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All information in these pages is copyright (c) 1989-2003 by Roger Nichols. All rights reserved. Permission for personal reference only, and may not be reproduced by any method without written permission.

Cut To the Chase

by Roger Nichols

Portable Audio Editing

For years I have been trying to come up with some way to edit audio while on the road. It seems like each time I come up with a solution, one of the manufacturers discontinues a key piece of the puzzle. After ten years of searching for the right pieces, it is almost possible.

There are two different types of tasks that many artists and engineers need to perform while away from their home system: 1) multi-track editing such as Pro Tools sessions and 2) two-track editing and sequencing necessary for CD production.

Multi-track

In the days of Pro Tools 3, there was a program called Deck II. Deck allowed you to import and export audio files and regions to Pro Tools. I had a computer in my hotel room running Deck II. I would leave the studio with a hard disk full of Pro Tools audio, import the files to Deck II edit all night, export the results back to Pro Tools, and show up at the studio the next day ready for the next challenge. Deck II had some nice features of its own. Deck II supported Digidesign hardware and had the ability to record and edit twice as many tracks as Pro Tools. Soon afterwards Deck was removed from the Digidesign third party developer list and interchange of audio files between Pro Tools and Deck became impossible. Deck II was taken over by Macromedia for editing audio for Quick Time movies. Deck II is now distributed by Bias (makers of Peak).

With the release of Pro Tools 4.1 Digidesign introduced Power Mix. Power Mix was a DAE plug-in that allowed the Power PC processor to do the DSP work so that Pro Tools would work on a Mac G3 laptop. You could purchase an additional copy of the Pro Tools software, install it on your laptop, and directly open Pro Tools files, almost. Since Power Mix only had two channels for output, any session loaded from a d24 system was re-mapped and all of the track assignments were changed. If you then saved the session on the laptop and re-opened it on the d24 system, all of your original plug-ins and buss assignments were gone. To get around the problem you could use Digidesign’s Track Transfer utility. Track Transfer allowed you to import tracks from one session into another. You could import tracks to your laptop, edit them, and then import the edited versions back into your original session. Things were looking good.

Everything was working out unless you were working with 24-bit audio on your main system. You could not open 24 bit sessions on a Power Mix system. There was a loophole in the system that let you get your work done though. You could make 16 bit versions of the audio files and place them on your laptop and give them the same names as the 24 bit versions. You could use track transfer to import the edited track information into the d24 version of Pro Tools, and Pro Tools would open the 24 bit audio file and apply the region information from the 16 bit audio files.

A year ago, Digidesign released Pro Tools 5.0. Digidesign dropped Power Mix. You could no longer use Pro Tools without Pro Tools hardware. If you had Pro Tools on your laptop, you were forever stuck with version 4.3.2. So far moving sessions back and forth between version 4.3 and version 5 leaves a lot to be desired. I have yet to be able to successfully edit a 5.0 session on my 4.3.2 laptop and get it back correctly.

The best solution, although not completely portable, is to purchase a Magma expansion chassis for the Mac G3 laptop. Magma makes a few different versions of their patented PCI expansion chassis. The smallest expansion chassis is a two slot PCI box with a PCM card connection to a G3-400 or G3-500 (pismo version). With two slots you can install a Digidesign card and a SCSI interface adapter. There is room in the box for two 1" high drives.

Two-track editing

The solution is a little easier for editing stereo sound files, but I have been working on that one a little longer. In 1989 I got my first Mac laptop. It wasn’t really a Mac, because Apple didn’t make laptops. A company named Outbound built the first Mac laptops. They used ROMs from a Mac SE, but everything else was Outbound. For a while they were able to purchase ROMs from Apple, but they were cut off like every other company since who looked like they were doing the job better than Apple. Goodbye Outbound.

Digidesign’s audio editor at the time was Sound Designer. Sound Designer would only work with Digidesign hardware. After two years of begging, I got a copy of Sound Designer II v2.02 that would work without any Digidesign hardware. I have been using it ever since. Digidesign no longer supports Sound Designer II, and has not incorporated all of its features into Pro Tools. The last version was 2.83. There is not a version of 2.83 that will work without Digidesign hardware. Sound Designer 2.83 will not work with the new Digidesign hardware. If you want to use Sound Designer for editing stereo files, then you need to keep an Audiomedia III card in your computer.

If you need to get audio files in and out of your laptop without an expansion chassis, there is a way. A company named Digigram makes a PC Card audio interface called the Vxpocket. The card has 24 bit A/D and D/A converters, a mic preamp, and S/PDIF digital in and out. It comes with ASIO drivers so it can be used with any ASIO compatible software. This includes Cubase, Logic Audio, Vision, Digital Performer, and Spark.

For my little portable system I chose Spark XL from tcWorks. I also have Vision DSP and Cubase Rocket 4.1 on my portable, but for CD compilation on the road, I prefer Spark XL and Toast Deluxe 4.1. Toast 4.1 comes bundled with most CD burners, but I purchased Toast Deluxe 4.1 because the Deluxe version allows Disk At Once burning of audio CDs. The bundled version does not.

Spark comes in two versions. Spark XL adds TDM support for Digidesign hardware, and de-noise and de-clicking software. If you are familiar with Sound Designer, you will be well on your way with Spark. Spark’s playlist can include regions from more than one sound file. Spark can also use VST plug-ins for processing audio regions. The Spark playlist is exported to Toast or Jam for CD burning.

The Final Portable Setup

So, how do I hook all of this stuff together? My audio source was a Sony TC-D8 DAT Walkman. The digital audio needed to get to the S/PDIF input of the Vxpocket card. The portable DAT has a digital I/O port, but the S/PDIF interface is only an input to the DAT, not an output. The digital output cable is optical. I connected the DAT optical cable to a Midiman CO2 Coaxial-Optical converter, and the CO2 box to the S/PDIF input of the Vxpocket card. Bingo. Digital audio into Spark, edit… edit… edit… and use Toast to burn a CD on a Que 8/4/32 Fire Wire CD burner. It almost all fits into two carry-ons.

I’ve Gotta Fly Now

After ten years of trying to solve the portable editing dilemma, the Magma chassis seems like the only foolproof method of doing all of my stereo and multi-track editing. The only down side is that flight attendants scowl when they see me plugging an AC inverter and expansion chassis into the airline seat power connector. Hey, if they don’t want the lights to dim, turn them off!