02R & ProTools - Suggestions?

[jgwyman]

A little help if you would - I often work at a studio that has a mix room equipped with an 02R and ADAT XT20's... i loathe the idea of dumping all my 2" sessions to ADAT, and want to try to convince the place to install a ProTools system...

Is it possible to integrate PT with an 02R? I have read posts that suggest using the 02R as a midi controller, but someone said this only worked for the first 16 tracks. I also thought about the feasibility of routing PT out through individual tracks digitally and into the 02R. The adat cards & adat bridge seemed like a good way to do this, but I'm under the impression that the ADAT cards for the 02R are only 20 bit.

Is it even worth it to use the 02R as a mixer? Will it alleviate some of the voodoo-math problems people have been experiencing when mixing in PT? It certainly would alleviate DSP strain by not having to use TDM eq on every channel (while not mind blowing, 02R's eq's are functional...).

having the 02R there already suggests, to me at least, the potential for a pretty powerful and flexible system when combined with ProTools. I'd love to hear your input.

One more question... can you have 8 channels of an ADAT bridge and an 888 hooked up to the same card in PT, or am i just getting greedy now?

[marc@soundpost]

jgwyman,
We have 2 rooms with PT and O2R's. I haven't found the midi thing to be that great. I've only been able to connect the first 16 channels. Maybe some one else has had better luck with that. Also the midi channels are slow and sluggish on our systems. (We are currently looking at the Pro Control w/edit pack for studio 1 and cascading the 2 O2R's in studio 2) So I have been using the O2R's to sum to a 2 mix. They do help with DSP (fair sounding EQ and comp on each channel). This may not be as neccesary with the new 24 bit optimised mixer in PT now (available as a download from this site). Jury is still out on that one. Anyway, I use AES between the O2R's and PT. AES helps me to integrate other digital outboard gear more easily. BTW, the Apogee AD8000 has incredible routing abilities (if it's in your budget). Hope this helps,
Marc

[Greg Malcangi]

I used to use an O2R with PT the way you describe, except using AES instead of an ADAT bridge. I know the new Digi ADAT bridges are now 24bit but I think you are correct that the O2R side of things still only supports 20bit even though it's internal mix resolution supports 24bit.

Although it costs a fair bit more, mixing in PT with some good plugins is a whole other league compared with the O2R. The EQ and compression on an O2R will suddenly sound like the worst thing you have ever heard and the built in effects aren't much better.

Forget all that "voodoo-math" stuff, it's only of interest to people who can't understand why PT doesn't sound as good as gear that costs ten times as much.

In theory and in my practical experience mixing entirely within PT is a major step above using direct outs from PT and mixing on an O2R. I don't think you will find anyone who has tried both who would disagree.

BTW, if you use the O2R (or any MIDI controller) to control the faders or pans in PT you are drastically reducing the resolution of PT. PT for example supports 1024 steps of fader resolution but MIDI only 128. Furthermore if you do decide to go down the O2R route you want to leave PT's faders at unity and mix levels within the O2R. Using direct outs and moving the faders from unity can indeed invoke some of the "voodoo-math" problems that have been bandied about.

<< One more question... can you have 8 channels of an ADAT bridge and an 888 hooked up to the same card in PT, or am i just getting greedy now? >>

Each card can handle 16 I/O's so what you want to do is entirely possible. You will need to get Digi's "Y" connector.

One last point, regardless of whether you are going down the O2R route or not make sure you leave space in your budget for a good master clock. I didn't realise how badly my system was under-performing until I got one. An Aardvark or my personal preference a Rosendahl Nanosyncs.

Hope this helps,

Greg

[Jules]

Apogee make a card for the O2R look into that!

http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/hardware/ap8/index.html

Get 3 and your transfers will rock!

MUCH cheaper than getting 3 x AD8000's

http://duc.digidesign.com/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif

Jules