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  #21  
Old 07-24-2018, 09:34 AM
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Default Surface Configuration

For this TOD - let's take a look at S6 Surface Configuration. Although it's not a terribly sexy topic, it is essential and important to know, not only how to configure a basic S6 surface, but also how to add customizable zones and perform calibrations.

We begin by accessing Settings > Surface - and you can see I've set up a scenario where we can build a configuration from scratch.

We first need to define the frame Width and Depth. For an M40 system (which we have for this example), you can specify Width as the number of modular frame pieces (buckets) which house modules. For Depth, if you currently have a 5-knob system with displays, the value will be 4. For a 9-knob system with displays, the depth will be 5. Hit Next to advance to the next page.

The module icons listed at the top can be scrolled simply by dragging left or right to expose more options. Grab and drag the module stacks appropriate for your configuration down to the frame sections you just defined. For this example, we are going to start with a Fader, Process, Knob stack. Even if you are doing the trick where you go Fader, Knob, Process - choose this same stack. The surface doesn't differentiate. Next, let's choose an Automation Module, Master Module stack. Then let's grab another Fader, Process, Knob stack. And lastly, we will scroll to find the lonely Master Joystick Module which I have tethered, but for these purposes it is represented as the fourth bucket. Hit Next. All of the modules you added should light up like a rave.

Referencing the modules on the surface page, Touch any touch sensitive encoder on the flashing module to finish the configuration association. Remember, if you have swapped your Process and Knob module (which I recommend), touch each module as it flashes on the surface page. Press Next.

Drag the Display Module icons printed with a number to the same number shown on your actual display modules. Number 2 in this case will be a Master Meter Module - but more on that later. Hit Done.

Next, we will add some Spill Zones and Expand Knobs. For Spill Zones - simply go Config > Surface > L Spill or R Spill. Press the Attention switches to define the Zone. Done. For Expand Knobs - simply go Config > Expand > Knob then Touch up to 2 Knob Modules to allocated Knob Zones 1 and 2. You will see little triangles with the zone numbers next to them.

Touch any module to check the status, IP Address, Firmware Version, Temperature and more. Touch the Joystick Module and press Joystick to calibrate it. Touch a Fader Module and touch Fader to calibrate it.

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  #22  
Old 07-25-2018, 08:56 AM
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Default Layout Creation Shortcuts

Let's examine one way to speed up the creation of Track Layouts. For this example we will leverage a few preferences which can be accessed from the Local Options (gear icon) of the Tracks Page including "Auto-Bank to Attentioned Track", which automatically banks the console faders into the range based on the touched track. We will also enable the option to "Double Tap Assign to Copy Tracks from Banking Mode into Current Layout" which pretty much does exactly what it says.

Auto-Bank to Attentioned gets you into a track range and fills the faders with the adjacent tracks and the Double Tap pref allows you to quickly dump those tracks on the faders into a Track Layout then Store it.

From the Tracks page we are going to touch the track Trem Swell which is the first of a series of magenta keyboard tracks. Doing so will left justify Trem Swell and place all 16 of those keyboard and synth tracks on the faders. Next, we'll double tap "Assign" which opens up the Layout creation dialog and populates tracks 1-16 with those same keyboard tracks. Press "Store" to save it, give it a name and finish with "Store". Obviously that was too easy as we had a nice contiguous grouping of 16 tracks of the same color lined right up.

Next example...the drums. Touch kik.01 which banks to the drums - including the trailing parallel compression subs for the kick and snare. Again, double tap "Assign", pop into Delete mode and remove the Jingle track which landed in 16, which is not related to drums, and save this 2nd Layout as Drums.

Last example...subs. Scroll down and touch sDrums which is the clean drums submaster followed by all of the other subs in the session. Double tap "Assign", clean house in Delete mode, and Store.

Even if you need to subtract one or several tracks from an auto-populated Layout using this preference, it can often be faster than adding tracks one at a time from the tracks matrix down to the destination scroller. Experiment and find the best process to match your workflow.

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  #23  
Old 07-26-2018, 07:35 AM
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Default Examining Track Layouts

Let's dig a bit deeper into Track Layouts: storing, editing, reordering, and deleting.

Recalling Layouts can be accomplished in a few different ways:

(1) Press the Recall button from the Master Module. Touch any Layout square.
(2) Press the Layout Mode switch: Choose a Layout from the Master Module Soft Keys.
(3) QuickJump: Shift + / to access Track & Meter Layouts on lower Soft Keys.

To Edit Layouts (rearrange, delete) press Edit then drag Layout squares around on the grid to reorder. Swipe from Right to Left to expose the full grid of 96 Layouts. Drag a Layout square off of the grid to delete it.

To modify an existing Layout, first recall it with any of the methods above. Let's access the Local Options (gear icon) to increase the maximum number of channels saved in the layout using the preference Number of Strips in Layout. Again, my S6 has 16 physical faders but I know I am going to take this project to a stage that has a 32 fader console. So let's tweak the preference. Now you will notice that there are 32 destination tracks at the bottom scroller (in addition to the Joystick slots). Pop into Assign mode to start your modifications. Let's also enable Insert mode which allows you to add and shuffle the existing tracks down without overwriting anything.

Feel free to leave gaps (blank strips) for spacing and organizational purposes. When you finish making the changes simply hit Store again, touch a new slot (or optionally overwrite the source Layout), name it, then Store once more to finish.

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  #24  
Old 07-27-2018, 09:48 AM
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Default Paging Docked Parameters on the Home Page

Let's take a look at some options with the Home page on S6.

I've started from the Tracks page and immediately accessed the Local Options (gear icon) to go and enable the preference for "Show Home Screen on Track Attention". Depending on your workflow, you might enjoy this preference. If we are in Attention mode on the Tracks page and simply touch a track in the grid, that track is Attentioned and we are brought to a user specified function on the Home page - in this case EQ.

What you won't be able to see is the fact that I am taking advantage of the lower circular buttons on the bottom corners of the Master Module. On the Left - (Home and Swap), and on the Right - (BackArrow and Config). Using these round little switches in combination with the Shift button can be pretty slick. Let's first dock Sends on the Left side and EQ on the Right side.

You can see that this allows us to independently page through the docked parameters - either chunks of 4 Sends, or the various bands of the EQ. We can also use the little lock icons to make sure that we don't accidentally focus a different function to the attention knobs. Let's swipe down on the EQ function to get the EQ graph.

While keeping sends where they are using Shift + BackArrow / Config (bottom right section of Master Module) we can page over to get to the High Pass Filter. Let's engage it with the "In" button on the Slope parameter which activates and you see an inner circle appear inside the Slope encoder. Play with the HP Frequency. Let's page back over to the High Mid band. Press "Sel" on Hm Freq to toggle it into Hm Q mode.

Tweak some sends starting with Send a - FVerb A (which you know because of the thumbnail in the Sends function scroller). Again, if the center is not filled, then the send is muted, if it is filled - the send is active. Page to the second chunk of 4 sends using the Shift + Home / Swap buttons on the bottom left section of the Master Module. Page again to get to the BadpipeV Send, which is on the 3rd page.

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  #25  
Old 07-30-2018, 12:42 PM
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Default Modifying a Factory Soft Key

Let's take a look at the process of modifying one of the Soft Keys located on the User Pages of the Automation Module.

First, let's navigate over to Settings > Soft Keys and then click on the pop-up menu which allows you to choose the module and section you want to edit. For this example, we want to make sure we are looking at the Automation Module Soft Keys.

Next we want to locate to the specific page which contains the function we want to modify. There are (2) ways to do this:

(1) Navigate with the Soft Keys panel to the page you want to work on.
(2) Use the arrows as shown to incrementally jump through every page for that particular soft key panel.

In most cases (1) is the easiest. Once you have found the page you want to edit (in this example we are going to modify a function on User Page 1), touch the virtual Soft Key switch adjacent to the function to modify.

At the bottom under "Soft Key Editor" there will be one or multiple squares representing the EUCON, Page or Key functions for the selection Soft Key. Let's delete the existing function for "Docked MIDI". Next touch "Add" then "EUCON" to add a new EUCON function. Scroll through the nested menus to find the function you want. In this example we are going to use File Menu > Bounce > Bounce to Disk. Hit "Done". Now you need to associate an icon for the Active and Inactive states. Touch the blank box under Active then touch "Pro Tools" and find the icon for Bounce to Disk (alphabetical sort). Do the same thing for State: Inactive. Touch the User Page 1 virtual quadrant on the screen.

Let's also show how to save a user set since we just modified the Factory set. This will be store on the Master Module SSD. Touch "Save" and give it an appropriate name. Press "Save" once more to finish. If another operator has mucked with the Soft Keys you can always press "Factory" to revert all of the Soft Keys back to the shipping defaults. Press "Load" to load any user Soft Key sets.

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  #26  
Old 07-31-2018, 07:02 PM
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Default Track and Meter Scroller Preferences

Let's take a look at the first four preferences of the Local Options (gear icon) located on the Home page which pertain to the Meter and Track Scrollers. For reference, the Meter Scroller is at the top of the Home Page and can be scrolled left or right to view the track or tracks you want to see high resolution metering for. The bottom of the Home page is where the Track Scroller lives which allows you to see a color-coded representation of all the tracks in your session. It's simple enough to touch a track on the Track Scroller in order to access all of the parameters on the Function Scroller, the horizontal row of function blocks which includes Inserts, Sends, EQ, Dynamics, and more.

Let's start with the first Preference which is Attention Tracks from Meter Scroller. This one is pretty self explanatory. When enabled, you can see we are scrolling and simply touching some of the drum track meters to Attention them. The function scroller lights up to focus on the meter that we Attention.

Next, Display Selection/Attentioned Track Border on Meter Scroller. This option is going to use the gold and blue color conventions for Select and Attention respectively. As you can see, Elec Gtr Chr.02 (track 25) is currently attentioned and you can see a blue outline around its track meter on the bridge. You can see the same outline with Elec Gtr Ch Dbl.01. Let's select a few guitar tracks just to the left of these and you can see the selections are outlined in gold on the meter scroller. If we happen to have an Attentioned track that is also Selected, as you can see with Gtr Loop, it shows up with a gold top and a blue bottom.

Next, Track Scroller Follows Attentioned Track. This is a very nice preference that always justifies the Track Scroller to ensure that the track you have Attentioned is visible by scrolling to make it the first of the eight tracks in the scroller. Whether you Attention from the channel strip or from the Tracks page, the Track Scroller is going to scroll left or right to make sure you can see the group of tracks adjacent to the Attentioned. If you look closely you can see a small blue rectangle representing the Attentioned track on the universe color scroller.

Lastly, Link Meter Scroller to Track Scroller. This is one is pretty obvious. Whether you swipe left/right on the Meters or the Track Scroller, they are going to both be in sync. If you want to ensure that you are seeing meters for the tracks in the Attentioned range as described in the previous preference, then this is a pretty useful option. If you want the flexibility to see chains and submaster metering independent of the channels feeding them, then this option should be disabled. As always, experiment and see what options are best for your particular workflow.

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  #27  
Old 08-03-2018, 02:37 PM
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Default S6 Tip ‘o the Day

Greetings and Happy Friday!

This one is simple, clean and fun. The image below shows all of the default transport section soft key functions that can be triggered by simply holding down any Shift key on a fader module while pressing a transport button.

The only caveat is for Retrospective MIDI Record, since we changed the shortcut function shortly after it was introduced. So, if you are currently running Pro Tools 2018.4 or 2018.7 and want to play with the correct function, either modify your Stop button (Shift + Option + Z) or simply load the modified appset below.




https://www.dropbox.com/s/7n7z7ae03h...80318.xml?dl=0
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  #28  
Old 08-06-2018, 10:33 AM
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Default Expand Fader Mapping: Altiverb

Howdy. Expand Faders. This one keeps coming up, and for a very good reason. They are extremely cool. So let's make a map! First, thanks to Jankoen and the good people at Audioease for being incredibly receptive to help improve the pagetables for Altiverb - which just happens to be the plug-in we are going to take a look at.

I noticed that the Exp button is just slightly out of frame. So, when reaching up on the Process Module please understand that I am pressing Exp.

We have a 5.1 track in our session. You can just as easily do this on a stereo version of the plug-in, however I thought it beneficial to show the additional controls for Front, Rear, Center and LFE levels.

We start with the 5th track on the Fader Module labeled AV currently sitting in Insert mode which includes a 6-Channel Altiverb followed by a multi-mono Sonnox Oxford EQ. We're going to press the encoder for Altiverb to get to Insert Parameters, still in a channel view. Next, press Exp on the very top of the Process Module to Expand the Altiverb parameters to the Knob Module.

To create the map, we are going to hold down the Attention switch (triangle) on AV track while pressing the Exp button above. A few things should happen to indicate that you are in Expand Fader Map mode: Exp flashes blue, Clear (above Exp) is lit red, and the Faders drop to - INF. Now that we are Map mode we can begin.

We are going to start by touching the bottom left encoder for Reverb Time then touching Fader 1. Next, Size to Fader 2, EQ Bass Level to Fader 3, Low Damp, Mid Damp and Hi Damp to Faders 4 - 6, Master Input Level to Fader 7 and finally, Dry/Wet Mix to Fader 8.

Press the illuminated teal fader switch to bank to the second bank of 8 faders.
Now we are going to add some secondary parameters to the second page map.
Let's start with the multichannel level parameters. Front Level to Fader 1, Rear Level to Fader 2, Center Level to Fader 3 and LFE Level to Fader 4. Let's add EQ Lo Gain to Fader 5, EQ Lo Freq to Fader 6, EQ Hi Gain to Fader 7 and EQ Hi Freq to Fader 8. Jump back to page 1. Press Exp one final time to save the Map.

Now let's check out what we did...starting with Page 1. Reverb Time can be flipped to Reverb Length using the Select switch (Sel switch dropped from the associated encoder parameter), Size can be toggled to Brightness with Sel, EQ Bass Level can toggle to EQ Treble Level. Next are Low, Mid and Hi Damping - with the crossovers accessible on Low and Hi by using Select. Master Input Level can toggle to Master Output Level, and finally Wet/Dry.

Page 2. Front, Rear, Center & LFE levels are Faders 1-4. Next, EQ Lo Gain and EQ Lo Freq - which can be toggle into Q mode with Select. Lastly, EQ Hi Gain and HI Freq - which can be toggled into Q mode with Select as well.

You can decide what parameters make sense to place on your faders in your mapping. You can either cross-map, like I did using Select to jump between two like-parameters, or explicitly map the parameters - for example Input and Output Level - on dedicated top level faders. Experiment and see what works for you.

Lastly, this video pairs well with a smoked goat cheddar from Carr Valley:
http://www.carrvalleycheese.com/Appl...ductinfo/3044/


https://www.dropbox.com/s/9dw5at2baj...rs_LA.mov?dl=0
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  #29  
Old 08-08-2018, 10:52 AM
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Default Re: Expand Fader Mapping: Altiverb

Quote:
Originally Posted by creativecontrol View Post

Lastly, this video pairs well with a smoked goat cheddar from Carr Valley:
http://www.carrvalleycheese.com/Appl...ductinfo/3044/

Too soon, too soon. . . .
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  #30  
Old 08-09-2018, 09:21 AM
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Default S6 Tip ‘o the Day

It's actually an incredible cheese if you've never had it. They've been making cheese in central Wisconsin since the late 1800's and are known for their cave-aged, mixed-milk - sheep, goat and cow. I seem to have digressed!

Back to S6. Expand Faders. If you looked at the previous video and mapping descriptions, I've included a Pro Tools Session file as well as an S6 Title for you to play with. Here's what it contains:

8 Mono Audio Tracks Assigned to a 5.1 Path containing Fabfilter Pro-Q2, Avid Pro Compressor and several sends feeding both internal busses for effects as well as Cue's. HEAT is enabled.

Expand Fader Maps to explore on 8 Audio Tracks:

EQ - Pro-Q2.
DYN - Pro Compressor
Sends - Effects and Cues
HEAT - Individual and global settings
Pan - 5.1 panning parameters

6 Aux Inputs for Effects Returns are included with processing from Audioease (Altiverb as discussed in last post), Valhalla Plate, ReVibe, Little MicroShift, Mod Delay 3 and Tape Echo. Each one of these includes a 2 page Insert Parameter (teal) Fader Map.

1 lonely VCA Master assigned to the group which includes the effects returns. You can look at an example of going into Bus mode on the VCA and pressing Exp to access the VCA Slave Expand Fader Map. I recommend enabling the preference (User settings) for Auto Expand Faders which will give you instant access to the Expand Fader maps after choosing the function from the Process Module.

My maps are an attempt to bring consistency and predictability to the parameter sets of like processors. Decay time, Size and PreDelay, for example, will typically be found first in the fader map for Reverbs. Have fun and experiment.

Pro Tools Session:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wd7dmi5473...80918.ptx?dl=0

S6 Title:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h8y88h8dnz...80918.xml?dl=0

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