What's the summing solution for mixing ITB?

[Jon_Atkinson]

Without wishing to start yet another argument about whether mixing ITB, or OTB on an analogue desk is "better", assuming I'm mixing ITB, what is the answer to the summing question? Is the solution simply to give an enormous amount of headroom to the master fader, and use NO plugins on that fader, so that the fader gives an accurate (ish) measure of what's going on. Then BTD (don't want to get into whether BTD, or re-recording back through a bus is "better", "different" whatever), and then take the bounced file and do whatever overall compression and EQ, and increase the gain THEN to get up closer to unity.
What is the solution (or are there a few different ways of dealing with this?). Bear in mind that I've only recently moved over from Logic, where the level meters on the master faders are clearly designed to not give you any information you might need!!
If Digi were to deal with this issue in a software alteration to PT7, how would we like this achieved?
Thoughts?

[love666]

great post, good thread, could be part of the solution

[Bentley Ferrari]

great post, good thread, could be part of the solution

I definitely agree, for what my opinion is worth. I have noticed a marked improvement since I began implementing some of the principled recommendations outlined in the post you linked up to. I read it on the ProSound Web last week and found it very intriguing. So far, simply taming my recording levels and watching for clipping in plugins, intersample clipping, etc., has made a marked improvement in my work. I also apply a CraneSong Phoenix plugin to every track, and set it to -18db. I cannot believe my ears.

But I don't want to bog the thread down in little "fix-it" tangents. Read the thread posted above for the info and the big picture.

Best of luck.

[Kenny Gioia]

And try to clean out your sink when you're done.

[Jon_Atkinson]

Cool..... Even if it's not the "best" method, ITB is the only option for some (myself included), and trying to find the optimum way to work this way is definitely a worthwhile cause!

Quote: So far, simply taming my recording levels and watching for clipping in plugins, intersample clipping, etc., has made a marked improvement in my work

Does taming record levels make much difference in this instance? If the issue is summing then isn't it just levels in the mix that are the issue? I ask this because I understood that optimising levels on the way in gets the most from your ADC's (within sensible limits!), and then easing back on the faders during mixdown to avoid oveloading the bus...... or have I misunderstood?

I'm interested in the Cranesong though...... I've heard lots of positives!

[Tony Shepperd]

If you want to have some more details about how I do this, get the June issue of Electronic Musician. I go into detail on how to setup the buss for Record to Disc. Even if you can't hear the difference there are many benefits to Record To Disc. I sat down yesterday with a Southern California Digidesign product specialist and showed him how I had the mix buss setup. He liked it... a lot. He thought this might be a better teaching tool if we did a session that you could download and see if in your own studios. First, read the article. After you read the article if you still cannot get it to work e-mail me and I will send you a session that has the setup you can use.

[Kenny Gioia]

Cool..... Even if it's not the "best" method, ITB is the only option for some (myself included), and trying to find the optimum way to work this way is definitely a worthwhile cause!

Agreed. No disrespect. Work the way you must. I hope you are successful enuff to afford to try one of the summing solutions.

Good Luck.

[mattpete]

Here are a few ITB mixing techniques that serve me well.

Use internal bussing and Aux tracks as "mix busses".

Use parallel processing techniques judiciously.

Always use the dithered mixers.

Use Master faders for trimming only. A Pro Tools master fader is NOT the same thing as the master fader on an analog console. It is a trim level on a bus that allows for optimization of sample values (thank you Paul Frindle). I never put plug-ins on a Master fader.

Route the primary mix bus (or any stems I want to keep) to an Audio track. Put the Audio track in Input mode or Rec mode all the time. This way I can print the mix while listening whenever I feel like it. I never Bounce to Disk.

I use plug-ins to correct my monitoring system a bit. To enable this, I send my main mix out AES and straight back in AES. This input feeds an Aux track and Master Track pair to handle the plug-ins and optimized output level. The AES routing in and out of my 192I/O causes the delay comp engine in Pro Tools to ignore the monitoring correction plug-ins for my main mix.

Cranesong Phoenix is cool.

-Matt

[minister]

tony (or anyone else),

i just read the article and there was one short paragraph about it. did i miss something? it just says that you route your outputs to bus 31 and 32, then assign a new stereo audio track with those busses as inputs. that's nothing new or advanced, people have been doing that for years (especially in post where it pays to reprint for stem creation and watching the picture in sync as you print). was there something more that EM didn't publish?

my other question is, how are you guys going from 24bit to 16? dithering? if so, how? or, are you merely truncating.

[Tony Shepperd]

Most of the time I am delivering to mastering at what ever the SR of the project is. If it's 24/48, then after the RTD I deliver the files as stereo interleaved (or .L.R) and that's it. It really depends on what my delivery format is supposed to be.