Thoughts on Reaper

Rock solid tracking with little to no limitation on tracks.  That's what people are using paid studios for these days.  No one is doing production and/or mixing in big costly day/hour hire studios anymore.  The rest is being done at home or at the producer / engineers place.  They can use whatever they want there.

In a situation where a reboot / retake can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, that's one BIG incentive.

There's a studio in Austin that has a decent sounding room for drums that you can rent fairly cheap. Their microphones are so-so (bring your own anyway) but the room sounds neutral. ProTools through one of the new Trident boards. A bunch of slightly above average outboard of the standard variety.

So that's about it for me. I've never run my own session there but if I ever had the need for a bigger drum sound and didn't want to just find a cool remote space (i.e., I was short on time), quick and easy.

But I'd just be tracking to a hard drive to capture the drums etc and then taking it back to my place.

And frankly, if I really wanted to I could bring my MOTU Ultralight and track with that. In fact, now that I think about it I probably would do that so I could use all my own tracking templates (regardless of DAW). Six line inputs for drums and two mic pres for scratch vox/band. Done.

 
1) Nailed it

2) I love patchbays... my idea of a good time is rerouting my patchbay on a Sunday afternoon (my wife thinks I'm super fun to hang out with)

3) Nailed it again. What is up with that Logic? That's the single thing I hate most about it.

Last time someone rented out my studio, he brough his own computer because he didn't use hardly any of the plugs I use and he wanted to use PT.  He plugged my converters to his machine via USB and was up and working in about 10 minutes.

Turned out pretty decently.  He worked in my space for about a week and had zero complaints.  I guess if you have converters with easy interfaces (USB or whatever) then it becomes much easier to change out computers.

Yeah, that's sort of in the same vein as I was talking about, but I wouldn't want to have to even mess with worrying about the computer side at all. What if their computer isn't compatible with your interfaces, etc? What if, for say in the case of Apollos, at least, you run into authorization issues with getting an Apollo up and running on someone else's computer?

Analog to analog connections are as good as it gets when it comes to being free of compatibility concerns. I'd just as soon as soon not even have to worry about any of that computer stuff at all. I mean, it's not like pretty much every freelancer doesn't have their own laptop and interface(s) anyway.

I'm with drbill on this one, I've never seen it done, never done it.  

Ok.  Pretty much everyone I know does it.  Oh well.  Different strokes I guess, but it's also different if you've embraced things like amp sims.  

But having a few busses with some basic plugs can really spice up a basic mix so that the band hears a more finished sound.  Gets them excited and working hard.

This makes sense. At first I was struggling to understand why I would want to track with sweetening type plug-ins (I already track through hardware on the way in but I'm not too picky... any decent stuff will do)? But I also only record stuff moving sound through the air. 

If I was in amp sim world, yeah 100%. Gotta hear what it's gonna sound like. But then again... why be in a rented studio to begin with? The whole point of a rented studio is the acoustic space (right?).

Even if you're not using amp sims, there are other reasons I can think of. If you're renting the room, that means there's a good chance you're paying by the hour. Sure, the place might have a bunch of outboard, but maybe that's not important to you and the only things that matter are getting a track down quickly in a nice acoustic environment, because you're going to use your own outboard when you get back home, or maybe you just don't want to mess with it. Having a template, with plugins (eq, reverb, etc.) already setup for monitoring, might save a bunch of time you'd otherwise be spending on setting up outboard on the paid clock, if you do still desire to have a more finished sound coming back in the cans. That's just one example that comes to mind.

Speaking personally, I like that I can basically instantiate a nearly complete sounding mix using plugins, from minute one of tracking. I think that stuff adds up towards getting a more finished sound in the cans for a more inspired performance and also helps you get to your targeted final mix sound earlier in the process, no different than the way that recording through a console would add its own flavor to a recording from minute one of tracking. The big difference here being that you don't necessarily have to commit with plugins.

I personally like the idea of committing, and I do own a bunch of hardware, but I do still get the appeal of using plugins during tracking. It's part of what really appealed to me about Luna (sorry to keep going on about Luna ). I like the idea that I can print hardware compression and some hardware eq during tracking, but use the API Vision console emu for eq and additional tone in a real time tracking scenario, all without having to commit any of said API plugins. And Luna shuffles the API console emu back and forth between native and DSP automatically. So it all sounds the same during recording and playback, even if the API console emu ultimately ended up being nothing more than a placeholder. But I'd rather have the placeholder than nothing at all. It makes for a pretty sweet workflow.

Honestly, a bigger issue is more toy and broken hardware than toy plugs because of how the market has developed over the last 20 years. Few parametric eqs, workhorse APi type channel strips, and vca compressors, lots of weird clones and intentionally distorted tube revival tube stuff. The most usable hardware might be a distressor or dbx stuff (if it’s the a or the 500 series. Old? God knows).

The HDX rigs usually have some Brainworx, McDSP, and Sonnox Oxford stuff and they’ll usually have a Waves bundle. If you can’t get the mix done with the Oxford or Waves Renaissance plugs, it’s probably not going to get done. They’re both way above average over 20 years after they came out. McDSP filter bank and Channel G still have great filters but the nonlinear plugs tends to have a dc offset. The Brainworx (the parametric eq, the old SPL plugs, the so bad its good bx rooms, the Ray Dratwa programmed stuff) prior to the bx console shenanigans and SPL Iron digital artifacts are pretty good too.

let’s do some basic math and add up the latency of plugin chains:

HDX ensures low latency with over a hundred channels going at once. Even if you have an RME or Lynx PCI-E card and a current gen CPU, you cannot guarantee that will on the lowest buffer without DSP. HDX is running most of the daw on the cards, keeping the latency below 2 ms at 44.1/48 khz and below 1 ms at 88.2/96 khz.

the stock pro tools and Oxford plugs are fine to build a monitoring mix with and once you have the monitoring mix, you might as well base the mix down on it to keep the artist satisfied.

oxford eq and reverb are good and add .16 ms per instance at 44.1 and .07 ms at 96 khz of round trip latency in HDX
oxford dynamics adds .6 ms at 44.1 and .5 ms at 96 khz because it has a proper lookahead. This is still lower than the Brainworx and McDSP dynamic processors at 44.1 which are dirtier with no lookahead and add about .77 ms of latency. The old Sony Oxford guys were coding monsters.

You’re looking at under 3 ms rtl with an Oxford dynamics, eq, and reverb chain mix at 44.1-96 khz and it’s not gross like the mcdsp/avid/brainworx verbs/dynamics.

you want gross but fast? Oxford eq (7 samples), Oxford reverb (7 samples), and avid dynamic plugs (10 samples) chain is going to be under 1 ms rtl at 96 khz on an HDX rig.

I can’t recommend Metric Halo Channel strip because the filters and eq (hp filter adds low frequency noise like old waves q10!), and compressors (the hold or raw aliasing dirt, Oxford dynamics hold is not a true hold) suck but it’s only 10 ms of latency

RME and Lynx pcie card and tbolt rigs can get under 2 ms latency at 96 khz and under 3 ms at 44.1 with zero latency low cpu plugs and even something with lookahead like the Oxford dynamics or shorter filter oversampling but stability is not guaranteed at high track counts!

I tend to agree with you on printing hardware, but I don't strictly follow that approach either, as I described in my previous post above this one. Either way, I was just pointing out that, though there are plenty of people like yourself who do have access to said hardware and who do want to use it during tracking, that doesn't mean that everyone feels the same way. There are a ton of people out there who don't work this way. So, for that crowd, it's nice to still be able to get closer to a finished sound early on.

Just because a band plays a certain way at a live show, that doesn't mean that a more finished sound in the cans can't help during recording. It certainly can't hurt. As far as mic selection is concerned, yeah I get what you're saying about making the right choices on that first, but the fact remains that you still need to eq things sometimes, especially drums. And what if the room you're recording the band in is dry, but the band is used to playing in large reverby clubs? Having some reverb in the cans helps too. That can make a huge difference in the overall vibe of the session.

My point is just that there is a legitimate reason to use plugins during tracking. Unless you're going for a completely old school analog approach, why not use whatever tools you have at your disposal to get a better sound going down into the computer and a better more inspired experience for the band, which will also lead to a better recording as well? I get we all have our own philosophical approaches to this stuff. I just wanted to point out that using plugins during tracking very much is a useful and valid approach.