DPA 4099G & DeVoe Blanca

I wanted to see how the DPA 4099G and DeVoe Blanca sound with the 002 Digidesign Rack that was moded by Black Lion (Sig Mod) no eq or compression was used. I had the mic pointing at the 14th freet. I called thise peace Shore Longings

DPA 4099 G Mic

This is a recoding using just the DPA 409 G Mic into a Digidesing 002 Black Lion Sig Mod using Pro Tools 8.4

I did use one track for Trillian for the bass.

Pro Tools 8.0.3 up and running on OS 10.6.3 at Palm Recording Studio

Well it took two weeks to figure out that the Mac Pro in our studio had some ram acting strange. we did not need a new Logic Board. We put a new HD 500gig 7200Rpm as the HD main. created all new files and now have a rock solid system.

AC-7 DAW Control Surface v.2.0

Was talking with Taz today about the new iPad and he shared with ne this new program AC-7 DAW Control Surface. I downloaded it from iTunes for the iPhone 4.99. Looks like a great app will write more later.

Bells Big Sur

DeVoe & Artcore with Neumann

01 DeVoe Numan Artcorre 2.5.10 by v2or

Pro Tools v8.0.3 vs Logic Pro 9 sound off

01 DeVoe Pro Tools 8.0.3 vs Logic Pro 9 Sound off by v2or

DeVoe Logic Pro 9 vs Pro To by v2or

Tears in My Eyes

Pro Tools Updated to 8.0.1

Updated Pro Tools 8.0 to 8.0.1 hope with the new updates it will work with Snow Leopard.

2009 Pro Tools Development Partners Catalog Now Available Just ordered mine

Since switching to Pro Tools 8 from Logic Pro I have really liked the simplicity of use with Pro Tools. I like the third party plug ins and while it takes a bit of getting used to use iLok and setting things up once you do you can really tailor your system to your likes and budget. I also like how you can build as you go. Im sure I will like looking at this catalog.
Discover and learn about hundreds of exciting and innovative third-party products that can greatly enhance your creativity with Digidesign’s line of products and boost your efficiency.

This beautifully-designed book provides insight to the latest virtual instruments and effects plug-ins, creativity applications, and productivity tools available from many of the best audio innovators in the industry. You’ll also find studio furniture, rack enclosures, hard drives, and accessories to customize your studio, plus some great educational resources.

Strike at Palm Recording Studio

Digidesign® Strike™ is a revolutionary instrument plug-in that makes it easy to create professional drum performances in Pro Tools® with uncanny realism and unbelievable human feel. More than just a high-definition drum module, Strike uses real drum performances and provides unprecedented control over every aspect of your virtual drummer’s sound and playing. Select a kit, set the mic placement and leakage, choose a room, and tell your drummer how to play as you adjust the intensity, complexity, timing, groove, dynamics, and more — in real time. This is one instrument you have to see to believe.
Features
Easily produce highly realistic drum performances right within Pro Tools software
Full real-time control of the virtual drummer’s performance, including intensity, complexity, timing, groove, dynamics, and more
Groundbreaking real-time performance engine allows for gradual drum performance dynamics adjustments without the typical machine gun effect or audible velocity layer switching
Choose from five high-definition drum kits, each featuring up to 12 instruments per kit and up to 300 samples per instrument
Includes over 20 GB of 24-bit audio stored in just 5 GB of space via proprietary lossless compression

Pro Tools 8 Refrence Guide

Digidesign Pro Tools 8 Refrence Guide is out. I just got my copy. Have read to about page 100. Only 1000 more to go. It’s 1100 pages and covers HD, LE, and M Audio.

Studio Updates at Palm Recording Studio

 

DigiPack Digidesign for the 002 Black Lion Mod (Bidding on eBay)

I will use this on my trip to vist Palm Studios West Coast in San Jose later this month or next month see you soon.

 

Update 2.3.09 Won one on ebay for 99.o0  should be hear a few days its new and in the box.

Take a load off with the new DigiPack carrying bag. Custom-designed for Digi 002/Digi 002 Rack, it also works perfectly well for safely toting any 2U device and its accessories to a studio, a show, or wherever else you need to go.DigiPack includes the kind of high-quality features you’d expect from any Digidesign product. Its spacious main compartment houses either of the 002 siblings or any other 2U-sized device – Pro Tools|HD interfaces, Focusrite units, 2U or smaller expansion chassis, DAT recorders, etc. Your laptop and accessories fit comfortably into the padded front pocket, which is secured with an internal Velcro™ lid. And additional accessories — mics, cables, cell phones, etc. — fit into extra storage pockets on DigiPack’s sides.

To provide extra protection for your valuable belongings, DigiPack’s water-resistant, luggage-grade construction is of black ballistic nylon and durable foam padding. And an overlapping lid bearing a classy black Digidesign logo adds another layer of protection for the entire bag. A padded shoulder strap is included for comfort and ease of mobility.

Review of Pro Tools 8 by DAVID FRANZ

Pro Tools 8! The Real Review…NOV 07 2008
Posted in Music Production, Pro Tools, Recording Studio
Post tagged Digidesign, MIDI, Music Production, Pro Tools
I know, I know… I’ve been silent since the announcement of Pro Tools 8. Why? Well, I didn’t want to post anything until I actually saw the program and played with it. Like anyone else, I can watch the marketing videos on Digidesign’s web site and be awed, but until I actually try out the software, I can’t give my real opinion.

So, here’s my real opinion. Pro Tools 8 is amazing. It is a major leap forward for Digidesign, and a necessary jump to leapfrog Logic and DP, both in GUI looks and MIDI functionality. Literally, it looks a lot like Logic now (when you make the tracks dark grey) or like Digital Performer (when you make the tracks light grey). Gone are the familiar white background on the edit window and stale grey mix window. Say hello to color! Seriously, the interface looks much more modern, with 3D buttons and rounded corners. The Color Palette window gives you a lot of control over the intensity of the colors too… ranging anywhere from muted pastels to bright ‘bag of Skittles’ technicolor.

Pro Tools new face seems appropriate too for all the changes under the hood. Let me list off “a few” of the new ones:
– 10 inserts (5 more than previous versions)
– Grid lines show through audio regions
– Meter markings on the mix faders
– Insertion Follows Playback button (yes, its not the “N” key mystery anymore)
– Waveforms are shown in higher resolution
– Customizable tool bars at the top of the Edit window (which can be saved in a Windows Configuration)
– Universe window is docked and resizable
– Time Lock feature allows you to edit a region without it in time
– MIDI Scrub tool
– Elastic Pitch tool
– MIDI Editing window (can be either a separate window or a docked window)
– MIDI Smart tool — this makes editing MIDI SO MUCH EASIER!!!
– MIDI notes shown with lighter color have lower velocities, darker colored notes have higher velocities
– 64 sample buffer size for USB interfaces
– Video Satellite (use a separate computer for viewing HD video, connected via ethernet)
– When launching, PT asks whether you want to create a new session, open a session, or start with a template
– at least 30 template files (.ptt files)
– Pressing SHIFT while opening a session makes all plug-ins inactive

OK, that’s a big list… but not enough to warrant PT8 status. Good thing there are a million more improvements…

PT8 comes with 5 new FREE virtual instruments:
1. Mini Grand – 1.5GB worth of great sounding piano
2. DB33 – B3 organ with a convolution modeled Leslie cab (which can be used as a standalone effect, sans the B3)
3. XPand2 – a serious upgrade to XPand! with 2GB of sounds and 1500 patches
4. Vacuum – mono synth with gnarly tube sounds
5. BOOM – an analog style drum machine

In addition, you also get Eleven Free (light version of their awesome guitar amp simulator) and Structure Free (light version of their sampler)… in addition to a whole slew of new effects plug-ins. Its quite a big offering. In fact, it all adds up to 9GB for the entire PT software package.

BUT WAIT… there’s more. I haven’t even talked about some of the coolest and most useful improvements.

First, there’s track comping… where you can record in Loop Record and each take is recorded onto a new playlist. Then, you can open and view multiple playlists for one track all in the Edit window. Making a comp between playlists is now even easier. No more switching between edit playlists. Then, there are “Automation Lanes,” which show any or all automation for a track on separate “lanes” at the same time. Draw volume, panning, and mute automation at the same time. No more switching between automation playlists.

And finally… yes, we’re finally getting to the end of the improvements… the Score Editor. Yup, PT has notation now, driven by the Sibelius engine. You can view the Score Editor as a separate window or as a docked window and edit on the page just like editing MIDI. Print and/or save your score as a PDF. The Score Editor doesn’t have all the complexity of Sibelius, but you can easily export directly into Sibelius for further tweaking.

There are other improvements, but my hands are tired from typing all of these ones. Stay tuned for more info re: the Music Production and DV Toolkits, as well as upgrade pricing…

Cheers!

 

Black Lion Audio Signature Mod Review by Palm Recording Studio

Received the Digidesign 002 with the Black Lion Audio Signature Mod.  Sound seems lika a pretty good improvement.  However there seems to be a problem with the time clock code in Pro Tools v8 theres a freeze and then a  message appears that says to find a valid time clock code.  The mod changes the pre amps (4) a/d and d/a converters and a Time Clock Change.   I was a bit disappointed with the communication with Black Lion as well.  The unit was delayed in receiving the mod. Black Lion had the 002 for two weeks, I would email, call and finally they did a one day delivery so we could do a session the unit was never was working ok, and we were not able to do the session that we had planed.  I worked on it until 2:00am and gave up.  I will try more today and see if I can get it working.  I will write back more later.  Hear is a pic of the top of the Black Lion.

 

UPDATE 2.1.09  Its now going rock solid and sounds as good or even better then the Apogee Ensemble.  It took some time to clean things out with the drivers.  I had to uninstall and clean out all clock codes in the audio section on the mac.  After that I am having no problems with running the 002 at 96 for capturing audio.  I use a Neuman M 149 into a Martech MSS 10 Mic  pre and into input  #5 on 002 and it sounds great.   The original problem was something wrong in the time code.  I had to switch the RTAS to 7 instead of 8 Up the playback and running the CPU at 90%.  Also the mic pres on the 002 at 12 or hafe way up on the gain seem to get some his it the signal.  So it took some time to get it all straightened out but it’s running pretty well and most likely will sell my Apogee Ensemble.

Update 5.24.09 While I did not care for the communication break down as well as some of the billing ishues with Black Lion, I am very happy with the Mod and would recomend it to anyone who whants to upgrade thier sound and ability to improve the clarity of the dynamics of sound captured in live audio. There is a depth to the sound in bass and treble. I have been running the unit now for 5 months and have not had any ishues. I did sell my Apogee

Black Lion Audio should be doing my Signature Modification to the Digidesign Rack 002 today

Hope to get it back this weekend.

Nope it took another week they had my unit for just about two weeks

Digidesign Command 8

Picked up a new Digidesign Command 8 Control Surface for my Pro Tools LE 8 from Sam Ash in NYC today  and it works great. Had it up and running in about 5min. Some pics below.

Small and affordable it may be, but Digidesign’s Command 8 is also a surprisingly versatile and powerful tool for controlling Pro Tools.

Mike Thornton

Iam sure most of those in need of a cost-effective, moving-fader control surface for Pro Tools would immediately think of Digidesign’s Command 8 (around £900). This is certainly what I did: I have one beside me now, and most of the time the faders are what I use it for, either when I want to ‘feel’ a mix or when I need to move more than one fader at a time. It is an approved, supported control surface that won’t break the bank. However, since I got it I’ve discovered that the Command 8 can do much more than merely control channel levels in Pro Tools, so this month we’ll be looking at the additional functionality and features that this control surface implements.

A Control Surface With A View

To start with, there are three view modes that can be selected on your Command 8. Home View is the default mode, and is what you will see once you have opened a Session in Pro Tools. In Home View, the track names are displayed on the bottom row of the display and the rotary encoders are set to the Pan settings, which is indicated by the ‘Pan L’ display on the top row.

When you hit one of the Console View Selectors on the left-hand side of the Command 8, the unit goes into Console View. This lets you see pan position, send assignments and plug-in assignments for all the channels the control surface has access to. When you adjust either the fader or the rotary encoder on a channel, the name is temporarily replaced in the display by the appropriate data value — for instance, the dB setting for the fader or the relative position of the pan controller.

With Pan selected, all the rotary encoders will display and control the pan settings for all the tracks viewed on the Command 8; this is the default setting in Console View. For stereo tracks this mode will display Pan L, and if you want to access the Pan R setting you will need to press the Pan/Meter button, which is just under the Control monitor section. Note also that pressing a track’s Select button in this mode will select the corresponding track in the Edit and Mix windows, making it easy to do multiple track selection.

 

Console View displays a single parameter, such as Send A, for each of the eight channels currently in focus.

 

If you have the sends in Pro Tools’ Mix window set up to display the level and pan sliders, pressing a Command 8 Send button in Console View will switch to the appropriate send in the Mix window.

When you press the Send button, the Command 8’s rotary encoders display the last send selected on each track. Using the Console View buttons A to E enables you to select and view the respective send assignments; to access sends F to J, you need to hold down the Shift button. Then by pressing button A you access send F, and so on. The top row of the display shows ‘Send x — All channels’ and the bottom row displays the send label. In this mode, the channel’s Select button toggles the track’s send between pre-fade and post-fade. Note also that if you have your Send View in the Mix window set to show the fader and routing for a particular send, as you press the Console View buttons, the Mix window will display the corresponding send view. However, this doesn’t work if your Mix window is showing Assignments.

Pressing the Insert button sets the Console View A to E buttons to enable you to view the appropriate insert on the display. If a track has a plug-in on that insert, the name is shown on the bottom row of the display and the track’s Select button lights. When you press the Select button, the display shows the controls for that plug-in; if there are more than eight controls, the Command 8 displays them in pages. I dislike rotary controls on plug-in windows, as they’re hard to use with mice, so it’s great to have physical rotary controls to adjust the virtual ones. Also, as with the faders, you can control more than one thing at the same time.

When you press the Display Mode button, all the text names on the Command 8 screen are temporarily replaced by the settings values. This works for faders in Home View, send levels in Console View Sends mode, and control settings in Insert mode. There’s also a Mon/ button, which enables you to toggle globally between Auto Input and Input Only on record-enabled tracks.

Channel View

The third Command 8 View mode focuses all the unit’s display and controls on one single track, showing all the plug-in, pan, send and insert parameters horizontally across the display. To access the various sections of Channel View you use the eight buttons immediately under the display.

When you press the EQ button, the Command 8 will identify any track with an EQ plug-in (in other words, any plug-in that ends up in the EQ section of the plug-in menu) by flashing the track title in the display and lighting up the respective track’s Select button. If a track doesn’t have an EQ plug-in assigned to it, the display is left blank and the Select button stays unlit. When you press a lit Select button, the controls for the first EQ plug-in on that track will be assigned to the rotary encoders and shown in the display. The relevant Channel Select buttons control any switched functions, such as Master Bypass. Likewise, the Dynamics button prompts the Command 8 to show any tracks that have compressors, limiters, gates and so on inserted.

Pressing the Inserts button will identify any track that has a plug-in or hardware insert assigned to it. Pressing a lit track Select button will show the names of all the inserts on that track. Now for each of the insert points containing plug-ins the appropriate Select button will light. Pressing one of those Select button will display the first page of that plug-in’s settings and assign the rotary encoders accordingly. Remember that any hardware insert won’t display settings, because it hasn’t got any!

The Pan/Send/Pre button identifies any tracks that have sends assigned to them. When you press the desired Select button the first rotary encoder displays the pan control for that track. Encoder 2 is unused, for some reason. I assumed that on a stereo track it would be the right channel’s pan control, but annoyingly, this is not the case — you need to press the Pan/Meter button to set encoder 1 to right instead of left. Why leave encoder 2 idle when they could have made it possible to adjust both pan controls on a stereo track simultaneously? Encoders 3 to 7, meanwhile, are assigned to Sends A to E; switching to the second page changes their focus to Sends F to J. In this mode the Select buttons again serve as pre/post switches.

 

Most Pro Tools plug-ins are set up to assign their eight most commonly used parameters to the first page of Command 8 controls.

The Page left and right arrow buttons enable you to scroll through the plug-in parameters, using as many pages as required to cover all the parameters for that plug-in. As you scroll through the pages, the plug-in window shows which controls are assigned to the encoders; you will see that they don’t always follow in their on-screen order. The first page is usually carefully selected to offer the most commonly used parameters.

 

Access’s Virus Indigo plug-in: although there are 40 pages of controls, it’s still straightforward to navigate from the Command 8.

The Access Virus Indigo plug-in provides an excellent example of how well plug-in adjustment works from the Command 8. When you load it up, you’re presented with 40 pages of parameters to go at, but the first page gives you the eight most commonly used from the plug-in’s Easy page. In the screenshot opposite you can see that the controllers assigned to the Command 8 encoders are identified by the light-blue background in the text field. Now the great thing is that if you have the plug-in window open as you navigate around the pages on the Command 8, the different pages of the plug-in window open and show which parameters are assigned; for example, page 12 of 40 on the Command 8 opens the Filter/Env page on the plug-in, and you can see the parameters that are currently assigned. If you then use the Command 8’s Flip function, you bring the plug-in parameters down onto the touch-sensitive faders, and once you have enabled automation on the plug-in (don’t forget the neat shortcut of holding down all three modifier keys and clicking on a parameter to automate that parameter, without having to open the plug-in’s automation window), you can now easily record the automation changes of any of your chosen parameters.

The Master Bypass button will put the selected plug-in into bypass if you are viewing an individual plug-in. However, if you are displaying multiple plug-ins, as you are when you have pressed Insert in Channel View, then using the Master Bypass button will put all that track’s plug-ins into Bypass. That is a neat trick you can’t do from the QWERTY keyboard. Likewise, because you can open any plug-in from the Command 8, you can control a plug-in that isn’t targeted on screen — you don’t even need to have its window open. Again, this is something you can’t do from the mouse and keyboard; you have to target the plug-in you want to adjust and then make the adjustments.

What You See Is What You Get

One of the neat features of the Command 8 is the way you can control what appears on the Pro Tools screen. For example, the three buttons grouped together above the Transport section enable you to switch between the Edit, Mix and Plug-in windows. The Plug-in button is especially useful: for example, once you have selected a plug-in via Console or Channel View, pressing the Plug-in Window button will open the window for that plug-in on the screen, which is helpful as you navigate through the different parameters. The four multi-function arrow buttons in the navigation section also help you get around the Pro Tools interface. When the Zoom button is enabled, the left and right arrows zoom the Edit window timeline in and out, and the up and down buttons increase and decrease the track waveform height. In Bank and Nudge modes, by contrast, the up and down buttons mirror those on the keyboard, so they can be used to mark in and out points on the fly.

Functional Stuff

The five Function keys at the right-hand side of the Navigation and Zoom section are oft-neglected, but can be useful. The first of them puts the Command 8 into Utility mode, where you have access to a range of information and test procedures. The first press displays the Command 8’s firmware version, which should read v02.01.12. If you suffer from over-sensitive faders, or faders that sit there and move very slightly on their own, make sure you have this version of firmware installed.

F2 lets you edit and name custom MIDI maps when using your Command 8 in ‘stand-alone’ mode, F3 provides control over an attached Digidesign Pre mic preamp, and F4 temporarily stops the moving faders from moving. If you are working in an environment where the mechanical noise of the faders moving is a problem, this can be a life-saver. Finally, F5 is called the Focus button, and toggles the LCD display between the current plug-in view and the previous Command 8 Console or Channel View, which is very useful when moving around the ‘mixer’ on the Command 8.   The review is from Sound on Sound see below. 

Getting The Best From Digidesign’s Command 8 : March 2008

Digidesign 002 Comes to Palm Recording Studio