Report from Digi Accel tour

[Jules]

A friend of mine attended, here's their report of what was hinted at for the future- NOTE none of this is known as being wholey factual!

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ADC is perhaps just around the corner, it may be a software upgrade and might not limited to HD, Mix user’s might benefit also. (hope so! time will tell eh!)

Also not far on the radar is perhaps a rewrite of the DAE software which might address and alter (improve) the summing and improve upon the state of the panning laws as they are now.

There might be an option of retaining the ‘old’ mixer but the new one might give a different width.

Nuendo programmers may have let the cat out the bag with their examination of panning laws taking the daw width from 2.5, as in PT, to the levels of 3+, as in Neve and SSL, and beyond to 6. PT engineers might be looking at it too and now we might in future get a new summing and panning stage. This might also be a software upgrade perhaps not limited to HD, as it’s a software only issue, but again, time will tell....

Major MIDI developments and changes in the implimentation of softsynths are supposed to be firmly on the agenda too.....

The vibe was that there may be a slowing down of radical hardware upgrades, ones involving plug-in chaos.

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Report ends.

Your comments?

[Milamber]

Jules,

Thanks for the info! It sounds like a lot of great software updates are on their way.

I wonder if they will be free updates to PT6 or a paid upgrade.


Mark

[Nicolasixxx]

Thanks Jules.
Could someone explain panning law for me as it pertains to stereo width? i.e. does " 2.5, as in PT, to the levels of 3+, as in Neve and SSL, and beyond to 6" refer to the attenuation as panning moves to center?
How does this affect the perceived width of the stereo field?

Nic

[jimlongo]

The implication was there that there may be a slowing down of radical hardware upgrades, ones involving plug-in chaos.

I would welcome that. Let's work on the software for a while. We keep changing hardware while the software really hasn't changed much in the last 5 years. Give me a better reason to upgrade than "your current hardware is no longer supported".

Let's get soft samplers and synths some needed attention. Having a combined plug-in/midi channel would be a much welcomed improvement. The latency issues with RTAS/HTDM need some work as well.

DAE improvements are another.

'course this will probably bring all the auto-delay compensation freaks out of the closet . . . me i'd be thrilled if they removed the N key from key focus. Better yet - give us options for both of those, I certainly don't want to sacrifice any DSP of CPU power for ADC.

[Lee Blaske]

The vibe was that there may be a slowing down of radical hardware upgrades, ones involving plug-in chaos.

Vibe or implication, I'd sure like to see that, too. I'm getting tired of living in the state of constant upheaval. I'm sure that the third party developers aren't thrilled with it, either.

Lee Blaske

[MAXIMUSIC]

Vibe or implication, I'd sure like to see that, too. I'm getting tired of living in the state of constant upheaval. I'm sure that the third party developers aren't thrilled with it, either.

Lee Blaske

I TOTALY SECOND THAT

[markjohn]

If any of this is true, Digidesign will remain on top, and still reign as king of the DAW.
That said, I know that myself amongst a couple other facilities are actively looking to phase out our Mix/HD TDM rigs. Between all the already well known issues plaguing TDM, Digidesign does not have the heads up on stability any more. My current HD system is less stable then my native system (MIO / Cubase SX), and, is as much of a headache to setup and maintain.

Let’s see 30K vs 5/7K hmm… not much to think about there.

Again, if any of this true, like if stated before digi will get my HD accel money plus a brand new system. But, right know I’m not budging.

All in all, I hope all this materializes, between this and a proper upgrade path for HD early adopters would make HD accel more attractive.

my2

[MusicTrax]

Nicolasixxx asked:

Could someone explain panning law for me as it pertains to stereo width? i.e. does " 2.5, as in PT, to the levels of 3+, as in Neve and SSL, and beyond to 6" refer to the attenuation as panning moves to center? How does this affect the perceived width of the stereo field?

Think of it this way: If you take a 1K tone at a given level (say, -10), if you hard-pan it full left, it will drop down 2.5 dB to -12.5. Most of the analog consoles I've used had a 3dB pan law; some use 6dB. And there are some that have constant-pan, so that if you pan something to one way or the other, the dB output does not change at all.

Ideally, Digidesign should give us the ability to control this as a user pref. The problem is, assuming the pan-law factor is imbedded in DAE, this isn't something you could change on-the-fly, probably not even session-to-session. You'd at least have to quit the program and re-start in order to change the pan-law.

And of course, the danger is, if you inherit a session from another user, and they used a different pan-law set-up than you did, the levels could go all over the place. True, .5 dB might not be the end of the world, but it could definitely yield unpredictable results in some cases. Even distortion and clipping, assuming we're talking many dozens of tracks all stacked up together.

I can't see how the pan-law would change stereo width per se. It's just that the overall level of the stereo signal would be x dB hotter. Since the pan-law affects both channels equally, it wouldn't result in a lopsided stereo image or any weirdness like that, nor would there be any phase problems.

--Marc W.

[RobMacki]

bump

[Dopamine]

Rumor has it Apple will be announcing a new pro audio app next week. Not just a Logic update.