DDP

[Bob Olhsson]

FWIW Mezzo Master does not work with MLCD 2.0 and OS 7.5.1. It only looks like it works but never actually writes anything to tape.

Frankly, Mezzo Master has never inspired much confidence, it really comes off as a flaky kludge. It has also screwed up big-time for me on MLCD crossfades to the point that I simply never use them. It only qualifies as far better than nothing at all! I welcome it being maintained but would love to see a better integrated solution. It would also be great to be able to listen back to master tapes.

[PT and my dog]

DDP support would stop my migration away from digi. i'm actually buying a winbox to run samplitude and toctotape(the ddp plugin). i'm hoping to be able to keep my PT24 system to use as an dsp unit, but cost may be an issue. if i could afford sonic or sadie i'd go there.

[Pete45]

I am in. Thank you Marc.

[Digi Engineering]

Huh, Pete? You're welcome, but for what?

-- Marc

[total]

Hello!

Do you need more prove that we need the DDP function.
Regards
Kaj Erixon

[Digi Engineering]

It's evident that many of you feel strongly about DDP.

-- Marc

[PT and my dog]

thanks for the recognition of ddp marc. i hope your crew feels the same. unfortunately it's too late for me. i really love my protools system, but now that i only do mastering it doesn't make a lot of sense. i'm a small business so i cannot afford sonic or sadie, so i'm going samplitude w/ the ddp plug-in option. i can also write cd's right from the waveform edl. no more bouncing. as for quality...well i havn't even tried it yet so i'm crossing my fingers. it's host based and worse of all - windoze platform. i've sold my PT system (thanks to your buy&sell forum) which will allow me to buy that waves L2 box to replace my l1 tdm (the harware provides 48bit path yeah!) i hope to be able to go back to digi one day.

[Dan Harjung]

I produce masters on a daily basis, I use MLCD version 2.0.1 to burn cd refs at 4x, and when I need to write a ddp I use MLCD version 1.4. I have both installed and interestingly I only need to have one autorization key installed to run both. When I use version 1.4 I just drag and drop my MLCD file. The biggest reason that I need to use ddp instead of cdr for manufacturing is because of a comment from the EMI plant we use, they told us that they prefer we send them cdr so that if they have any problems they can fix it, with ddp they have to ask for a replacement tape. I don't know about you guys, but the thought of the plant "fixing" anything scares the heck out of me. In fact I used to use the compare feature in Sound Designer to check manufactured product against masters before I used ddp, in several cases I found that the plant had done analog transfers of my cdr masters. No such problems when using ddp. The bottom line is if you work hard to produce a quality master and want to feel confident that the plant isn't going to "fix" it, then ddp is the only choice. If DigiDesign does not support ddp in the future, I will switch to another system. I use pro tools and MLCD daily, and I truly believe that DigiDesign produces a superior product, but product loyalty means nothing to me if it means that I need to compromise the quality of my product.

By the way, I use Mac Os 8.6. To install Mezzo Master, all you need to do is boot off of your 7.6 disk, install Mezzo, then restart with 8.6. It runs fine in 8.6, you just can't install with 8.6 running.

Dan Harjung

[Monte McGuire]

Thanks for thinking about MLCD and Mezzo Master. Even though I jumped ship to Sonic recently (largely because Mezzo Master is broken), I think it would be a good thing to provide DDP support again.

As for the concept of an MLCD LE and an MLCD Pro, let me suggest this instead. How about adding a PQ subcode track to ProTools and a few new options to the bounce to disk command instead?

It seems that people will eventually ask you for every editing feature that PT already has and that adding a PQ track and some bounce options would be a heck of a lot simpler and more reliable for everyone.

The bounce options you'd need would be bounce 1x to a CDR and bounce 1x to a CD image file (Jam format or maybe a new MLCD image file format?) You'd also want MLCD to be able to write an image file to CDR or DDP to make the picture complete.

These features would make the workflow of preparing a master just about as fast as it would be on Sonic and it'll save a lot of hassles caused by the poor integration of MLCD and PT. I used to do all the editing and prep in PT, bounce a single file and then do all the PQ editing in MLCD, but it was tedious and error prone. Right now, I still have to sit through a 1x dump to create an image file in Sonic, but I also have to bounce each track to print the processing, and that would be eliminated if I could use PT for CD prep.

Something to think about...

Monte McGuire
[email protected]

[Digi Engineering]

Great stuff guys. DDP is clearly a useful feature to have. It's unfortunate for Digi that we're losing customers over this.

Monty, I like the idea of ProTools/MLCD integration a lot. Perhaps if you guys have any other ideas on what you might like to see regarding this, you can post them in a new thread.

Thanks, Dan, for the tip -- something to look into.

-- Marc