Wednesday, November 08, 2006

How do I store my music?

I write music. I also record and produce other people’s music. A lot of the time it’s really good music and it would be nice if it were around beyond the life of a CD. What would happen if the only CD copy of your music got scratched or lost? What happens 10 years from now when we’re no longer using shiny plastic discs to store music or video, and manufacturers no longer make the hardware on which to play them? Could be a bummer. Now multiply that bummer by all of the other musicians, studios, Engineers, Producers, project studios, game producers, video production companies, TV stations, etc. using digital data to produce content, and you begin to see exactly how big a bummer this is going to be.

Up until a couple of years ago, everyone agreed that analog tape was the best long-term storage medium for audio. You can pull a tape from the 1940’s and still play it back, and it sounds pretty darn good! Then came the closure of the Ampex plant in Opelika, and reality came crashing in on our comfy world. Sure, there are still makers of analog tape, but try to name 3 current manufacturers of tape recorders? Let’s see, Studer, Otari, um… and I don’t see a bunch of folks entering that market in the near future. How many machines did you see at AES this year? If you have an analog 1/4” machine and plan on keeping it in good working order, that’s cool, you’re covered. But what about multitrack tape machines? 1/4”-4 and 8 track, 1/2”-4, 8, and 16 track, 1”-8 and 16 track, 2”-8, 16, 24, and 40 track? Unless you live near the Smithsonian, this is already a problem. Here in the Northwest we have an e-newsgroup called nwstudios, and nearly every week someone is looking for an obscure multitrack format machine to remix some ancient project. And we haven’t even started talking about digital multitrack – SONY 3324/48, Mitsubishi, DA88, ADAT, Mackie HDR, RADAR, yada yada, etc. See where this is headed?

Here’s an interesting challenge – try to name a current digital storage medium that will still be around in ten years. Will it be CDR or DVD-R? FireWire hard drive? Data tape, like DLT, AIT, or LTO? Maybe Flash drives? (Remember SCSI?) Think about that for a bit, I’ll be back next time to look at solutions.

Cheers,

MBM

Friday, November 03, 2006

After the dilemma

Happy Friday!

I figured this week's topic would spawn some interesting discussion. There have been a number of folks on either side of the equation emailing me with possible solutions.

Additional notes -

• It was pointed out that a modern digital summing bus has the capacity for 1500dB of dynamic range. I'm on the hunt to find out how that impacts track count, stay tuned.

• I like mixing in the box for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are repeatability, ease of revision, and the ability to archive ALL of my work. There are some very cool plug-ins in my virtual rack, and I'm generally pretty happy with the palette of tonal colors available. Making hi-res and lo-res copies is pretty simple, and versioning is easy-breezy.

• Mixing on a console has its own attraction; I get to use all of the cool outboard gear that has been accumulating in my physical rack over the years. There's something about grabbing a handful of faders or EQ knobs and just mixing by feel that is very satisfying. Not that you can't do that with a control surface, it just takes a half-hour to set it up. Plus, I have metering when and where I want it, and the ability to trim down the input to each channel to avoid the aforementioned bus overload.

Here's the interesting discovery in this experiment: working in a hybrid mixing world (DAW as an editor and playback medium, final mix through a console) gives me the best of all possible options as mentioned above, plus the ability to quickly compare the sound of a mix-in-the-box session with the analog version simply by routing channels to multiple outs in Pro Tools. Try it, you'll like it!

Next up - either Logic automation or data archival, I haven't decided yet.

Cheers,

MBM

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Dilemma - Mixing In The Box part 3

Welcome to November! It's raining like... well, it's raining like everyone thinks it does in Seattle. That's OK, I work in a nice warm room with tube gear and no windows.

To briefly recap - mixing within Pro Tools wasn't working for me, so I bussed out into an analog console and that sounded better. Why did it sound better? This is the subject of much debate and more than a few well written treatises by knowledgeable folk. Here, then, are my findings. (Which, when combined with $5, will get you a cuppa coffee at Starbuck's.)

One could assume that the Pro Tools hardware just gets overloaded and sounds "bad". We all know that that's not true, the HD192 I/O is a great sounding interface. One might think that the internal summing bus in Pro Tools can't handle the amount of information that needs to be processed when mixing >64 channels down into 2. But that's not true, since the Pro Tools stereo summing bus is a 48 bit bus and has the capacity to sum many more channels than 64 without screwing up the output. As Roger Nichols points out in Sound On Sound, at that point in the process digital summing is just math. From that standpoint, Pro Tools hardware does the math pretty efficiently via proprietary DSP cards. Certainly faster than many host-based systems. But even those do the math correctly, it just takes a bit longer.

So what's the deal, you might ask? Here's the deal, and it's not flattering, because it points to basic engineering skills (or a lack of attention to same).

Part 1. In recording to Pro Tools or any DAW, we feel compelled to seek the highest possible input levels. Maybe it's a throwback to 16 bit recording days, when a -20dB input level yielded a 12 bit recording (Eeewwww!). In a 24 bit world, a -20 input still results in >20 bits. Whatever the reason, we record into our DAWs really hot. Hotter than we ever did to analog tape. This results (in my case) in >64 channels each tracked at the analog equivalent of +14dB VU. That's a lot of signal, even for an analog mixer! That in itself is not a bad thing, as long as you plan to manage that kind of level. The problem is...

Part 2. Metering on a DAW. Let's look at the metering on the Pro Tools stereo master fader. You immediately notice that it's post-insert. Meaning that you're only metering after that secret combo of Fairchild/1176/and L1 plug-ins that we all use. What's happening with gain? Who the heck knows! Why can't we meter a) at the input, b) at each gain stage, and c) post-insert? (DAW makers, please read this...) With >64 faders, all up near the top of their throw, the input to the stereo summing bus is pretty formidable. How do most of us fix it? Pull down the master fader to -30dB. What's wrong with that? (Remember your basic unity gain theory and how to structure gain in a console?) I hear distortion in Pro Tools because I'm slamming the bejeezus out of the summing bus. Duh. Same goes for the aux busses. 20 channels of high-transient drums recorded at 99% modulation means a ton of signal at the input of the aux master. Ergo: distortion, lack of headroom, lack of dynamic range, bad sounding mix.

How do we fix it? I wish it were easy, but it requires that you actually look at the meters on the DAW to check levels pre-insert. Don't know about you, but I'm kinda lazy and loath those extra keystrokes required to engage and disengage plug-ins. Also, there typically aren't enough insert slots in PT to insert 3 meters per channel, and you can't view them all even if you could. The obvious solution is to pull down the individual track faders when setting up your mix. Same as we used to do on an analog console. Help the summing bus do its work by leaving some headroom. Trust your ears to tell you if there's something wrong, but use your eyes to double check the meters. We can't calibrate if we don't know what the levels are! Simple stuff.

In the meantime, maybe we can lobby the DAW manufacturers to include more metering options, or low-latency metering plugs, or more insert slots on each channel, or the ability to look at more than one plug at a time, so we can really do our jobs properly. And make better music in the process.


QED. Thanks for reading!

MBM