Monthly Archives: June 2009

Pro Tools – Shortcut of the Week (2009.06.29)

Pro Tools is a strong multi-track editing program, but unless you’re willing to drop some change on a custom keyboard, it can be tough to learn all the keyboard shortcuts. I’m featuring one a week in an attempt to highlight the tricks I find most useful.

Half-Speed Playback: Shift+Spacebar

Half-Speed Record: Command+Shift+Spacebar

Half speed playback mode is very, very useful to me when I’m trying to figure out timing issues. Often I will hear something that seems off, but I can’t quite put my finger on the issue. Half-speed playback usually makes it too apparent that the kick drum is lagging, or that it’s actually the guitar hitting late.

Half speed record is a different beast. I haven’t used it much, for the same reason I’m so interested in it. Recording a passage at half-speed, though it may be easier on the performer, results in audio playback one octave higher than recorded. This isn’t useful for all music, but sometimes may help you get just the sound you need for that odd passage. An example of this are some of the drums on Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity. One suggestion would be to try playing a passage down an octave, but recording it at half speed. The music will end up in the intended range, but won’t sound completely natural. Try it and see!

SMH-CD

Previously I wrote a little about the Blu-Spec CD - a red book CD burnt with a shorter wavelength blue laser. In theory, the digital signal on the Blu-Spec CD should be less prone to errors in playback.

The SMH-CD is a very similar idea: a red book compatible CD created through a new process to reduce errors on playback. In the case of the SMH-CD (Super High Material CD), the base material is a special polycarbonate plastic designed to increase the transparency on the data side of the disc. The increased transparency means less distortion on the sign SMH-CD al read by the laser, and a more accurate playback.

I can’t find any SMH-CDs for sale, and there’s very little information about them on the internet. It looks like Prince’s catalog was reissued in Japan at some point in this format, and there’s substantial debate about the sound quality of the manufacturing process. If you know anything else about this format, toss it in the comments!

Clarity Track by Track

Clarity Live

One of my favorite records, by far, is Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity. I know every note, from the organ and snare drum opening of Table for Glasses to the last loop in the perfectly evolved Goodbye Sky Harbor. I was able to get tickets to see them on the Clarity X10 tour at the House of Blues in Boston, and I’m glad they’re releasing a live album from the tour.

I was poking around on their website the other day and fell into a gem: a track-by-track set of notes and comments by Jim Adkins (guitars, vocals) and Zach Lind (drums). Among the highlights are the inspiration from Low for the opening, the drum machine magic in 12.23.95, and the epic drum production of Goodbye Sky Harbor (two tape loops, one speeding and one slowing!).

Clarity Track by Track

Pro Tools – Shortcut of the Week (2009.06.22)

Fine Tune (Fine Adjust Mode): Command+Click

Quick tip this week: this is a really useful mode if you find yourself mixing with a mouse. If you’re adjusting faders, plug-ins, or automation parameters it can save you some real headaches. Fine Tune mode makes the mouse a lot less sensitivity, so that you can control the parameter much more precisely.

Journal of the AES - May 2009

The May AES Journal just dropped, and there are a few articles that look intriguing. The first is a measure of objective speech intelligibility that will work with perceptual coding algorithms - definitely something needed since STI fails with perceptual coders. They recommend some amendments to the ITU standard to handle the perceptual encoders.

There’s an article discussing the optimum bandwidth for AM and FM broadcasting. For speech and classical music listeners preferred lower bandwidths of 5-7KHz - it seems that the lower bandwidth reduces noise from nearby channels. For listening to ‘highly compressed’ music, like rock, most listeners could not tell the difference between 7 KHz of bandwidth and 10 KHz of bandwidth… interesting. I’ve been observing the same thing recently: many people just don’t pay attention to the content above 8 KHz. It’s a shame - I think that’s my favorite part.

For loudspeaker designers there’s an article about the impact of heating in the voice coil of speakers, and the impact it has on sound level and damping. The result, as expected, is compression of the output, but the frequency response was also impacted by the damping changes.

Journal of the AES - May 2009

The 127th AES Convention is going down October 9-12, 2009, back in Javits Convention Center in NY!

Pleasurize Music!

Pleasure Music Foundation Dynamic Range Meter

Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music did a post on the Pleasure Music Foundation back in March. The Foundation aims to put the pleasure back in music - pleasurize music! - by advocating for greater dynamic range in music. From their Aim:

p style=”padding-left:30px;”>Our aim is to improve the sound quality of music in its various recorded formats – including data compression methods such as MP3 – as well as music destined for radio broadcast. Only music that provides a positive musical listening experience has real market value. The Foundation’s aim is to increase the value of music within the creative production process for the entire music industry. The objective is to revive the willingness to pay for music and therefore to create a healthier basis for all creative participants within the music industry.

They’ve produced a Dynamic Range Meter that gives every recording a score, a function of the peak amplitude and rms level (though this is really the crest factor of the music, not the dynamic range). The meter is available for all platforms.

Pro Tools – Shortcut of the Week (2009.06.15)

Shuffle Mode: Option+1

Slip Mode: Option+2

Spot Mode: Option+3

Grid Mode: Option+4

Hot keys to flip between the four edit modes of Pro Tools. I find that it’s rare I’m flipping between modes in a given session - usually the structure of the session dictates which edit mode I use. Regardless, when I go to get started I’m almost always in the wrong edit mode.

Shuffle mode is useful for “shuffling” the order of regions in a file. The best example would be rearranging the order of bars in a track, or the structure of the song. When you drag a region it will latch to the beginning/end of whatever region you drop it near, and everything will slide to fill the gap it left behind.

Slip mode is completely free-form. If I’m working in a session that was recorded without a click or bar:beat references, editing between takes, this is the only way to work. Moving one region has no impact on the location of other regions - anything you cover is covered, and holes may be left in the playlist.

Spot mode allows you to specify the precise location of a region through the use of a dialog box (as opposed to using the mouse).

Grid mode latches the region you’re moving to the bar:beat references of the session. This is primarily useful if you have a session that is well marked, and that was recorded to the grid or that has had a grid built around the recording.

+4 dBu / -10 dBV

+4 dBu / -10 dBV: These values are typically used to represent ‘Pro’ and ‘Consumer’ audio signal levels - some gear even has a switch to scale the output, or to adjust input gain. So what do these values mean on a common scale?

First we need to know how to get from dB to volts. For linear measures like volts, we defined the measure in dB to be 20log10(volts/reference). To go backwards we’ll need volts = reference10^(dB/20).

You’ll recall from a previous post that the reference for dBV is 1 volt, and the reference for dBu is 0.775 volts.

Let’s convert 4dBu to dBV, via volts:

0.775*10^(4/20) = 1.228V

20*log10(1.228/1) = 1.8dBV

So +4dBu=+1.8dBV, and the difference between +4dBu and -10dBV is really about 12 dB.

Blu-Spec CD

At the end of last year Sony announced a new audio disc, the Blu-Spec CD. This is an interesting idea - they’re using a blue laser (the same process as Blu-Ray Disc) to burn a standard Red Book Audio CD.

To be clear, this is not a high-res audio disc. It’s a standard Red Book CD, playable by all CD players. The difference is in the creation process.

The advantage is that the shorter wavelength of the blue laser allows for more precision in the pitting of the disc. This should result in fewer errors on playback when read by a standard CD player with a red laser. This raises an interesting question about the audibility of errors in CD playback - what do they sound like, and how well does error-correction work?

Pro Tools – Shortcut of the Week (2009.06.08)

Pro Tools is a strong multi-track editing program, but unless you’re willing to drop some change on a custom keyboard, it can be tough to learn all the keyboard shortcuts. I’m featuring one a week in an attempt to highlight the tricks I find most useful.

Bounce to Disk: Command + Option + B

There’s a debate with Pro Tools about the quality of the summing bus - many people claim to prefer the sound of summing through an Aux channel over the Bounce to Disk tool. When I’ve finished a mix I usually record the mix onto a separate channel, but before that point I find myself using Bounce to Disk quite a bit. I probably use it most when playing out takes for an artist, for take selection. If I have a lot of takes to work through, clicking File->Bounce->Bounce to Disk gets tedious. This shortcut is a huge time saver when I’m working in this mode.