Lock PT & DP w/SMPTE to fix analog transfer?

[jibberia]

Sorry about the bad title... this one's hard to name concisely.

I'm working on a very important project with a producer right now.

We recorded the basics for 6 or 7 songs at Planet to Planet studio on 30th st. in Manhattan a week ago on a Sony APR-24 (great machine, btw). We had 2 reels of tape to work with, and at the end of the second, we really quickly needed a way to get another take out of the band's system. We had to tell them to calm down for a second, and look around... hmm, the PT HD system in there belongs to Soulive... can't use that.... RADAR... we plan on taking this out of this studio immediately, no good... PT LE? No SMPTE lock! No midi timepiece in the rack yet, either. We quickly decided to just dump the tracks into PT via the 002r @ 96k and just go 7 at a time plus SMPTE, knowing that we'd have to put up with some slight speed issues, but hoping it would be close enough to lock by ear and eye, and REALLY hoping that the band would pull the perfect take next. We also knew that a usb MTP/AV was on its way, so transfers wouldn't be a problem later in the evening (morning?).

Weeelllll..... we just had the go-over-everything session last night, and those tracks are a nightmare. We have 4 groups of tracks (from the 4 transfers into digital) and they just don't want to match up well. Looking at the SMPTE tracks, the sony was all over the place speed-wise (sounded to me like they needed some new rollers on that thing).

So, what this producer has proposed, and what I'm deathly afraid to do, is to set up 2 systems. The first will be his DP4.5/motu traveller/MTP rig, as slave, playing back. The master will be a 002 (most likely using pro tools, though he prefers DP4.5). The audio will travel over lightpipe. He wants to import the funky SMPTE tracks into the PT system to use as masters to drive the MTP, and claims that he has done this before and it sounds good.

The thing is, he's a bit more of an analog guy, and I'm not 100% sure he understands the implications of "varispeeding digital." As far as I can tell, this is going to cause horrendous artifacts and other digital nasties, if it even works as he plans. Also, since all the SMPTE tracks are different.... this won't really even achieve the goal of re-alignment, will it? There's no way he can expect to be able to use just one of the SMPTEs, either...

I guess it's murphy's law that the band has to love this take so much. We don't even have the option of re-transferring as it was recorded over. This is a real pickle!

Let me know your thoughts/suggestions. Thanks in advance!

-Kevin

[spinsong]

your post was a little confusing, but what i got after reading it a few times, was that you recorded 7 tracks at a time with a smpte track alongside each time, and you did this 4 times in order to transfer all 24 tracks

anyway, 002 is in the LE forum, but I'll try to answer your question.

what you're trying to do is sync 4 different smpte tracks along with their associated audio.

protools LE I think doesn't have support for smpte tracks, or locking audio in spot mode to a smpte track location if I'm not mistaken, but that's besides the point.

what you need to do, is do the transfer over again from the reel to reel. but this time just use one smpte track. there can only be one smpte track at a time. each time you make a pass, let the first smpte track you layed down be the reference. you can only have one reference. in other words, don't lay down multiple smpte tracks.

let that first (and only) smpte track trigger the tape machine each time you make a pass..you'd need a syncronizer for that. the producer has a mtp that should do fine.

I just read the last part of your post again, and what I can suggest is that you try the process in reverse, and then do it right...

first take your 7 tracks with smpte back into the tape machine with a fresh reel... 4 times
let the machine lock to each different smpte signal each pass...once you have the takes on tape do the transfer again the first way I suggested.
you're going through the converters a few times but thats better than having a totaly unsyncable session.

there might be a third solution, but I'm not too familiar with a program or hardware device that syncronizes multiple smpte streams with associated audio

good luck

[jibberia]

Hmm... that post was hurriedly typed and most likely confusing. Sorry. Thanks for the reply.

We're both talking about doing somewhat the same thing. The real problem for us is that we've moved to the producer's studio and don't have a 2" machine there. So, we're trying to do it with digital. (Well, I should say... HE's trying to do it with digital.. I don't really advocate this at all).

The issue is that he has this belief that digital performer is really good at acting like a tape machine and "varispeeding" to sync to SMPTE. He wants to use the DP DAW as the 2" machine you suggested.

I guess the real question I'm asking is if you or anybody has ever done this digitally... i mean, there's no way to varispeed digital without (a) varying the sample rate (which it doesn't/can't do, ESPECIALLY when we have 2 DAWs synced via lightpipe) or (b) dropping or interpolating samples to change the speed.

This is going to sound like bulldinky, right?

[spinsong]

well if the software has varispeed capabilities..then do the same thing as you would with the reel to reel except, don't use the ADAT outputs and inputs.. use the analog ins and outs. you're just adding a DA to AD conversion into the equation..which for some people is negligible (no flame wars here..lol)

with most consumers happy with mp3s you hopefully won't have problems with the client...
nonetheless, HD done right is the way to go.

I"m not sure but theoretically it might work digitally. just have the digital sync independent of the smpte sync

if all else fails go analog
good luck