tapeop.com "Work of the Devil?"

[Marc Edwards]

"Latency is caused by the time it takes a signal to be routed through a TDM and back into the mix"

What a tosser. Any engineer who's been in the industry a while will be able realise the strengths and weaknesses of different gear and techniques. I love the sound of tape, but you can keep your razor blades, I prefer my mouse.

The winging purists can record a stereo pair to acetate. ... Just my opinion, but I prefer our approach.

[C SMITH]

I am a contributing author to Tape Op and a close friend to owner/editor Larry Crane. I know that Larry is not anti Pro Tools or anti digital. It really baffles him that people view his magazine that way. Various people who write for Tape Op have strong opinions about Pro Tools and they are not censored. I think that is great. I answer a lot of Pro Tools questions that come in to the mag via e-mail. I even brought my PT rig into Jackpot! last month and used it to record a band. Larry thought it sounded fine.

Regarding the latency issues with plug ins, there is an etire section in the PT manual that describes the problem and how to deal with it. If you are just finding out about this problem from Tape Op you need to study digital audio processing and how it works a little bit more. I don't see how John or Tape Op could be doing the work of the devil when all they are doing is reporting what the manual itself says. Perhaps John needs to read the secion on how tho deal with DSP induced delays as well. This problem is for real and is one of the primary weaknesses of mixing on a DAW.

[Marc Edwards]

C Smith : Great reply. I'm sorry if my post seemed a bit full-on, i'm just sick of people arguing about this.

[blake eat world]

yeah, I just decided to go through a lot of the manual taking heed in what you said. A lot of the delays in mixing part confused me. Is it possible for digi to have the delay fixing integrated in the software so it does it automatically for us not so bright, and lazy folk? BTW Tape Op is still good in my book, whenever they have something bad to say about Pro Tools it's educated and for the most part true

[Felix]

if you do a search for latency / phase / ...
you'll see several rounds of posts on this heated topic. many from me and even more from Cory. we, and others, have been asking for dsp delay compensation for quite a while now. since v.4.3 or perhaps even earlier. other DAWs do it. but they just won't do it. perhaps for a good reason, who knows.

[C SMITH]

Delay compensation is really the only good answer. I still prefer to mix analog because many of the mix techniques I have learned rely on parallel signal processing via an aux or sub group. These tricks just don't work in Pro Tools. Maybe if we continue to bring it up, Digi will finally give us what we want.

The other half of the solution is to develop new mix techniques. This group is an exellent source of new information for me. I want to be educated and professional on whatever is the current standard recording format. That is why I still work on 24 track and that is why I learned to work in PT. I am just thankful to Digi that they finally killed the ADAT. I haven't had to do an ADAT recording in over a year.

[felixstone]

yes thank god i NEVER have to work on another adat again. BTW all this talk about latency when useing a plug-in....if your mixing on a analog console and plug a analog compressor across the insert u will also get some latency.

[Felix]

Originally posted by C SMITH:
Delay compensation is really the only good answer. I still prefer to mix analog because many of the mix techniques I have learned rely on parallel signal processing via an aux or sub group. These tricks just don't work in Pro Tools. Maybe if we continue to bring it up, Digi will finally give us what we want.

The other half of the solution is to develop new mix techniques. This group is an exellent source of new information for me. I want to be educated and professional on whatever is the current standard recording format. That is why I still work on 24 track and that is why I learned to work in PT. I am just thankful to Digi that they finally killed the ADAT. I haven't had to do an ADAT recording in over a year.

i also rely on sub-mix techniques. have you tried the method of having 2 sends for 2 aux. channels? (1= compressed, or whatever effect, and 2= original unaffected signal plus a sample delay plug-in which compensates for the plug-in delays of the underlying affected signal.) it works for me. even after matching the delays indicated in the volume display, i usually double-check with a phase plug-in. (and of course use my ears for a final approval.)
also, this method is detailed countless times in the archive threads. however, i still think it should be fixed in the software. i wish i could just click a phase adjust button on any track or aux. channel for such essential fine tuning. even though i suppose this would suck up even more dsp power on an already inefficient mixer plug-in, it takes extra mixer dsp to compensate with sends and aux. channels as it is.

[Conscious Structure]

ADATs are good for one thing: Live backing tracks!
Btw, someone has purchased Alesis' patents. I think it's actually Technics. But I am not certain. So we may continue to see ADATs if they decide to pursue the techonology. Sorry if that was off the subject, I just thought I'd bring it up.

------------------
Dave Belazis
Conscious Productions
Conscious Studios

[ppine]

Numark purchased Alesis on May 24th.