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Archive for June, 2008
Sunday, June 29th, 2008
After about a month of delay, The Home Recording Show Podcast is now ready to be heard.
This is our very first show. We thank you for coming to check it out. This week Jon talks about phase issues using multiple mics, Des talks about the benefits of using parametric EQ to remove unwanted frequencies, and Ryan discusses compression at the tracking stage. We hope that you enjoy the show and please give us your feedback.
Subscribe to the RSS feed to get the podcast each week. Yes weekly.
Listen now at http://www.homerecordingshow.com
Posted in Gear, Podcast, Tutorial | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
In Craig Anderton’s Harmony Central Pro Review Peter Gorges ( Director – Digidesign A.I.R. Group) stopped by with some tips from the developers of Transfuser, the new realtime groove manipulating, beat mangling, really cool effecter plugin for Pro Tools.
Tips from Paul Kellett:
- Insert a reverb effect before the Gater effect. This fills in any gaps in the audio so makes the gating effect stronger, and is especially good on an Audio Input track used as a send effect for your other tracks in Pro Tools
- For a vintage drum-machine sound, insert the Lo-Fi effect, switch on Anti-Alias and adjust the Sample Rate to between 8 and 16 kHz. This will add a vintage “crunch” without the hard edge of normal bitcrusher/decimator effects.
- Load a vocal sample into a Phrase track (or any sound that is both pitched and rhythmic), switch Tempo Sync OFF and adjust the speed knob to zero or a very low value. Now move the sample start marker while playing to find interesting textures within the sample. The different Mode settings will also play the sample with different textures.
- Crossfade between drum sounds with velocity: In the Drums module, load samples into both “Sample A” and “Sample B”. Then on the Amp tab set the Vel knob to 100% for one sample and -100% for the other. [check terminology matches user guide]
- Add a sub-octave using the BeatCutter effect as a send. Turn down Repeat, Reorder, Gate and Freeze, but set Scratch to 100% and “Oct Down” Type.
Tips from Mario Reinsch:
- Applying complete FX sections to an existing track
Many of the the tracks you find in the tracks folders have complex and perfectly worked out FX sections. To apply their complete sections to an existing track browse to a folder you expect to have tracks with cool fx settings, such as “Percussive Textures” and drag one of the tracks, dropping it onto the fx section of the existing track. You will find TF extracting all FX settings and applyig them to your track. Notice that in a similar way you can copy FX section between existing tracks.
- Burn audio
If you prefer to work with Audio rather than MIDI-triggering loops, just replace MIDI-triggered Transfuser tracks by audio – using the Recorder Module:
Once you’ve created a bunch of loops, sequences and variations for your song in Transfuser (which may already be ALL the material for your song), solo a track, start playing inside Transfuser and drag the result from the recorder module into ProTools. Set an adequate bar length in the recorder before. Repeat for all tracks – done.
Save the TF setting to be able to re-create stuff or add more variations later, then close TF and work with Audio Regions only.
- Use Pumper FX for pumping pads like a “kick in the sidechain”
The Pumper effect was designed specifically for imitating the sound that you get when you feed the kick drum into a compressor’s sidechain. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get creative with it:
Turn off automatic triggering, assign the manual trigger pad to an automation lane and create your own trigger pattern. Or assign it to MIDI and trigger it from ProTools.
- “Never” ending automation variations
To get a “never” repeating automation in track automation, assign 3 parameters like filter, resonance or decay to 3 automation lanes. Use 3 different loop lengths and step (mostly long) resolutions there, and maybe one lane even working in alternating direction.
- Create a DrumSeq pattern from a slice track
In the pattern section of any sequencer you can drag the current pattern data into any others sequencers pattern editor display. If it`s a sequencer of a different type the pattern gets converted intelligently. It`s nice to use this feature to drag any slice track’s MIDI Pattern into a DrumSeq pattern. It will get converted into a sequence with kick, snare, HiHat, OpenHat in the first 4 lanes.
- Using send FX master input for performing dub delays
On the preferences page you`ll find the send FX’ master input dials. In case you like to perform dub delays or similar things to more than one track at once, assign them to a CC, and keep the track’s Send FX Level constant.
Posted in Software, Tutorial | No Comments »
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
Announced by Kenny Gioia minutes ago, his third tutorial set is ready for download. This time around its all about the new Pro Tools 7.4 Elastic Audio feature.
Its only $39.99! I’ve purchased my copy already, just waiting for it to finish downloading.
(more…)
Posted in Gear, Tutorial, Video | No Comments »
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
Looking for something really easy to use that makes your podcasts both louder and better sounding? Try The Levelator.
What does it do? It quickly processes your wav or aiff files, evening out the average volume and normalizes it as well as evening out left-right differences on stereo recordings. It’s not a substitute to mixing or mastering, but for things where quick turnaround and quality is less of an issue like a podcast this is great. It’s probably great for YouTube videos too.
How does it work? Just drag and drop. filename.wav gets processed and a new file called filename.output.wav is created in the same folder. Can’t be any easier.
Below is a before and after screenshot of the waveforms.
The Levelator is FREE for PC, Mac and Linux.
Get it right here: http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator/
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
RetroVerb 1.2 is a library of 125 impulse responses created by MoReVox for use in convolution reverbs, such as TL Space. Impulse responses are short samples of the reverb of a space such as a church, hall or room. A convolution reverb can load these samples and these spaces can be recreated and manipulated. Impulse responses are often created to simulate pieces of vintage gear or speaker cabinets, but the ones in this library are only reverbs.
The collection is 125 24 bit, 44.1 kHz WAV files ranging from 0.7 seconds to 7 seconds long. The full list of impulses is here in this PDF.
So how does they sound? Lets put it this way, my favorites IR folder is now 85% from Retroverb. While there are a few good IRs included with TL Space, I don’t find most of them useful for mixing music. That’s not the case with Retroverb, these really seem to be aimed at music rather than post production, especially considering that they’ve included 30 plate reverbs including EMTs. The impulses are conveniently sorted into 4 categories, Halls, Large Spaces, Plates, and Rooms & Chambers. The filenames are a lot like the presets on a hardware unit, descriptive names like Warm Plate, or Dly Hall, which I really like as then I get an idea of what it’s purpose is without hearing it.
The reverbs sound really good IMHO, my only complaint about the sound is some are too bright, I prefer darker reverbs, but I’m not afraid to use EQ whenever I need it.
Impulses recorded at 48 or 96 kHz would be nice but I’d imagine 44.1 is fine for most users including me. I do think MoReVox should do an HD version of this collection.
One other slight complaint is I’d like to see more information about what was sampled for this library as its very vague, the RetroVerb site only says “Real Spaces, Vintage Hardware, Custom MoReVox”.
Installation was easy, you just need a serial number (emailed after payment) and to choose where you want them to go. No system requirements to speak of, you just need a convolution reverb such as TL Space, Pristine Space, Space Designer, etc.
Despite those little complaints, I think this is an awesome collection and I know I’ll be using these on every mix from now on! Highly recommended.
Download MoReVox RetroVerb for only $59.00
http://www.morevox.com/retroverb
Posted in Review, Software, Virtual Effect | No Comments »
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
The standard press release copy & paste:
Digidesign is pleased to announce the availability of Pro Tools® 7.4.2 software, which provides Mac OS X 10.5.3* (Leopard) compatibility to Pro Tools|HD®, Pro Tools LE®, and Pro Tools M-Powered™ users. We’d like to thank our entire community of Mac users for their patience as we worked to bring a fully tested and reliable version of Pro Tools to Apple’s latest platform.
Get the Update
- If you’re a registered Pro Tools 7.4 user, you can download the free Pro Tools 7.4.2 software update here.
- If you recently purchased but haven’t yet registered a Pro Tools system packaged with Pro Tools 7.4 or 7.3 software, you are eligible to receive a free update/upgrade to Pro Tools 7.4.2 upon registration.
- If you haven’t yet upgraded to Pro Tools 7.4 software, you can purchase an upgrade to the latest version from the DigiStore(all versions of Pro Tools) or an authorized Digidesign dealer (Pro Tools HD only).
- If you’re looking to purchase a new Pro Tools system or software, you will receive a free update to Pro Tools 7.4.2 upon product registration.
This news would be exciting a couple months ago when Leopard came out.
Posted in Software | No Comments »
