This post is adapted from my review published on The Home Recording Show episode 154
Back in November, Craig from TC Helicon sent us one of their new products the VoiceLive Rack, to try out and review. I got to play with it first and here’s what I thought of it.
Overview
The VoiceLive Rack is the latest vocal processor from TC-Helicon, a company who have a long history of building excellent harmonizers and vocal effects. The VoiceLive is a complete vocal processor for live and studio use with eight effects such as delay, reverb, harmony, in addition to the global tone control and chromatic pitch correction. This is the bigger brother of the VoiceLive Touch, TC-Helicon’s mic stand-mountable vocal processor. It has many of the same features but with more in-depth control, and more i/o options.
Physically the VoiceLive Rack is a shallow 2-space rack. The top and bottom panels have a curved finger groove making it easy to move the Voicelive around when not in a rack.
On the front panel there is large, very bright backlit display, 5 rotary encoders, an 1/8″ headphone jack and power button. The majority of the front panel is covered by a large touch sensitive interface.
The rear panel includes a wide array of i/o options. From left to right, XLR mic input, 1/4″ Line input, Guitar input and guitar thru, 1/8″ stereo aux input. The output are stereo on XLR and 1/4″ TRS. A ground lift is available for the XLR outputs. Next there are S/PDIF in and out on RCA jacks, a footswitch jack, 3 MIDI ports – Thru, out, in and lastly a USB port.
Overview
The TC Electronic Impact Twin is a mid-level firewire interface with 14 inputs and outputs. It has two preamps, onboard effects, S/PDIF, ADAT Lightpipe and MIDI I/O. It’s not as compact as some other interfaces but packs a ton of features and i/o yet still small enough to fit in a backpack.
The Impact Twin caught my eye in spring 2011. I was looking for a more compact replacement to my M-Audio Profire 2626 (see review here), or a way to expand the I/O of my system, or at least a portable option so I don’t have to tear apart my studio all the time I go out to record. I trust TC Electronic to make nice clean digital gear, for about $400 it had pretty much every feature and function I wanted. I ordered one through Revolution Audio (note: I work for this company and got dealer pricing) and when it arrived I started writing my review. I don’t really have a good excuse why it took nearly a year to write, other than that l got busy being awesome in other aspects. Jump down to the end if you’d like to see what I think of it after about 8 months of owning it.
Last week Ian Shepherd (productionadvice.co.uk, mastering engineer and friend of AGZ) announced the release of his first instructional E-Book Mastering with Multiband Compression.
There is a basic and enhanced edition. The enhanced version has a bonus 1hr tutorial video, and audio examples for just $10 more.
Here is the sales page: Buying through this link will support AGZ If you prefer not to donate, click here.
Ian sent me an advance copy and I was quite impressed. I sent him a short review for his sales page.
“I already use multiband compression in my mixing and mastering, but this eBook made me realize I’d been taking some things for granted. Reading it I gained new strategies, a greater understanding of the parameters and new ideas I can implement into my mastering projects right away” Jon Tidey, Audio Geek Zine
And this is the truth. Ian’s approach is different than the way I’ve taught myself to use multiband compression over the past couple years. I haven’t been doing it completely wrong but I now know why on several occasions it hasn’t worked as well as I’d hoped. Multiband compression was never as transparent as I’d like and it was so easy to overdo it. I know this is a common complaint about multiband compression and Ian’s book has the solution. The starting point, strategy and tips will change the way you misuse multiband compression.
This week I checked out the latest tutorial from Groove 3, Programming Rock Drums in Pro Tools and I thought I’d write a short review.
Programming Rock Drums in Pro Tools is presented by Travis Brown and runs about two hours, fifteen minutes. This is shorter than many of the other Groove3 titles which run three to six hours, but it is $10 cheaper than the others. Regardless of the length, there is plenty of content in this tutorial.
Travis uses Pro Tools for the tutorial but I wouldn’t say there is anything Pro Tools specific about the lesson, you should be able to apply the info to your DAW of choice. He also uses Steven Slate Drums EX but again any modern virtual drum package can be used in the same way.
This tutorial is aimed at beginners. Travis did an outstanding job of presenting the information in a way that will get beginners up to speed, but without dumbing it down too much for the intermediate viewer. I’ve been programming drums for years and I took a way a trick or three from this video.
Travis came up with a great beat for each section of the song, starting with a basic foundation, then making each part special, then working on humanizing. This is a great strategy that I’m going to adopt as I tend to spend far too long worrying about all the details before I’ve got the big picture and the full song laid out.
Mixing and processing drums is not covered in this tutorial beyond balancing the kit, just FYI.
The only criticism I have is some of the Pro Tools specific things that the average viewer may not notice. One was that he was switching tools all the time. Pencil tool to insert notes, grabber tool to move notes and selector tool to choose where to play from, rather than using the smart tool and modifier keys as necessary. This is just a personal issue for me and for the beginner, using a specific tool for each task is probably the better way to teach, but is really inefficient. The other is that the main ruler was on Samples instead of Bars|Beats so when he switched to slip mode the gridlines changed to samples. He even commented on that. Again, not something terribly important, just a little nitpick.
Groove3 sets and maintains the standard for software video tutorials. This video met the high level of quality I’ve come to expect from Groove3. Worth checking out.
You can get Programming Rock Drums In Pro Tools here: Groove3 The smartest option is the All-Access pass which let’s you watch the entire Groove3 library, hundreds of hours whenever you want.
Yesterday at my Acoustic Guitar recording workshop for VHR the Apogee Duet decided to add heaps of white noise into channel one.
I was demoing Large diaphragm condensers vs small diaphragm condensers using both channels. I turned off phantom power, swapped the LDC for another small diaphragm and went back to recording. There was a ton of noise in channel 1 making stereo miking impossible. With the mics disconnected the noise was still there. I don’t know if this is a permanent problem but I wasn’t able to fix it within a few minutes.
This unit wasn’t brand new and I don’t know if it had been abused prior to this workshop by connecting mics while 48V is on. A bit of searching online shows a number of noise issues with the Duet mostly on the monitoring side but some had preamp issues too. Hopefully the owner doesn’t have any trouble getting it repaired or replaced.
Mini review of the Apogee Duet
Here are my first impressions after using the Apogee Duet for a few hours.
Sound – The preamps and conversion sounded very nice, very clean with lots of gain. When it was working I was impressed with the sound.
Functionality – Using the Duet was fairly simple and the features that can’t be controlled directly on the box were in the software. I could get used to the one knob design, but I definitely didn’t love the idea of it. The software control panel and mixer was far less intimidating than most others.
Design - The large knob just looks out of place to me. A shorter dome shaped one with little nubby grips would have been better. I much prefer a separate control for the essentials. 4 flat sliding controls would have been best. The pigtail for the i/o really detracts from the appearance of the device. The wires are thin and I wouldn’t trust it to last long if you do any traveling. I can’t think of any way to get that i/o on the interface without making it twice as large.
Other complaints – No power button means you have to completely shut down the mac or hot plug the interface, which is bad. Loud noises into your speakers when you plug in the interface to the computer and a pop when you use the mute. Mac only.
PT Tuts is an awesome new Pro Tools training course created by Chris Bryant. This is a complete and comprehensive training product for absolute beginners to intermediate Pro Tools users.
.
Click to watch video
. Key Features
Hours of Pro Tools Training Videos
Access to Member Community
Text Based Articles
Illustrated Tutorials
165 Page QuickStart PDF Guide
QuickStart Tutorial Pro Tools Sessions
Membership Bonuses
One Year Membership
Chris gave me a chance to see the first few modules of his course and it did not disappoint! I’ve seen over a hundred hours of online Pro Tools training and this is among the very best in quality. Large, clear videos with clean audio; excellent clear narration by Chris; and a ton of content covering everything you need to know. One great aspect of this course is that the massive amount of content is not just dumped on you. Each week new articles and videos are unlocked giving you time to learn and really understand each concept before moving on.
Now because I’ve seen over a hundred hours of PT vids, went through a year of training including ProSchool 110 certification and 5 years of almost daily use, this particular product doesn’t give me a lot I haven’t seen before. It’s aimed at beginner to intermediate users, I’m probably closer to the Guru status at this point. Having gone through all that, I’ve got pretty high standards when it comes to PT Training, this product is in another league above the rest. I wish this was available a few years ago as a supplement to my PT training in school, this is actually much better than what I paid hundreds more for. I’m being as honest as possible here.
I recommend this course for:
New Pro Tools users (less than 1yr frequent use or 2yr occasional use)
Anyone that wants a solid foundation of knowledge for Pro Tools Operation
Anyone that’s NOT interested in becoming an engineer, but needs to know Pro Tools
Anyone thinking about going to recording school and wants a jump start on PT (I wish I had this when I was in school)
At the regular price of $129, I’d say this is a fantastic deal. At the current introductory special price of $97 (or 3x $39), well it’s a no-brainer!
If you’re thinking of signing up for this course please purchase through these links as they will help support AudioGeekZine, otherwise go to pttuts.com
Overview
Programming Rock Drums in Pro Tools is presented by Travis Brown and runs about two hours, fifteen minutes. This is shorter than many of the other Groove3 titles which run three to six hours, but it is $10 cheaper than the others. Regardless of the length, there is plenty of content in this tutorial.
