[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGUGgcoQ09A&eurl=http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/12/11/iphone-hacked-to-control-pro-tools/[/youtube]

Although I haven’t been able to download it, I am an iPhone owner and user (as well as hacker), and I have used many of these 3rd party apps. I have no doubt that this will prove to be as smooth and easy as it looks to use - but if it really ends up at $150 per install, I’m not sure how many people will actually use it. Currently there are hundreds of 3rd party apps that are available via the “install” app that can be used once the iPhone is “freed.” Every single one is free, and considering that I can use VNsea to control my computer via my iPhone (for free) I’m not sure that I’ll throw another $150 into my $350 iPhone (that’s a lofty percentage). So, I’ll look on with jealousy and hope that they future holds better handheld devices with more and more utilities to help us manage our everyday life.

In the last post, I was talking about the DigiDesign brand interfaces for Pro Tools HD.

Aside from less than exciting sound quality, they are also large, heavy and feature cooling fans that add noise to your control room. So, after hearing a lot about Apogee products for years, and learning that there was a way to add a card to their units that would allow you to bypass using a 192, we took the plunge and bought a couple of Rosetta 800’s for our live rig.

Apogee Rosetta 800 w x-hd card
The Apogee lives up to its marketing tag line: it sounds amazing. I love the sound of this box. It is warm, punchy, rich in the bottom and it performs remarkably well. It has a wide array of I/O options, lightpipe, AES and an option card for HD connection (or firewire if you so choose). My only complaint about it is with the X-HD card option: you can only run 8 channels in and out. Another nice feature is that it uses no cooling fan (I can’t seem to stop talking about that on this post). Fits in a Single rack space which makes it very portable. With the lightpipe connection you can use it with a Digi 002 as well when you need to do the occasional low budget remote and still have it sound great. Very helpful and responsive tech support too. The Apogee people always answered the phone and talked us through some serious problems at first when we had a bad HD card. They fixed it really quickly and got us going, even upgrading our Rosetta 96k to a 192 at no charge. I can recommend them without hesitation.

Lynx Aurora 16 w LT-HD card
This is also a great sounding box. Much cleaner and detailed in the top end than the Rosetta. Both the Apogee and the Lynx seem to put the Digidesign converters to shame. It is definitely more transparent than any other converter I’ve worked on with Pro Tools. I really like this box for live recording because it fits 16 channels of A/D and D/A conversion into Pro Tools directly (with the LT HD card) in a single rack space. My only gripe about it is that the digital I/O is only AES, which means that can’t use it with a 002 for low budget remotes. But that’s a minimal gripe. I’m sure there’s a format converter out there somewhere that I just haven’t researched yet. This box does generate a fair amount of heat (as does the Rosetta) so give it some room in your rack if you can.

Summary

I think I prefer the sound of the Apogee Rosetta, it just seems smoother and I find myself less fatigued at the end of a long day when I work with it. The Aurora is definitely more defined in the top end (which is probably why I feel fatigued after using it) and it is also probably translating the sound of digital audio more transparently. The Apogee feels more analog.

Both of these units sound much better than the DigiDesign options the 96 or the 192 io. Even if you own one of those units, try out some external converters. It can really improve the way you hear your mixes.

There are several interface options when working with an HD system. Of course, Digidesign would like you to only consider their branded version of the Pro Tools interface (and it is the only one that’s officially supported) but there are a growing number of 3rd party interface options that you can choose from. Since this is essentially 4 reviews, I’m going to do this as a series of posts. Feel free to chime in if you know of any others that are worth checking out.

So far, I have owned 4 different units, each with its benefits and drawbacks.

Digidesign 96io
Moderately flexible. Weakest sound quality of the four. TRS inputs (which can be good or bad depending on your situation and for live applications, can be a bit of a pain to have plug in that many inputs at once. But it’s the second cheapest interface you can get your hands on for use with HD (the 96i is cheaper as it only has 2 outputs). I don’t think this box sounds much different than a Digi 002 as far as the converters go. Seems like there’s a bit of smearing going on in the top end (probably a result of jitter) and it just doesn’t have the bottom end punch that you can get out of an Apogee or a Lynx Aurora. The imaging feels a little bit indistinct and 2 dimensional. I do like the array of digital I/O options though. Lightpipe (8 channel), AES (2 channel) and SPDIF. It’s a decent starter unit and can be found pretty cheap, so if you just need some extra channels in a pinch, it’s an acceptable option, but there are definitely better options.

Digidesign 192

This unit sounds better than the 96io. It has more flexibility in terms of i/o because it is expandable. You can pick one of three option cards: an extra 8 analog inputs, 8 more analog outputs, or 8 more digital ins AND outs. The 192 has a much more detailed top end and mids than the 96 io, particularly at higher sample rates, which I think is its best feature. The imaging on this box isn’t as clear as the Lynx Aurora or the Apogee Rosetta, but the 192 is solid and predictable and you can find it in most studios, so it’s worth getting to know. We had this box for about 3 weeks before we sold it. My biggest complaint about both the 96io and the 192 is the ventilation fan which is loud and annoying. Some people might not be bothered with this, but I often track with live vocalists in the control room. They are also large (2 rack spaces) and heavy, which makes them less than ideal for live remote recording and was the first reason we switched to the Apogee Rosetta 800.

Coming next: Part 2: 3rd Party Pro Tools Interface Options (Apogee Rosetta 800 and Lynx Aurora 16)

The master fader is one of those overlooked, yet very helpful, devices in pro tools. Most people use a master fader only on the main output, then they often slap a 2 bus limiter (like the Massey L2007 or Waves L2), maybe a meter plug in and then route it to their stereo aux track.

But the master fader can really be much more useful than that.

If you mix in the box or if you simply use aux tracks to sum any number of tracks, a master fader can solve a lot of headaches caused by bus overload.

A few things to consider about master faders

- They do not feature delay compensation. Therefore, any plug in you put on a master fader should be also put on any other master fader you have open if you want to maintain phase coherence.

- Master faders don’t consume any DSP. You can have as many master faders as you want and it will not add any extra drain on your processor (in theory at least)

- Master fader inserts are post fader. Any time you put a plug in on a master fader channel (say a bus compressor) the input to that plug-in is controlled by the master fader itself. Thus, if you have a bus compressor on a master fader, and then automate a fade out, you will in effect be lowering the input to the compressor and your track will be less and less compressed as you fade out. This may not be so desirable. Because of this, it is usually most desirable to use master fader channels simply as a trim control for a bus or hardware output.

Tricks for master fader
- possibly the most useful trick for a master fader comes when you mix a lot of stems. For example, you could have 8 stereo aux tracks on to which you bus drums (aux 1-2) bass (aux 3) vocal (aux 4) stereo guitars (aux 5-6) and effects (aux 7-8). All of these auxes feed a single master fader. If you start to experience an overload on the guitar bus ( whose input is aux 5-6), turn down the master fader for bus 5-6.
- Group master faders for the stems. In the above example, it is sometimes even more useful to create a group of master faders, so that if you pull down one level you can also pull down the others at the same time, thereby eliminating the need to adjust all your aux channels to compensate for your trim.
- Use a master fader to control the input to your bus compressor.

Possibly one of the most underrated and undervalued multi mic pre box on the market.

I don’t really know why Digidesign doesn’t promote these more heavily. Perhaps their margins are lower on this, or the competition in the marketplace just doesn’t make it worth the effort for them, but these are some really great mic pres.

The Upside

It’s 8 mic pres in two rack spaces. It is remote controllable from within the Pro Tools session window and via MIDI. It has multiple outputs. It has the usual nice mic preamp features like variable impedance, High pass filter, phase reverse and a -20db pad. It also has some features not found on many mic pres, like a selectable insert and ¼” input jacks on every single channel as well as two additional ones on the front. It also has a 1k oscillator which is incredibly useful when troubleshooting a system. On top of all this, it sounds pretty good. It’s pretty quiet and is very transparent. It has well extended lows and highs and it compares favorably with other mic pres that cost twice as much per channel (most notably the grace 101, which I used to own)

On the hidden value side, the insert sends doubles as a secondary TRS output. It’s always sending signal even with the insert button turned off and therefore makes it secondary output for live recording. Send the D-Sub output to your HD rig, send the TRS send to another recorder (we use an Alesis HD24, which makes TRS-TRS cable snakes cheap and easy to use) and you have a very reliable line level analot mult to your backup.

The best part of it is that you can find them on the used market ranging in price from 1800 to 1200 dollars a box. That comes out to 150-220 a channel for a pretty damn good sounding mic pre.

The Downside
It clicks when you turn the gain knob. It doesn’t have a trim for the gain. There is only one knob (the gain) and you have to select the channel before turning the knob to get any sort of adjustments done unless you’re working via remote control. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell which channel you’re working on and what the settings are. I would be very very cautious about plugging in a ribbon mic to this box. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever done so, although it does have 60 db of gain, so it should be able to handle a ribbon mic pretty well in terms of gain.

But on the whole I think this is a really respectable mic pre. And it is an incredible value for the money.

Ease of Use
8

% of projects I use it on
100

Sound Quality
8

What it is:
5 Band EQ with low and hi cut filters, Parametric and switchable low shelf
4 different types of Q presets

Why I like it
-    This is my first call EQ. 8 out of 10 times, this gets the job done
-    The filters are excellent. They switch between 6, 12, 18 , 24 and 36 db / oct for mild or steep filtering along with a frequency control from 20 to 400 hz for high pass and 20k to 4k for Low Pass
-    4 switchable voices for every day use, surgical eq, or very broad stroke “artistic” eq
-    Sounds really good and is incredibly transparent
-    Visual representation of eq moves (a good and bad thing)
-    Switch bands on and off very easily

Why I don’t Like it
-    Sometimes it’s a little too transparent… (and that’s not what I’m looking for)
-    Copying settings between the A&B profiles isn’t really possible (or else I haven’t been able to figure out how to do so…)
-    Sometimes it’s not always a good thing to see a graphic representation of the eq you’re making (makes me use my ears less…)

Tips / Examples of Use
-    This is the first high pass filter I reach for. It’s quick and easy to use, you can dial out low end all the way to 400hz with 5 different slopes and it’s pretty transparent, no weird phase issues, not a very noticeable bump at the cutoff frequency.
-    There are 4 styles of eq. Usually I stick with A, which is a general purpose eq. The “B” style is more surgical and is great for taming problem frequencies (particularly on drums). C and D have very broad Q’s (with D being the broadest) and more like a vintage style / artistic eq. All of the settings are very useful. There is an extra “Massenburg emulation” setting that you can pay more for, but I’ve been pretty happy with this one as it is.
-    I keep this in the preferences as my first eq, one of the nice new features in Pro Tools 7.3. Quickly gets the job done.
-    I have some presets saved for things like kick drum (cut 400hz, boost 70 hz and 3k), SM57 vocal compensation (steep high pass, cut the lows to reduce proximity effect, high shelf boost at 7k, and bump up 2-5k a bit for lead vocals) and so forth…
-    Use the low pass filter to tame 451’s and other very bright edgy sources
-    Use both high and low filters on extreme settings to get a mid rangey honk / piercing intercom effect

I have the Massenburg DesignWorks Hi-Res Parametric EQ 2.0 and I have the Diamond Bundle, the URS N Series , the URS A Series, the Oxford EQ etc. etc. and they are all wonderful, amazing sounding plugins. They should be, they cost a fortune to research and build, and a small fortune to purchase. The EQ III, on the other hand, comes bundled “free” with your purchase of and Digidesign Hardware, and as the old adage goes - You get what you pay for. Or do you?

I have a secret obsession with this little plugin. I love it’s ease of use, it’s little colorful interface, and most of all the way that it sounds on Rack Toms and Floor Toms. I don’t know why, but I can’t get enough! I’ve used a hundred different plugins on rack and floor toms, but EQ III, for me, takes the cake.

The EQ III has an impressive ability to manage low end - it corrals and focuses the low end with ease, managing that incessant ringing on your lowest floor tom. The high end isn’t brilliant - in fact you really have to pump it if you want a ton of sizzle, but the high end responds beautifully to transients. Each thwack on the tom, with a little boost on the EQ III, has an extra crack and smack that sings TOM TOM ! to me. The ease of swapping the phase is another added benefit - I yearn for the days that every session that I get and work on has every drum mic in phase with one another - but until that day comes, thank Digi for that phase flipper, it sure is helpful. And can anyone say colors? Who doesn’t love a nice colored parametric EQ to display that +8db boost that you made? Sure is pretty!

The EQ III has become my impulse reach for EQ when I’m working on the toms in my drum mix. If that tom is just not sounding right, I pop on an EQ III, put on a high pass filter around 80hz, pump the low end around 160-180hz, cut out the lower mids around 400-600hz and do a peak boost at around 3 or 4khz. Of course, it really varies from mix to mix and tom to tom, but this is my default go to, and I find that 99% of the time this gets me within range off the sound and tone that I was looking for. From these basic settings I nudge boost and cut to get that tom sounding exactly the way that I want, and then move on to finish that drum mix.

When all is said and done I find that I use the EQ III on about %90 of my drum mixes. That’s what I call a reliable plugin. Although I don’t venture outside of Tom Tom land much with the EQ III I am confident that it is more than able to hold it’s own in the world of EQ. If you’ve been avoiding this EQ because everyone’s got it and you think that free = cheap, then I highly suggest that you take another look, try it out and see how it can fit your needs. This is one little plugin that will go a lot further than you think in your mix.

Open up a session with all your plug ins and settings in place. This will be the session you import from.

CREATE TEMPLATE FILE
1. Choose “Save as” from the file menu and label it “mix template” (With a number or whatever after it so you know what it is later)

2. Select all your audio in the audio bin (click on any audio file in the regions list and press Shift-Cmd-A to select all regions). Remove all the audio regions from the session by pressing Shift-Cmd-B. Select “Remove regions from session”

—DON’T DELETE THE REGIONS!!—

* Option click on the “remove” button and you won’t have to go through a hundred or more warnings asking if you actually want to remove regions that are used in the session.

3. Delete extra playlists (To do this, click on the title of a track and select “delete unused” click on the top title, scroll to the bottom, and then while holding down the shift key, click on the last playlist title, then select delete)

4. Once your session is completely devoid of audio regions and extra playlists but still has all your plug in settings, label all the tracks (remove numbers at the end of track titles) so that it’s really obvious what the tracks are.

5. Save the session and close it.

6. Open up the new session that you want to import on to. (It’s always wise to do a “save as” in case you want to revert back to your previous stuff too, by the way)

7. Choose import session data and import all the tracks that you want to use plug ins from. Those tracks will then come in as empty tracks with all your plug-ins still functional.
8. Drag the playlists from your current tracks onto these new ones and erase the ones they were originally on. (or make them inactive if you feel weird erasing tracks.)

Until Pro Tools actually comes up with a “notes track” that would allow us to attach JPG’s, this is a pretty handy workaround.

Uses for MIDI tracks that have nothing to do with MIDI
- Recall notes for analog gear
- Lyrics to follow along the audio track
- Notes about playlists and how they were recorded
- Production notes about how a track was made in case you need to open it later and redo it
- Any place you might want a text file to notate something happening at a particular place in a song
- A divider line track to differentiate between groups of instruments in your track list

HOW TO USE IT
1. Create a MIDI Track
2. Change the view from “notes” to “Regions”
3. Arm the track for recording
4. Hit record and create a small region
5. Drag the region to whatever size you want using the Trim tool
6. Click in the region and type the text you need
7. Resize and copy to make more regions and rename as many as you need

BE CAREFUL
- if you copy a region to make a new one, you need to resize it in order to not overwrite the information you typed in the region you copied it from

TIPS & TRICKS

LYRICS

- Create a track called “LYRICS” directly above your vocal track. Type in the lyrics before you track vocals and you will have a much easier time communicating with the vocalist (they’ll think you’re a SO into the project for knowing all the lyrics). You’ll also have an easier time comping, tracking backing vocals and knowing what the song is about.

FORM

- Create a track called “FORM” and make a region block that is exactly as long as your chorus, verse, etc and label them as such. You can enable “All” group and then click on this region to select entire sections of a song without having to use markers or remembering where certain things are. This makes using shuffle mode a lot easier to slide sections of a song around without getting lost
RECALL

- Create a track at very top of the session and label it “RECALL” so that if you want to look at the outboard settings from a particular song you can easily import that track and read what you need. When you’ve finished working on a mix, copy down all the settingsyou’re your compressors, outboard effects and notes for any patching that you’ve done. It’s usually easiest to use one region for each piece of gear so that you can click on that region and see it’s settings very easily.

SPACER TRACKS

- Create any number of MIDI tracks labeled “ ——-“ and put them in between groups. You can hide these tracks so that when you look at your track list on the left side of the screen, it is very quick and easy to see where your groups begin and end. You can also show these tracks in your session, deactivate their outputs so they turn the track grey, and shrink them to the smallest size possible so that they work as group delineators in the Edit window. Unfortunately you can’t hide tracks in the mix window and keep them active in the edit window (yet). You can also use these tracks to write down notes about what mics, preamps and instruments were used on a particular track. You can never have too much documentation… and you never know if somebody wants to go back and redo something, if your song becomes a huge classic hit and people want to know everything about it…

NOTES
- Create a “NOTES” track. Use this for other engineers that might work on the session. Also enter producer, engineer, musician, assistant engineer credits here.

% of projects I use it on
30

Sound Quality
8

What it is:
Plate Reverb Plug In. 10 controls plus a kill switch to mute the effect
Controls include, Input, Wet / Dry mix, Predelay, Decay, Front / Rear Position, Diffusion and a 2 band eq (High and Low Shelf with gain and frequency selction)

Why I like it
- Useful list of presets that get the job done
- Limited control set means tweaking time is minimal and therefore I can focus more on the mix
- Well labeled control set make it easy to use right away; short learning curve
- eq knobs do what they need to do
- sounds pretty damn convincing
- Very diverse sound palette for such a limited control set
- The Settings are so obvious and easy to read that it’s hard to go wrong with this thing.

Why I don’t Like it
- Sometimes sounds a bit digital and grainy

Tips / Examples of Use
- I usually set this up just like any other reverb, on an aux track that I send to from other channels. Therefore I leave it all 100% wet.
- I don’t use this plug that often, I admit. Usually when I reach for a plate, I go with TL Space EMT, Revibe or my outboard Lexicon PCM70… However the Snare Plate is very useful and sounds great.
- The preset list is fantastic. A great place to start and explore this plug in. I’ve gone through it a few times and sometimes it does just the trick for a backing vocal, an acoustic guitar or a snare drum
- Rolling off high frequencies is incredibly handy when using reverbs because nothing screams cheese louder than sibilant “ssss” sounds on a reverb. I often put a de-esser in front of the plate or on the master bus send to chill out that kind of problem.
- I sometimes put a gate / expander after it to tame the tails