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All information in these pages is copyright (c) 1989-2002 by Roger Nichols. All rights reserved. Permission for personal reference only, and may not be reproduced by any method without written permission.

AES Cruising
By Roger Nichols

I love cruising AES. I hate cruising AES. I like checking out the new companies that have sprung up with a new innovative idea. I respect the old companies that deliver tried and true products and have been around longer than I have. I wonder at booths offering new software that promises to do everything you ever wanted in an audio/MIDI application but were afraid to ask for. I am amazed by the cool high-tech gear spun off from some NASA Mars project that ran amok. What I like best is the hardware that claims that this item “Will not become obsolete because it’s firmware upgradeable.” I have a garage full of those already. I am waiting for the firmware upgrades right now.

Digital Consoles

Speaking of small format digital consoles, how do you decide which one to get in the first place? One console has high-resolution 1024 step faders, but in 96k mode you only get half as many channel strips. Another console is 96k all of the time, but they made the faders 256 steps so you can’t make the small moves or trims you want. Another console has no offline editing for automation data, so the automation that was supposed to help you now takes three times as long. I like them, though. I have five of them. Don’t tell my wife.

Which format?

How about multi-track recording formats? Which one should you use? Should you use a DAW with firewire interfaces and a laptop, or a full size computer with DSP cards inside? Is my data safe recording directly to a firewire drive or should I only trust SCSI drives in hot-swap trays? What about recording directly onto my 180 Gigabyte 7200RPM system hard disk? There is plenty of room and it is fast enough to do what I want to do.

Should I go with a stand-alone recorder? They are just hard disk recorders in a dedicated box running software that crashes just like my DAW. What is the difference? Some units let you record in the stand-alone box, and then take the disk home and plug it directly into your computer and open it as a DAW session document. Why not just record on the DAW to the same hard disk?

Is a hard disk as safe as a piece of tape? Boy, you got me there. And where do you back it up? I have digital tapes that have been sitting on the shelf since I recorded them in 1982. I put them in the machine that recorded them and half way through one of the songs is that dreaded digital tearing sound from tracking error. The tape played back perfectly before I put it on the shelf 20 years ago.

I was backing up to firewire drives for a while. I have 23 of those nice 80, 120, and now 180 Gigabyte drives stuffed with stuff. One day when I was backing up some more data to one of the drives a computer crash erased a few drives. Some of the stuff was not recoverable.

Are CD-R and DVD-R the answer? One of my DVD-R drives is in the computer. I was going to load a project back into the hard disk to do the surround mixes. I took the DVD-R out of its protective case an as I was reaching down to put it into the DVD drive the corner of the keyboard drawer at my workstation scratched the label side of the DVD. Below the paper thin label is where the data is recorded. If I had scratched the clear side that the laser looks at everything would have been fine, but the damage to the label side rendered my DVD backup unusable. I guess I should have two backups of everything, but then I won’t have any time left to mix because all of my time will be spent backing up everything TWICE! It now takes an entire day to sort out all of the hard disk files, make the delivery formats for the record company, and make the backups for me.

When I mix, I always mix to two different formats, but it gets way out of hand real quick when you have to do the same thing with 20 or 60 Gigabytes of multi-track files. How about this. I GIVE UP!

MAX-MSP-JITTER

A few months ago I talked about video processing. I have used MAX since 1992, and the MSP digital audio extension since about 1995. I am now a proud user of Jitter, the new video processor extension to Max/MSP. You can now write your own real time video filters if you so desire.

Jitter ties in with the audio processing as well as the MIDI processing. You can control the video process with MIDI, or you can control MIDI from video information. The audio and video are tied together as well. How about this; you can write a program for Foley that will exactly match footsteps to the movement of the feet. You can match gunshots to the muzzle flash of the automatic weapons. You could even use the picture to sync ADR tracks to the lip movement of the actors. Maybe I will do it. I will call the program Lip-Lock™.

Shure Mics

I just recorded a session in LA with some new Shure KSM141 microphones. The capsule design is from the KSM32 series of microphone, but the case design is a pencil mic configuration. They are designed for loud instruments like drums or horns, but they worked perfect on piano for my session.
The frequency response curve has a little rise around 10kHz, which I like very much. After I record a lot of tracks I find myself brightening thing a little because of multi-track masking. The little hump at 10k does that for me so I don’t have to add phase shift by using eq in that range. Overall a welcome addition to my mic collection.

SpectraFoo

There are some things that you always carry with you because you never know when you are going to need them. My list includes a roll of quarters, breath mints, a change of underwear, and a copy of SpectraFoo on my laptop.

SpectraFoo is the Swiss Army knife of audio tools. Real-time audio analysis and metering at the touch of a button. I used it two weeks ago to touch up the sound of a control room in Caracas. Yesterday I was finding out whether it was the mic pre or the console that was asymmetrically clipping my horn overdub.

They are now delivering the 96k version for ProTools HD. If you have the earlier version, upgrade. If you don’t own it yet then good. I will get the call to align the monitors instead of you.