HDx Option

[emluper]

I must say that the HDx option has got to be the most trouble free amazing integration of technology that I have had the opportunity to utilize. I have worked with Synclavier systems, Euphonix consoles, and a variety of other "cutting edge, high-end" tools. Sheldon, Matt and the entire design team, my hat is off to you. I am a loyal devotee.

Erik

P.S. I'm sure that Darth will feel the same way once he sees it.

[Sheldon Radford]

Thanks Erik, glad to hear it works well for you.

Please tell us a bit about how you use it. Are you using HDx to record tracks for archiving, for record/playback to do "virtual soundchecks", or both?

Sheldon

[emluper]

We'll be using it for our live internet feed, our campus feed, and archiving. Outputs from ProTools are sent into unused FX returns in Venue, which then are sent throught Direct Outputs to the media booth. We've got a Control 24 which we mix on, with a Direct Out feed from the 2-Track Analog outs from the FOH Rack. I built a template last night that includes all the inputs from the Stage Rack, as well as the assignable ins and outs, 1 stereo buss mix that is split in the Venue patchbay to the various FX Returns, and any necessary plug-ins and processing. This way the PT operator just opens the template, saves it as a new session, and we're ready to rock very quickly.

Darth likes the option of being able to send the musicians home, putting ProTools in loop playback, and working on EQ, Dynamics, or FX processing until the cows come home, and the only person who has to be there is himself. He finds that capability pretty amazing. It was cool being able to place all of the PT inputs in to input monitor and watch all of the meters dance, and all I had to do was connect the two DigiLink cables. One thing we ran into that neither Darth nor I thought about was that there are different conventions used in the two systems when it comes to stereo tracks. ProTools takes in stereo tracks by using odd-even pairs. Venue doesn't care what you use, which is as it should be when you are needing to set up a live show, you want as much flexibility as possible. My work around was to create a stereo track in ProTools, name it, then split it to mono. ProTools automatically gives the split mono tracks a L/R designation, and you can assign inputs however you like. The other thing is to make sure to examine the Venue patchbay and Direct Outs when you build your ProTools template. Since we use the Aviom through the Direct Outs of the Venue, we had to do some thinking about how we were going to get all the I/O happenning.

It's all gravy, and now that we have the template built, we don't have to worry about it anymore. Once the patchbay routing was done, we propagated it across all the snapshots in the show, and life was, and still is, AMAZING!

Thanks again guys,

Erik

[darth]

Power, flexibility, and ease of use! The seamless integration between Venue and PT should silence those "open standards" critics. Great work Digi team!