Still no surround in LE?

[RobMacki]

[QUOTE]

Maybe what you should have done was point out that a "composer" without the means to record his work is like a painter without a brush. You coulda slipped in the fact that your studio is up and running and could "help" the composer there for a fee.

The Line Producer (my good buddy) is an associate of mine who does camera op and production sound. I have done post work for him before, and to be honest, it took me off guard that he took this approach with me. It is a very small community where I am and I'm finding out that many know I am the PT (full HD) guy in the area. I told him if it was anyone else I'd say I was "too busy". But now that he even asked me to do this...well let's just say he knows better. With a community this small you have to keep relationships well oiled.
Too bad audio always seems to be the "oh yea, uh did we budget for that?" or "oh, we have Pro Tools"

[Don Barto]

Hi Brad, how are you doing down there... Here it is in a nutshell: getting good audio post work out of a laptop LE system with small speakers in an untreated room is perhaps much more likely after first getting 30-plus years experience as a mixer and engineer. Results may vary, given less experience.

But seriously, LE is a great thing for my son and me — that and a healthy mix of working in other facilities — Jurassic Post even — and as a part of other audio teams. We both also do field recording and live TV mixing. Combined, it can all result in building some great chops, earning a good living, and never getting stale. It's also a great thing to be able to work on a given project from field recording through post — sometimes I even get to write the music. But through all of this variety and diversity and opportunity, my platform of choice is Pro Tools running under OS x.whatever on a 17" PowerBook with alpha focus turned on — and with maybe a few faders off to the side. LE, HD, whatever I can get to work on that machine — it's where I like to work the most.

All of that said, I do see our jobs as changing...drastically...and it is the direct result of cheap technology empowering more and more people with the ability to dabble in the work we do. The choices are of course to stand fast or to go with the changes. Standing fast, while good for the soul, only ever seems to be effective in yielding good short-term results. I think what we are seeing here — this awesome empowering of the individual through affordable technology — is a theme that will drive the 21st Century. So go ahead digi, give us all surround panners, six-channel Master Tracks and cheap encode/decode plugins — it is our destiny!