easily handle 120+ i/o, etc. before I'd consider it. And the Apollo interfaces (if that's what you have to use) would need a refresh and step up. Just IMHO of course. Unlikely to happen, IMO. I just don't see the Apollo/Luna ecosystem surpassing HDX2 for large sessions. If it were to happen, it would have to take years to achieve, I think. I really do think you're using the best system for your needs/setup drbill.
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Post by Johnkenn on Jun 14, 2020 17:47:05 GMT -6
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Post by the other mark williams on Jun 14, 2020 18:28:17 GMT -6
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Post by wiz on Jun 14, 2020 18:51:15 GMT -6
Looks great.
I must give luna another go at some point.
cheers
Wiz
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Post by mikec on Jun 15, 2020 8:24:58 GMT -6
That Helios theme for Luna is one of the best ones yet. I've been looking at these but haven't pulled the trigger yet.
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Post by MorEQsThanAnswers on Jun 16, 2020 20:36:53 GMT -6
Anybody have a workaround for the issue with Logic where you can't use Outputs 1-2 for hardware inserts? Running 8x8 Apogee trying to use all 8 I/Os for inserts while monitoring via SPDIF (Outs 9-10). Hoping to shift over from Pro Tools as my HW Insert Delays aren't stable and I'm sick of starting my sessions with a manual "ping" routine to compensate for these glitches.
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Post by subspace on Jun 19, 2020 5:41:31 GMT -6
I haven't run a Pro Tools tracking session since March. I've had Logic for about 5 years for session compatability and started tracking vocalists again last week with another engineer who runs Logic. I took over engineering this week as he had a schedule conflict and I tracked four female vocalists last night. Thankfully I had paid attention while he was comping vocals and was able to navigate the take folders to audition different sections for the producer in the fashion he'd already gotten used to. Pretty great workflow once I wrapped my head around it. I think I'll be updating my second OS partition to install the newest version of Logic and leave my Sierra/PT12 partition frozen where it is..
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Post by the other mark williams on Jun 19, 2020 12:50:59 GMT -6
I haven't run a Pro Tools tracking session since March. I've had Logic for about 5 years for session compatability and started tracking vocalists again last week with another engineer who runs Logic. I took over engineering this week as he had a schedule conflict and I tracked four female vocalists last night. Thankfully I had paid attention while he was comping vocals and was able to navigate the take folders to audition different sections for the producer in the fashion he'd already gotten used to. Pretty great workflow once I wrapped my head around it. I think I'll be updating my second OS partition to install the newest version of Logic and leave my Sierra/PT12 partition frozen where it is.. I love the Quickswipe (or whatever they call it) comping in Logic. It’s super fast and intuitive for me.
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Post by rocinante on Jun 21, 2020 22:45:22 GMT -6
Left PT10HD for Studio One but I keep PT aroundfor mixing stems made by clients who use PT. I had the whole rig with Accell cards and 192s and just hated the propriety of Avid and then their subscription. After trying out MOTU 192s and not hearing the slightest difference in converters I was done with PT. I haven't looked back and the extra money goes to cool gear.
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