Recording with PRO TOOLS (1 Viewer)

[Speed Racer]

HAs anyone here got the new Pro Tools hard drive+sound card release. You can hook it up to your PC or Mac. I heard it's onlly 3000 euro or something and has 16 track recording + midi etc. Just as good as any recording studio here, but the standard of soundproofing is up to you. Can you buy them in Dublin? If so where is best?

 

[egg_]

Originally posted by Speed Racer
Just as good as any recording studio here

no NO NO
Don't let the hype about home recording fool you. You reckon you can buy one of these and make your band sound like it was recorded in Electrical Audio by Steve Albini? Forget it. Number one, Albini could most likely make your band sound better using a 4-track and a €100 mic than you could if you had the run of Windmill Lane. Sound engineering is a skill that takes a long time and a lot of hard work to get good at. Number two, Pro Tools is just the basic bare bones. What about microphones? Any good studio will have individual mics that cost as much or more as the sum you're talking about. What about speakers, compressors, reverbs, mic pre-amps? More money. Also a good-sounding room to record in might prove impossible to find, ESPECIALLY if you intend to record drums
Don't let me put you off home recording - it can be a lot of fun, but it can also be heartbreaking, especially if you get to thinking that you can make it sound as good as any 'proper' recording studio

 

[dubh in seattle]

rec with ProTools

.|..| .|..| .|..| Whazzup y'all-
Using either the Digi001 or MBox is a breeze, and the sound quality is superb. If you're so inclined, you can hear the 001 used on CD Baby.com-- find Carrie Akre Cd "Invitation" I suggest the first track "Play," 'cause it's the most processed on the record. Of course, the thing with really any digital recording system is that it's gonna give you exactly what you feed it--mentioning acoustics, etc. is very astute of you! That's the main bugaboo for all of us/having a neutral room and monitors that are neutral. I LOVE prattling on about ProTools & recording-- I'm stoked to have found this site. Since you can use both RTAS (real time audio suite) and AS (audio suite/non-real time & processed to your track)plug-ins, it really, truly is like about 70% of the mega$$ TDM or HD ProTools systems. It runs on a G3 Mac and above, sorry I don't know the PC equiv; probably a P3 and above. We run the Digi001's on both a G3 and a G4 (both 450Mhz) with Alesis AI3 optical interfaces connected to the optical "lightpipe" connect on the 001, so for competitively low $ you can have 16 simultaneous analog ins & outs if you need them. It has 8 analog i/o as stock, plus the lightpipe/adat 8 digital i/o AND stereo s/pdif i/o. Since the # of plugins running in real time (the RTAS ones) depends on your CPU power, faster is better. Friends run the Digi001 on faster CPU's and get more plugs running, like one guy runs a 733 G4 vs. our 450 G4, and gets 4 more Bomb Factory 1176 compressors to run-- and those are power hogs! On the G3 450, it'll run, say, 24 tracks, 6 4band eq's, 4 1176's, and maybe a couple "Channel Strips." But, other things like edit and automation denstiy affect plugin count heavily, too. I've rambled on quite a lot-- post more ?'s if ya wanna.

 

[dubh in seattle]

addendum to my last post

Hey- I made my other post before I'd read Speed's post. Speed is right that the skills in making records take time, I've been doing this full time for 10+ years, and I know I'll always be learning things. And, the Digi systems are just software and a breakout box, but it's a great way to learn as you go. I'd really stress getting a decent pair of nearfield monitors-- I personally use KRK 7000 (no longer made, but they abound used, around here for about $300pr/US), and cheapish decent mics can be had--Shure sm57's, AKG c-1000's, too many to list. I do agree that Albini would do well with a boombox and a cheap mic! He does have the luxury of Studer machines, custom preamps and $6000/each Josephson custom mics for the projects he does, which most of us poor geeks will never see, much less become intimately familiar with. So, if you're just getting started, you'll learn a lot but have tons of frustrations trying to get the results you want with any gear. There really is no substitute for experience, but getting the experience will give you much pleasure too. You all might be interested in www.endino.com and tapeop.com for tons of cool recording info.
Have fun!.|..| .|..|

 

[Speed Racer]

Re: Re: Recording with PRO TOOLS

Originally posted by egg_


no NO NO
Don't let the hype about home recording fool you. You reckon you can buy one of these and make your band sound like it was recorded in Electrical Audio by Steve Albini? Forget it. Number one, Albini could most likely make your band sound better using a 4-track and a €100 mic than you could if you had the run of Windmill Lane.

Don't worry I wasn't thinking about abandoning the professional Recording studio altogether. I know to make something really professional you need amazing microphones which cost the moon. Also a good engineer and producer. One of the guys in the band is a qualified engineer. Really knows his stuff. Our plan is to record great quality demos, really well crafted like, then when or if we get a record deal, we'll go make the album professionally. The great thing about home recording is unlimited time to experiment and also turning a nice jam session into a really crackin tune. We are currently packing our little studio with instruments and getting a really good vibe about how we experiment. Can't wait to finish our demo. We are currently using a Roland 8-track with good quality mics. So alot of the sounds we had in mind are beginning to be realised. That's the frame of mind you wanna be in when you head into the recording studio.

 

[Pantone247]

what band are you in Speedy??

what kinda sounds??

 

[Speed Racer]

Originally posted by Pantone247
what band are you in Speedy??

what kinda sounds??

I can't say yet. I've been writing music for years, for animated films, and I always wanted to one day start a band and work my ass off and enjoy every minute of it. Maybe be successful. So I hooked up with an old college mate last November who has his own studio (the engineer guy) and began recording tracks blindly. Then we got such good reactions to most of our songs (about 10 at the time) we decided to fully form a band. Got a kick ass drummer. A great drummer, really. And a Bass player. So now we wanna start gigging in early October (haven't been on stage in a while). We've got so much material written that we have to decide where it all fits live. But as soon as we've done a couple of gigs I'll let everyone know who we are. I don't wanna build things up (hype me band) till we've got some honest reactions. The kinda sounds we're messing with vary from Funk wah stuff put thru some extreme pedal board FX, to 70's style Keyboards like Moogs, Korgs, Rhodes, to Midi programs such as Native Instruments Generator, putting samples thru loads of oscillators and mods, till they sound unearthly. We haven't got round to FX on the vocals yet, but will do in time. I'm one of the singers and the engineer guy is the other. Ehhh.....sorry I've been goin on a bit here. I shouldn't do that. What band are you in?

 

[Beanstalk]

A quick question...

To use the Pro-tools software, do you need to have a specific soundcard/PC?

For example, if I aquired the Pro-tools software, would I be able to run it using a Soundblaster Audigy card on a standard PC?

 

[Sprite Boy]

Originally posted by Beanstalk
A quick question...

To use the Pro-tools software, do you need to have a specific soundcard/PC?

For example, if I aquired the Pro-tools software, would I be able to run it using a Soundblaster Audigy card on a standard PC?

Yes can run it on a stand alone PC. You can get Pro tools free from the web which allows somewhere in the region of 8 audio tracks.

You have an Audigy! How good is it? Any special features how much did cost I've seen them for about 300 euros. Are they worth that much?

 

[Beanstalk]

Originally posted by Sprite Boy


You have an Audigy! How good is it? Any special features how much did cost I've seen them for about 300 euros. Are they worth that much?

I got mine last christmas for IR£220, I think...I've only been PC recording since then, so its my first soundcard...it does everything I need it to do, so I can't tell you about its limitations.

I'll probably post a link in 2 or 3 weeks, to some songs that I've recorded using it ...you judge what you think then.

Overall, I'm happy with it, but I wouldn't be experienced enough to tell you what it CAN'T do.

 

[dubh in seattle]

ProTools Free

Hey y'all-- you can download Protools Free from http://www.digidesign.com
scroll to the bottom/click ProTools Free. comes as Mac OS and Win98 and above. Or, you can buy it on cd-rom for like $20. It's worth checking the tech req's just to make sure it'll support yer soundcard--I'm mac-only protools geek, so I dunno. Free will do 8 audio and 48 midi tracks; but realistically with 8 digital tracks and unlimited undo, you can do just about anything, 'cause you can do sub-mix bounces down to a stereo pair, and continue overdubbing; do another reduction bounce, etc. If you don't like your bounce, just do it again. It'll run tons of plugins, though not as many as cubase/dig perf (only supports RTAS and AS format plugs, and won't support bombfactory rtas and some others). For the price (ha) it can't be beat. And of course, though none of us would ever DREAM of using kracked plugs(...), I reckon there's tons out there on the net. And this may not be in your head, but if you know how ProTools works, chances are pretty good you can go anywhere in the world to a studio and get to work. You can drop your files from Free into any ProTools system, and all yer edits/ pans/etc. will be intact. I'm gonna be in Ireland from Oct to whenever; if anybody needs engineer/producer/ProTools operator, send me a private msg..|..|