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Studio

 

Songphonic Pro Tools Tutorials

At Songphonic we use a lot of Pro Tools systems and we train our in-house engineers and artists in using Pro Tools in a structured way. Over the years we have developed a few tips and tricks which we now decided share publicly.  During the next few months we will be posting more videos - some of these are real gems.

COPYRIGHT:: You are free to share these videos and copy them so long as you do not do it for commercial gain, you credit Songphonic and you do not remove the copyright message.

We are not affiliated with Digidesign or any of the manufacturers of the plugins mentioned in these tutorials.

All the tutorials were tested on PT 7.1cs7 TDM running on a dual-2Ghz G5 Mac.  Users also reported success with LE systems  - please see the update notes below for additional compatibility information.

Hope you find them useful.

Please send any comments and feedback here


Please note that there are TWO different tutorials on this page. Although they sound superficially similar, they address different issues and show different tricks. 

Feel free to watch both of them - you can combine the two tecniques to match your particular environment.

UPDATE :: After 10 days, we had over 12,000 views of these videos - thank you for your interest. Please share your insights and comments on the various forums (DUC, Gearslutz etc).


2. Pro Tools :: Printing and Freezing Audio Tracks

Have you ever wanted to freeze a track so that you can use its resources elsewhere ? Have you ever wanted to have 10 hardware LA2As as inserts ? Now you can...

With this method you can simply print your audio onto the same audio track (no messing with new tracks etc.), deactivate your plugins and hardware inserts and use your plugins and outboard gear on other tracks.

Especially with outboard gear, this method allows you to re-create your sessions without having to remember the position of every knob on that vintage compressor...

Please click here to watch the video (Quicktime Stream)

Please right-click here to download the video (Quicktime Movie,15MB)

UPDATE :: Viewers reported that the scheme works well for Mac & PC and for TDM 7.1 to 7.3.

UPDATE :: To make sure the printed tracks are correctly delay compensated (TDM only) please do the following.

  1. Make sure delay compensation is on
  2. Print the track and note the 'dly' value reported for the track in the Mix window - 228 samples in the example above.
  3. Enter this value (228) + 10 (for send delay) = 238 in the '+/-' field as a NEGATIVE number - ie -238.
  4. Deactivate all the plugins as normal.

UPDATE :: This trick is also useful for consolidating tracks which use Pro Tools' behind the scenes 'auto fades'.  These autofades, while useful for avoiding clicks at region boundaries, are not recorded to audio when you consolidate a track. Use the 'Freeze Track' tip in the video to consolidate with autofades.

UPDATE :: On user request, we tested the trick on LE. It works fine on LE 7.3.1cs4 (OSX 10.4.10). It does NOT work reliably on LE 7.1.

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1. Pro Tools :: Printing an RTAS Instrument

RTAS Instruments are great but cumbersome when you want to print them to audio. This short tutorial shows how to print them with ease on the same audio track they are instantiated.  No more messing with new audio tracks just to print them to audio.

Please click here to watch the video (Quicktime Stream)

Please right-click here to download the video (Quicktime Movie,15MB)

UPDATE :: Viewers reported that the scheme works for Mac & PC and for 7.1 to 7.3, LE and M-Powered.

UPDATE :: To make sure the printed tracks are correctly delay compensated (TDM only) please do the following.

  1. Make sure delay compensation is on
  2. Print the track and note the 'dly' value reported for the track in the Mix window - 2056 samples in the example above.
  3. Enter this value (2056) + 10 (for send delay) =2066 in the '+/-' field as a NEGATIVE number
  4. Deactivate all the plugins as normal.

UPDATE :: The 'Trim' trick is also useful for playing RTAS amp simulators (like Amplitube etc) live in TDM systems. Inserting Trim ensures that when you press Record or Input, the RTAS plugin is not bypassed.



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STUDIO NEWS

Magic SLAM

Recently we took delivery of SLAM by Manley Labs (with the digital option) and life has not been the same ever since. It is not only the best A/D for recording acoustic instruments but it also has the best limiter for those loud vocals.

Slam

Royer Labs SF24

SF24 is a new stereo ribbon mic from Royer Labs powered by phantom power. It has a gorgeous tone and we use it extensively as a room mic and also to record our new Yamaha C7 grand.

Our new grand is grand

Songphonic is now the proud owner of a Yamaha C7 concert grand fitted with the diskclavier Pro system. This enables us to capture all the nuances of a performance and to record it acoustically once the performer has left - avoiding any creeks of the piano stool (or tapping on the floor)

C7 Grand

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