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The past week has been one of the most interesting and exciting times for the audio industry. The hot news at AES was the announcement of Pro Tools 10 and the new Pro Tools HDX Systems.
It’s not often that Avid (formerly Digidesign) brings a game changing product to the marketplace. Certainly Pro Tools 9 opened a lot of doors with people, but it’s been nearly 10 years since we have seen a new DSP solution. The previous HD systems (Accel / Process Cards) have been used on countless music albums, movie mixes, television shows, anything to do with audio. Now we must look to the future and what it has to offer the next generation of creative professionals. Let’s start by taking a look at the Pro Tools 10 software.
Right from the moment you launch the new software you will notice some new things.
You will notice that there is a new Bit Depth option available, 32 Bit Float, and a check box for Interleaved audio files. These features are a direct result of where digital audio is going,- higher quality as well as more diversity in file types it supports. Many Pro Tools users have asked for years for the ability to use 32 bit floating point audio files for their increased quality as well as the near endless dynamic range. Also, new improvements allow the entire session to run at 32 Bit, including all of the plug in processing, thereby increasing the fidelity of the entire sound.
The other interesting feature relating to Bit Depth is the ability to change the Bit Depth setting on-the-fly in your session. If you view the Session Setup window, you will notice that you can now click on the Bit Depth button and change settings while the session is active. You can also select/deselect the Interleaved function as well. Changing either of these settings during a session will not change anything you’ve previously recorded; it will only affect any newly recorded files.
What is going on? You may be asking yourself this as many people are. For many, many years, these types of functions would have never been possible. This whole thing ties into a much bigger, more overlooked feature - the ability to have different audio file formats all in the same session. Pro Tools will no longer just make a copy and automatically convert every audio file you want to use to that of the pre-existing session. Bring everything you got, it will handle it with ease.
Given the current state of Operating Systems such as OSX Lion (Mac) and Windows 7, it is not inconceivable to see 64 Bit files in the near future. (hint hint, wink wink.)
While we’re on the subject of processing, there is also a new plug-in format that has been introduced, AAX - Avid Audio Extension. For the time being there is still the RTAS Native format that still works for backwards compatibility, but don’t plan on it sticking around too much longer. The benefits of AAX are quite remarkable, it can operate as a Native plug-in (on your host computer) or it can run on the new HDX cards. No longer will there be two different formats for Pro Tools plug-ins (RTAS = Native, and TDM = HD cards), there will only be AAX. This makes it great for plug-in developers because now they only have to write code for a single plug-in. The fact that there have been two formats has also kept many plug-in developers from being able to use TDM and have been stuck with only Native formats. Think of AAX as “One Plug-In To Rule Them All”.
The first plug-ins that come standard as new AAX plug-ins are, Avid Channel Strip, Mod Delay III, and Down Mixer. The one to really keep an eye on is Channel Strip. Avid have taken the architecture of the Euphonix System 5 console and have placed it in Pro Tools 10. Since Avid owns Euphonix, they have taken the software that is that portion of the console and have given it to you built in to PT 10. It is such a versatile unit, I see many engineers using it across their mixes. It has a great sound with a fully configurable Dynamic section, full parametric EQ section with Filters, plus, did I mention it is exactly what the console is! What’s not to like?
The Dynamic section can be set to Pre or Post, and the order can be changed between EQ, Filter, and Dynamics. Once again, this is just like the System 5 console. One really exciting feature I’ve already discovered about this particular plug-in is how efficient it seems to be. I have launched 40 of these at once across tracks in a session and it only peaked my CPU at 17% processing! (your performance may vary based on your computer)
One of my favorite new features in PT 10 is Clip Based Gain. It might not sound like much to you yet, but, it is a very powerful mix tool that will soon become a necessary tool to anyone wanting to do great mixing in Pro Tools.
Here’s a visual example of what happens to your audio when you use Clip Based Gain.
You now see a small fader with gain value in the lower left hand corner of audio clips in your session. You can raise or lower the amount of gain of each clip by up to +36db. You have the ability to use your tools such as Trim, Grabber, and Pencil to draw in Clip Based Gain changes very similar to writing automation. The big difference with Clip Gain is that the gain change is applied to the audio file directly, which means it happens pre-insert. By changing the Clip Gain, you are changing how hard the audio hits the plug ins. Using traditional automation, you always hear the audio post-insert, after the processing. As you raise/lower the Clip Gain you will see the audio waveform visually increase or decrease in size.
Yet another really amazing new feature of Pro Tools 10 is the increase in Auto Delay Compensation to over 16,000 samples (16383 to be exact).
This means you can run more plug-ins per track and have them automatically be time aligned so they don’t drift out of sync with one another. In Pro Tools 9 you only have the ability to go up to 4095 samples of delay compensation, and as many of you have found out the hard way, there are plug-ins that you use that have well more than 4000 samples of delay. With over 16k samples of delay compensation there should be no more issues with plug-ins during a mix. The one thing to take note of with this feature is that it applies to Pro Tools 10 native and HDX only, it will not work on HD TDM systems. Anyone who has an HD system, like I do, will not be able to utilize this new setting.
And now for something completely different, you can now bounce your session directly to SoundCloud and to your iTunes library. In the Bounce to Disk window, you will notice there are two new buttons at the bottom that allow you to select Add To iTunes Library and Share with SoundCloud. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bounced a song to import into iTunes as a mix reference. Instead of having to go through all the steps, it has become a lot simpler. Also, for those of you that still don’t know, SoundCloud is awesome! It is quickly becoming a part of collaborative workflow for many producers/engineers. Sign up with SoundCloud and share your audio with the world.
I can only say that for myself, I am super excited to start working with all of the new features and discover new and useful workflow’s with my sessions. As I discover new tricks and tips I will share them with you. Have fun exploring Pro Tools 10 and stay tuned for the arrival of Pro Tools HDX. These new systems really deserve their own article, but just a sneak peek at some of the awesomeness.
- 18 DSP chips per card
- 5 times the processing power of current HD systems
- AAX plug-in format
- 64 Bit address space
- All new Disk Cache features allow instant access of session on any kind of drive. (USB, Network Drive, even USB Thumb-drive)
- All new mix engine with over 1000db of headroom
And, many, many more things yet to come!
These new HDX systems will start hitting dealer floors by late November. As soon as they do, yours truly will be doing demo presentations of the systems throughout the U.S.
I’ll keep you guys updated to what happens.
Enjoy,
Mihai Pro Tools Instructor |
As many of you have undoubtedly experienced, there are what appears as endless buttons and features in Pro Tools. There are so many things going on there is actually now 57 pages of keyboard shortcuts! You might need a manual just to get through the shortcuts that will hopefully make your workflow quicker and more efficient. In many ways the concept of “working quicker” or “working faster” is really a matter of context. We are all trying to get things accomplished, whether it’s music production, recording, editing, etc..., and with all these fancy features and shortcuts, it really is a matter of figuring out what you’re trying to accomplish. For this moment, let’s take a look at working with vocal recording and editing in Pro Tools. Note* - these techniques can be applied to anything you’re recording. For demonstration, I’ll be focusing on vocal tracks.
Hi everyone! Hold on to your seats folks, there are some MAJOR announcements from your friends at Avid. At the AES convention in New York City, Avid introduced Pro Tools 10 and the new Pro Tools HDX systems. For those of you lucky enough to attend, it was an amazing experience to be apart of and to see the future of our industry. There are so many things to talk about I’m at a loss for where to begin so excuse me if I forget to mention something. In the following weeks we will be doing follow up articles focusing on each of the new components.
here are so many new features we will need to cover them in more detail in upcoming articles and video blogs. For now though, we have to talk about the future of audio and the standard that is being set by the new HDX systems. Amazing doesn’t even begin to describe what they are. The future is 5! Five times the processing power of the previous generation HD systems. That’s right, 5 times the processing power. For those of you doing the math in your head, 1 HDX card is more powerful that 5 previous HD cards. For those of you that have worked on HD systems in the past, I’m sure you’ve been exposed to and HD|2 or HD|3 card system, some of you may have seen a larger system with 4 or 5 cards in an expansion chassis. Now one, single HDX card can handle it all. If you had 2 HDX cards it would be equivalent to 10 previous HD cards. You couldn’t even have that much power in the past since the systems maxed out at 7 cards. The figures are mind-numbing when we look at the rest of the enhancements.
Words don’t even begin to describe how in awe I am right now. I can’t wait to record and mix a record with these systems. I can’t wait to see all the exciting developments this will bring into our world of audio. Plus, there are some really amazing 3rd party plug-in developers coming of board such as Trident Audio and Tube Tech that will introduce new plug-ins for the AAX platform. This new plug-in architecture will have significant improvements over the RTAS and TDM formats currently in use. First of all AAX is set up to fully support 64-bit processing. Secondly, the AAX format can run on a host computer or on DSP from the HDX cards.