The Good & The Bad... The Help....

[M2E]

Well, got to say, the last couple of days have been great messing with PT8. There are some great features on this thing and some getting use to features that are incredible and then ya got ur bad stuff. I'll go through what I have experienced and hopefully we will to as maybe we can all come together and fix these with Digi's help on this thread.

The Good..... Mix Screen

1. The look. I complained as well as many others about Digi taking away the colors in last updates before 7.4 and finally they added them back in after about 300 something post here. Now with PT8, the colors are 100% better. not as bright and as they say in the housing market, warm colors sell the house. Great job!!!!

2. Thanx for adding more Inserts. Now, we don't have to add extra Aux's just to mess around with plugins and the such. Much needed.

3. The pan knob is some getting use to but, is a great thing. Make's it look more Professional and the 3D graphics of it is great. Great job.

4. The Delay/User Offset/Comp idea all in site is also great for HD users. Not sure if it is for LE users but, HD users would have to hold apple/click to get these's settings. Now, if you could just add "Peak" to that list to finish it off, that would be the bee's knees. Thanx

5. So use to seeing REC for the record button but, like the new rec button. I was looking for the rec button and finally just took the time and said, this must be it. Looks cool.

6. The faders are thinner but, that's a good thing. Now I can get more faders on my 22' screen. Thanx

Now... The Badd... Mix Screen...

1. Everytime I open a new session or an existing one, The Region List is open. I always have this closed unless I need it so I can see more tracks when mixing. Even when I save it closed, when I close the session and reopen, it's opened again. Please fix that.

2. I just have the Stereo Dithered Mixer in the plugin list but, I get all the unnecessary Surround Sound Outputs. Please fix that.

Other than that, so far so good, now, the edit window....

The Good.... Edit Screen...

1. Well, first off the colors are grand. How everything flows.

2. The moving around of the different title bars is genius. Great Job.

3. The Midi editor reminds me of Logic Pro. Great, love that.

4. Not too much change form the original design. Thanx

5. Being able to add and take away the Universal window and other is great. Thanx

All in all, really great....

Now, The Badd..... Uh Oh......

Disclaimer: Let me first add that I've used Pro Tools since 1999 as my main audio editor but, not my midi editor. Always used the MPC 60/II/3000 and then Logic Pro 8 though I've owned it since 4.

1. When I bring up and old session, odd things open with it like I/O or Track List(which again, always opens on my mix window). I can saved them closed or save the I/O to not be seen and when I open it back, like magic they appear. Bug.

2. Elastic Pitch is a good idea but, is it suppose to just be for instruments? When I put it on a vocal and raise the pitch it sounds like the Pitch plugin (Chipmunk City)? Or when I lower it it sounds like I'm trying to chop & screw when I just want to have the same sound, lower note. Am'I thinking about this wrong? Help please.

3. When playing with Elastic Pitch and Audio, it loses audio in your session. BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO SAVE YOUR SESSION AFTER PLAYING WITH THIS A LOT!!!!!!! Something didn't sound right as I was missing half of the verse. Come to find out, it was gone. Luckly I did not save the session and when I pulled it back up, the parts were there. Bug Fix.

4. When pulling up Beat Detective and pressing capturing selection after highlighting the audio, when you try to move that audio a little italic hand comes up and won't let you do nothing to that audio. Really weird. I've done it a couple times with the same results. Bug Fix.

5. When you hold the Control or Control/Option keys and hit the up and down arrows you can change the vertical size of the track/s but why can't you do the same for Horizontal? Does anyone know the shortcut to that? Help.

Over all, so far so good. I haven't gotten to the Midi yet. I can only give an MPC or Logic overview in switching over and give that point of view.

So, now that you've had time to play around or do a session, what do ya think?
I did a session last night and thought I could do the Dynamic Transort thing but, not too use to that yet. So, different in Logic. Much better in Logic I should say.
Anyway.... Let's give the good and the bad and hopefully we can get our questions answered and bugs fixed.

Thanx

Marc

[M2E]

Add-In: Also, I noticed that the Grid lines in the edit window are very non-viewable. Can you guys please make those lines more darker. Love the gray back drop thou. Superb but, needs fixing.

Marc

[Premo]

I'm also LOVING the PT 8 changes. Most of them and just wanted to chime in on a couple of your sub points. Others will have to speak up too.

1. I definitely don't have that Track List or Region Menu or I/O bug that your describing. I have PT 8 on 4 different systems, 2 TDM Intel Mac, an XP rig and a Vista Rig with no issues. They do open the first time on a NEW SESSION only, after I close them and make changes save and reopen, its exactly as I saved it, which is how it should work.

Are you working from templates or always creating new sessions?
Just curious but not sure why it would make a difference.

2. The Elastic Pitch really only sounds usable up to about 2 octaves change and beyond 4 octaves you really start to notice artifacts that I would call unusable. It doesn't matter if you do 2 octaves then another 2, or just 4 up or down at one go. It just damages the audio too much. It gets even worse if doing pitch shifting WITH normal EA stretching, so it's getting pulled in more than one direction and the artifacts are cumulative.

How many octaves or what are you trying to perform with Pitch? Workflow?

But Elastic Pitch does work like the pitch plug-in and gets chimpmunk like on me too. I do think that's how it's supposed to work and I'm not exactly sure if I follow you on the "chop and screw". But maybe it's not preserving the formant or something like that is messing it up. So I would use X-Form as your plug-in of choice on pitch shifting and make sure the Formant is engaged because this is important to preserve the natural tonality of the harmonics to make things sound natural when pitch shifting, probably more apparent on vocals, but I'm just guess based off what the reference guide is mentioning about it.
Formant is only enabled with EA when using X-form and pulling up the EA properties window to enable it.

And Side Notes and Rambling about PT8:
One bummer that you'll find now is that there is bug with Pitch Shifting that was due to Digi using Izotope's algorhythms for Pitching and Izo reportedly found a bug at the last minute during development and it was too late for them to change it in the PT 8 release. So it causes Preview to be suuuper slow and X-Form only works in rendered mode so the whole process moves like molassis. I believe this is in the Read ME for PT 8 and should be addressed in an update for PT. We'll see.

I'm not sure why pitching isn't allowed on Monophonic (wonder if its related to that same bug?) but that sucks. Because I'd normally use Monophonic for vocals because with EA the monophonic algorhythm is best and actually has less warble and artifacting on mono sources. That's why it's slower to render your files than Poly is. Sometimes monophonic even sounded better than Xform for me on vocals. But with PT 8 I'd start using Polyphonic for vocals and see how it works out because they rewrote the way Polyphonic performs its TCE stretching and compressing and the way it handles and detects the audio spectrum and transients. Which is supposed to result in 'better sounding Polyphonic processing". Which means if you open sessions from 7.4 that you might hear your session sounding different now with unrendered EA tracks using Poly. This is because it's a new Poly you're hearing. So the work around is to render the poly tracks in 7.4 first. Or import the Elastic Audio.dpm plug-in from 7.4 install and yank the 8.0 EA plugin out and then commit your tracks in 8.0 then save it and swap the 8.0 EA plug-in back in and continue. But I'm curious how many people will be 'negatively' effected by this new feature. Also be aware that Pitching won't be available while using old 7.4 EA plugin in PT8. I also wonder if in some cases the session would just happen to sound better with the new plug-in? I've seen audio tracks like acoustic guitar and certain files that are delicate or have particular tonal charterictics that don't work very well at all with Poly so this is supposed to address some of those issues and have less warbling.

[Premo]

I don't think there is a way to make grid lines darker. Adding Markers or sync point is the only kind of lines that really jumps out at you on the edit screen.

Feature Request it. http://archive.digidesign.com/support/forms/feature/

Sound on Sound mag had a really good point that I feature requested.
I love how all the new windows have the new PT 8 look with rounded corners and font you can read! but the IO setup window and Prefs window and others have the old school GUI which really pulls you out of the PT 8 experience. I might be just as anal as them, but I wish the entire program had no sign of the old bright PT. I'd like to wish it goodbye forever. They made the right decision on the darker GUI and its so much easier on the eyes esp late night in my dark studio when mixing. As Phil Jackson would say "Very Nice. I.. just...Love it"

I think many people would agree that they are listening to people, even a single person. I believe Avid / Digi's customer first is working and PT 8 is the brain child of this new initiative and outlook. Even Digitech supt post more frequently now on the DUC.

[PaulV]

2. Elastic Pitch is a good idea but, is it suppose to just be for instruments? When I put it on a vocal and raise the pitch it sounds like the Pitch plugin (Chipmunk City)? Or when I lower it it sounds like I'm trying to chop & screw when I just want to have the same sound, lower note. Am'I thinking about this wrong? Help please.

No you're thinking about it correctly - what you're looking for is formant-correct pitch shifting (i.e., non-chipmunk) like the Monophonic algorithm would do, but unfortunately Elastic Pitch wasn't included for Monophonic in 8.0 due to time constraints. Only Polyphonic, Rhythmic, and X-Form. Hopefully we'll get to that soon. In the mean time, you can get reasonable results on vocals within a small range (like fixing an out of tune note or a close transpose) with X-Form or Polyphonic. But you'd need Monophonic for more radical shifting of vocals.

3. When playing with Elastic Pitch and Audio, it loses audio in your session. BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO SAVE YOUR SESSION AFTER PLAYING WITH THIS A LOT!!!!!!! Something didn't sound right as I was missing half of the verse. Come to find out, it was gone. Luckly I did not save the session and when I pulled it back up, the parts were there. Bug Fix.

That doesn't sound good. Could you provide some more details here? Is there an easy way you can make this happen again that you could describe?

[M2E]

Originally Posted by Premo

Are you working from templates or always creating new sessions?
Just curious but not sure why it would make a difference.

How many octaves or what are you trying to perform with Pitch? Workflow?

I'm pulling up older sessions. I then save it with those closed and when I open it back up, it's open again. Very weird.

I notice that it's no good going past 1 maybe 2 keys. That's not even worth talking about to much. Thanx for helping though. Maybe I can use it for stricky efx as I have Auto Tune to do my vocal fixing. Just thought by Digi bring this up and talking about it like they did Elastic Audio that it was going to be that amazing.

Again Thanx

Marc

[M2E]

Originally Posted by PaulV

No you're thinking about it correctly - what you're looking for is formant-correct pitch shifting (i.e., non-chipmunk) like the Monophonic algorithm would do, but unfortunately Elastic Pitch wasn't included for Monophonic in 8.0 due to time constraints. Only Polyphonic, Rhythmic, and X-Form. Hopefully we'll get to that soon. In the mean time, you can get reasonable results on vocals within a small range (like fixing an out of tune note or a close transpose) with X-Form or Polyphonic. But you'd need Monophonic for more radical shifting of vocals.

This is correct, Formant Correction as when you normally talk about when fixing vocals. They should have waited on this one til they got it right like Elastic Audio. Well, they have a lot of room for improvement on that one. :)

Originally Posted by PaulV

That doesn't sound good. Could you provide some more details here? Is there an easy way you can make this happen again that you could describe?

Yes, I can explain. When I was messing with the TCE in Elastic Properties and all the other settings that Elastic Properties has, After using the it for about 10 min of non stop experimenting, part of the verse in the song (Vocal) was gone. I didn't take notice till after I was done playing around with it that part of the vocal was gone, in fact a few parts. I don't know how it caused it and I could try to do it again tomorrow to see when or what makes it happen. I'll let ya know....

Marc