Once upon a time there was a version of Pro Tools that only ran with Avid hardware. Many users hated this idea and wished that Avid would let them use any hardware or even no hardware at all. One day when all the planets alligned Avid set Pro Tools free, the rest, as they say, is history.

Joking apart, in a conversation with another Pro Tools user this week, it occured to us, that even though this was the case, most of the time we still used Avid hardware. This got me thinking, how much of a difference has an unlocked version of Pro Tools made to our workflows?

So a survey, not asking if you think an unlocked version of Pro Tools is a good idea, that’s a no brainer, it is. This poll is simply to see how much it has changed our way of working. Don’t worry, if we all say we still use Pro Tools as if it were still locked there’s no chance of Avid locking it back up again. Thanks for answering.

Former President, CEO, and Board Member of Avid Technology from 2000-2007, David Krall has joined the Board of Universal Audio as STRATEGIC ADVISOR. Prior to Avid, he served as VP of Engineering and COO of Digidesign.

“I have been incredibly impressed with the UA team, product lineup, and roadmap, and I’m excited to join Bill and his team on their path of growth and innovation within the audio industry,” says Krall.”

Universal Audio

In part 1 of series designed to help people get started with Pro tools we looked at choosing an interface and software. Next we will look at choosing a computer and hard drives to put your projects and media onto.

Choosing a computer
Not just any old computer will do, and I cannot recommend too strongly that you follow the advice in the compatibility charts for Mac or Windows on the Avid web site.

Click to read more ...

After saying I had no problems with 10.2 last night on the podcast, I suffered a number of 9129 errors during the editing and post production of the show. Also I mentioned the problems Mike Aiton was having with 10.2 and scrubbing and that no one had managed to reproduce his problem. In his thread on the DUC, in which he spends quite a bit of time talking to himself, Matt-o- from Germany has now reproduced Mike’s problems in part. Mike’s dealer’s tech guru also suggested that running the HW Buffer size on 1024 samples might not be the best answer and that he should use a lower buffer size like 256 samples. 

So armed with all this information I opened up my 10.2 system this morning and ran a session to find the screen refeshing was very slow so the metering was very jumpy and the counter wasn’t running smoothly.

Click to read more ...

Enjoy!

I have to admit, the thought of moving from ‘MY’ baby the AIR Users Blog to Pro Tools Expert blog with a team was a little daunting when I first considered it. It had nothing to do with megalomania, more to do with the feeling you have when you are a parent (or a pet owner) and you have to trust your baby with someone else. What you are thinking is ‘will they love my baby like I do and will they treat it like I do’.

I’m glad to say that all those fears were unfounded. It was a little weird at first to find posts on ‘MY’ Pro Tools blog when I woke up in the morning, but now I love seeing what’s coming up on OUR Pro Tools blog each day, I’m getting myself a new education - although perhaps not on Windows, that would be a step too far for this Apple fanboy.

Team can sometimes be a challenge, it means deferring to one another, group decision making and also of course just making the time to keep in touch and care about one another. On that last point, if you do want to come on and take a cheap pop at any of the team then don’t be surprised if I bite - it’s a natural instinct in a team of caring professionals. Please don’t misunderstand, we are happy to take constructive criticism to make this better for all of us, but if you just want to throw a rock then don’t be surprised if 6 come back at you!

I think the new Pro Tools Expert blog is stronger and richer for this amazing team and I just wanted to publicly thank them for their care and dedication to the community. So to Eric, Mike, Neil, Wolfgang and Roberto - I thank you on behalf of everyone!

Furthermore, we are always on the look out to strengthen the team further, so if you want to share this journey then send me an email outlining what you think you have to offer. You need to be experienced in Pro Tools and related equipment, be able to string a sentence together and must commit to at least 6 months to the team.

Russ

Click to watch

The cause of some 90XX Errors in Pro Tools can be related to bad hard disk performance regardless of the what the Pro Tools Disk Meter is telling you.

This can be caused by not having AHCI enabled in your motherboards BIOS setting or not having the required drivers /software installed in windows.

As i mentioned in the Video, heres a link to a Youtube Video that shows you how to prepare your system before enabling AHCI in your BIOS if Windows was installed before AHCI was enabled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRlpE9Ar3v8

*IMPORTANT*
Make sure you create a Windows Backup before making these changes,
Then you can always get back to how your system currently is, if something happens to go wrong.

Neil

It has become apparent fairly recently that the way that your memory is setup on your PC can have quite an impact on your system performance in Pro Tools. In the past is has been OK to install your sticks of RAM and leave the motherboard’s BIOS memory settings as the default “auto” then away you go.

But it seems with the latest i7 based systems you need to manually enter the details of your particular memory modules, otherwise all kinds of crazy issues can rear their ugly heads, the Avid DUC is peppered with reports of strange system behaviour and we always say “Do the System optimisation and trouble shooting tweaks that Avid advise”, but even those tips don’t fix every issue.

Click to read more ...

Russ sits down with producer Mick Glossop.

They talk about everything  from his work with Frank Zappa, Van Morrison, his time at the Townhouse and right up to his current work with new talent and his role in the Music Producers Guild.

• Listen here on Podbean
• Listen here on iTunes

More about Mick here

Music Producers Guild

Popular in many tracks, the distorted radio voice effect.

Russ shows you several tricks for achieving both the radio and the distorted voice using just the stuff that ships with Pro Tools.

We love to be able to help you with your problems so you can be more creative. Its the main reason we set up the site. However it would be a great help if you could help us to help you when you ask a question via this site, or via our Facebook page.

Detail is Good
Please describe exactly what’s occurring in as much detail as possible, what you’re doing in Pro Tools when the problem occurs, what any relevant settings are, list any troubleshooting steps you’ve tried as well as any other info that may be relevant.  

Make it Clear
It’s better to write something like ‘DAE Error 9073 when playing back on 002R’ than ‘HEEEELLLLPP!’. It will make identifying the urgency of your problem more apparent, as well as helping to do a search for previously reported issues. 

Please don’t get cross
It is much harder and often virtually impossible to offer help and advice without a clear description of what happened dispassionately. We understand you may be cross because it has caused you problems and let you time, but please don’t take it out on us.

Information please
At the very least, we need the following information…. 

• Computer model and processor speed
• OS version
• Avid, M-Audio hardware model or 3rd party make & model
• Pro Tools version
• Amount of RAM installed
• A concise description of the following 
  • Any attached peripherals (hard drives, other firewire or USB devices that may be attached, etc). 
  • Which port on the computer they’re connected to,  and if you’ve tried replacing cables, what the differences were between the original and the replacement.
  • Number and type (firewire, SATA, SCSI, etc) of drives installed, how they’re formatted and which one(s) you’re using for recording and playback.
  • A concise list of the troubleshooting you’ve already tried - please be as specific as possible! 
  • A description of what was happening when the problem occurred. Sometimes it is what appears to you to be unrelated can point us in the right direction, so things like what other applications were running at the time, where you uploading to the internet are all helpful information.

We look forward to receiving your questions for future editions of the podcast and don’t forget you can submit them by mp3 so we can hear you too.

Thanks

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It seems some of our friends at other blogs and sites have got themselves some flack from taking a position on matters such as summing mixers and mastering, good on them - it has resorted an online p*ssing contest by ‘gurus’ in some forums, good luck to those people trying to change the colour of the ocean.

This leads us to re-assert our position on these matters.

You can do what you like and you should try and do at least everything once; mastering, mixing, soldering, sampling to name just a few. In fact it would be pretty dumb of us to run a site to equip the community and then not want them to want to try and do these things.

Click to read more ...

In a recent survey we asked ‘How are you getting around Pro Tools’ only around 20% of those surveyed said they used either Pro Tools keyboards or stickers. The gang at Editors Keys sent us some of their new products to review, so as one person who has had Pro Tools keyboards and not used them, then the gauntlet was down.

I’ve decided to review both the dedicated keyboard and the skin, to tell you what I think of both.

Editors Keys Pro Tools - Premium Apple Dedicated Keyboard

Click to read more ...

Many people find getting started with Pro Tools a bit daunting and so I thought it would be useful to have a series on starting out with Pro Tools, taking you through setting up your PT system, creating your first session, some tips & tricks and finally some basic troubleshooting advice. But first lets take a look at specifying your first system. Time spent at this stage will save you lots of grief and problems later.

Choosing an interface
A Pro Tools system consists of three main components: the Pro Tools software, a Mac or PC computer, and additional hardware that handles audio and possibly MIDI input and output.

Click to read more ...

Yep, it’s that deal again - the sun is out and there’s a holiday feeling in the air.

So until midnight GMT Tuesday, our super popular Vinatge Synths for Structure library is just £5 normally £25!

Listen to the demos here and then click the Paypal link to buy it for just £5!

Our resident Windows guru Neil Hester visually demonstrates in this video the Even and Odd Harmonic distortion produced by various saturation plugins.

I’ve been working on several new titles recently for Groove 3.

This one starts with the important foundations such as setting up synth tracks, using MIDI in Pro Tools and creating synth templates. I then goes into production techniques for creating custom arpeggiators, making filthy bass sounds, huge monster bass sounds, noise and filter sweeps, synth kick drums, filter gates and much more.

Check out a free preview here