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Brian Liston

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Everything posted by Brian Liston

  1. That is conjecture at best my friend.
  2. They have been several times. I've tried scoring them and glueing them myself, which has worked better than the stock. The last time I got them back I think it made it a day before popping out. I've made forum postings about it. My Nomad is going back again as well, since this is a reliability thread.
  3. I will address build quality on the LAs only as that is the title of this thread. Those magnets for the door pop out constantly. I've given up and just gaff tape it shut. The ERXs are even flimsier for comparison. If we are comparing the build quality of the Zax LA and Lectro SMQ, there is none.
  4. I've used these soundcraft digital boards quite a bit. Ultimately, I went with the presonus because of its smaller footprint. But the soundcraft is a better sounding board. The soundcraft is also around double the price. Jeff, I thought you were grooving on the new Roland? I was hoping someone was going to take the plunge and try to power that thing 24v.
  5. As usual on most things Post, I agree with Mr. Henchman. I guess for those of us making a living at it, paying $900 after 1.5 years doesn't seem so bad after buying some Schoeps... RTAS had to go. It is sad, but we've all known this for the last year and a half. The 64 bit processing just had to happen. They said it when 10 came out in a very non-Avid way actually. And working in Logic or Nuendo in surround is just crazy. Yeah, Avid is a strange company, but is seems that the audio side is actually listening to customers as 9 and 10 opened things up more than any other release. Jesus, clip gain! Can't drag a stereo clip onto two mono tracks, man I do that 90 times a day when mixing a TV show. On Logic you have to buss and re-record. Waves sucks. Good riddance. Man, people complain about avid in the same post as loving waves? The whole WUP thing, remember? I've been phasing out my waves usage over the last 5 years (stuck with 7) and am ready to leave it on the roadside. I too use the Duende and I'm not sure if SSL is going to make it. The Duende system has been shall we say, cantankerous since its inception. I've been reaching to the Sonnox stuff more and more. I'm still getting some clipping at odd places with the Duende that has me worried. If you guys are worried about money just use Ardour or Reaper. After messing with Jack for Ardour I gave up. Reaper looks pretty cool though. But hey, I get asked if I use Pro Tools all the time. I've never been asked if I use any other program from people that hire me. For me know, back to work on my PT 10 CPTK machine with RME hardware that has been an awesome workhorse mixing over 30 television episodes alone last year. Didn't miss a deadline or have any mixes rejected by a network. Much of it was edited and organized on a plane using my laptop.
  6. the Roland mixers are massive, and heavy. Exactly what I don't like in a digital mixer.
  7. I have mixed on the Behringer X32 before. A local nightclub has replaced their venerable Allen & Heath with this guy. Sure, I mocked and chided the owner for putting in a key piece of equipment from a company like Behringer and their reputation. The thing has been installed for nearly 6 months now, doing multiple bar bands every night. AFAIK, no hiccups. My time on it was fine. It was a capable, good sounding mixer. I own a Presonus Studio Live, and it was defiantly better, especially in the eq which I'm not happy with on the Presonus at all. Not having a trim for every input was weird at first, as it was on the Nomad, but one gets over that pretty fast. I liked the sound of the Soundcraft better, but this X32 has twice the channels for the same money. I will say this though, the Soundcraft wins the beauty pagent. She is a looker compared to the old hag that is the Presonus. I have used the Presonus with Boom recorder and Pro Tools quite a bit, and mixing this way is a huge advantage in ergonomics and cost over using a 788T or Nomad type setup. I'm quite interested in the X32 compact as a Presonus replacement. Oh, but the first thing I did when mixing on the Behringer was put a piece of black gaff over the logo, so nobody could take a picture of me working with such a thing.
  8. I've used the Radars quite a bit, although admittedly not in many years. As they are really a high-end studio esoteric piece of kit, most studios don't bother. These decks go for around 10K for a 24 track. They are mostly used by soundies that have to move to digital from 2", and hate Pro Tools for whatever B.S. reason they have (mostly they don't want to learn it). They can be portable, in a rack case and whatnot. However, they are destined to be truck bound for that use as they are stupid-heavy. They took two of us groaning everytime we had to move them. I'm hoping that they finally got away from the Be-OS that they were using. Nothing like a dead company's operating system for trouble shooting. Wow. QNiX is a dream by comparison. The ones I have used require an FTP connection to transfer files other than the removable bays that they sell. Which are expensive, as one could imagine. Sound quality is what makes them what they are. Don't expect to edit much more than you can on tape; save the fact that you can do tape like edits on individual tracks. But no grids, no crossfades other than the default to avoid clicks, and then you need an analogue desk to deal with it. Why not a spiffy digital desk you ask? Because why the F@*k would you use a radar on anything but a pristine SSL or Neve? Not worth the bother. If I was recording an orchestra, with unlimited $$$, I would gang several Radars and record at 192K. These things sound unreal at that rate. For my mics I would grab...fantasy session over. Back to work.
  9. When I get these errors, I just bring in the audio first, Bring in the video and eyeball it. Unless there is a drop non drop frame issue, the head and tail should sync fine. These small errors happen all the bloody time. I'm shocked when the OMF and reference movie actually sync up when I drop them in.
  10. There are, such as VOCAlign. But it, and its peers, are expensive (as in over $1K). They don't always work however, and elastic audio is a godsend. They especially fail if the new tracks don't match well, or if the guide tack is really toast from wind/wires/clothes rustle/whatnot.
  11. This trips up many a PT user. When you import an OMF, there is an option to make new files, or just import the OMF. What that means is it will either make all new clips, or just read the audio out of the OMF container. You have three choices to accomplish what you want: 1. Select the clip you want to edit, option-shift-3 to "Consolidate Region" (make a new clip file). Then process that clip. 2. Do a "Save session Copy in..." and choose to make new audio files on the copy. Then open the new session. 3. Re-import the OMF, and change the Audio Media Options dropdown menu from "Link to source media (where possible)" to "Copy From Source Media" Hope this helps! Also, upsampling the entire session to 96K can really improve the quality of the elastic audio. I will often do this just for the dialog edit, and then bring it back to 48K for the mix.
  12. I just got to mix on one of those for the first time the other day. Sweet board! Looks like all the new trucks are putting those in. But can the Calrec do the LUFS with the time constant that Insight does? Man, 2 minutes after hitting stop and the meter is still falling...weird. I need to look at the CALM act rules and wrap my head around it. It sure ain't leqA
  13. Hey Simon. Awesome that you are working on that race. I just saw a thing on Top Gear the other night about a race team of amputees from the UK that are entering the race. Very cool. I do a lot of work short course offroad truck racing (www.torcseries.com) and have done Baja a couple of times. The stress on our gear and our bodies is not as bad as the stress on the trucks. However, the trucks were designed for that abuse, and our gear was not (as tough as it may be). I've had few failures of any equipment that worked at all. That is to say, I have found either instant failure, or everything is cool. Unless of course the truck crashes. I have used my Zoom H4Ns, wrapped in a condom, taped to hell. The Nomad does not deserve such abuse, although I have used SD recorders in this capacity. Then stuffed inside a cutup yoga matt, taped to hell but with a flap to get the unit in and out. You can still see and press the buttons through the connie when slipped out. Then I use zip ties to lash it to tube, of which there is usually no problem finding. I usually loop out of my recorder into an omnipresent go pro for a secondary audio record. The Yoga matts do double duty as vibration compensation and crash pads. And they are cheap. The only guff I get about them is from camera guys who say it looks low-fi. Whatever. I would like to get a different cheap recorder however. The Zoom has crappy headroom, all of the limiters and filters are useless. I want to try the little Sony or Tascam guys. Same thing goes for Nat sound mics, only replace the condom with a tube sock and don't have a flap. If you can lash one of these near the tail pipe you can get great clean engine sounds with a 57. But you will need an external pad for something like a Zoom. I like to get cockpit sounds as well, and a 57 again works fine because it is so loud. Other dudes use a 421, but they are 4X the price and bulkier. You get all of the rattles and gear changing slams. Then, if you are lucky, the truck will crash and you will get all the crunches and bangs. And then usually swearing. The Peltor's aux out is awesome. Wish they all had that.
  14. Where can I get a charger for these batts? (besides eBay) I got one but it is so slooooooooow.
  15. PT can load all of the files into RAM, even from a CD. Drive speed matters not anymore. You (may) need the CPTK for this feature I believe. And even before that happened, I haven't had a drive issue in years, like V6-era. Any FW drive or internal is fast enough for most uses. I did a 120 track project on an internal drive on a G5 computer 6 years ago. PT LE even. On choosing a platform for Pro use, as in "I want to make money." Nobody has ever asked if I use Nuendo or any of the others mentioned here. But I get asked if I use PT all the time. And usually when I say yes, the answer is, "Good!" and we get to work. I just wish Opcode SVP was still around. Sigh.
  16. This is why with my Adam A7X setup I went with a JBL sub instead of the Adam. Technically you should have bass management across all speakers plus LFE, needing 6 inputs. Genlec has LCR and LFE for a total of 4 inputs. I'm guessing that Adam and Genlec just figured if you really want to do it right you need something like a Martin ontroller, or Grace, or like an SSL 900 that has this bass management built in.
  17. I enjoy these discussions too. Gosh where to start with this one. I said -6, -18RMS. Not -6RMS, I never said that. Of course I don't record dialogue at that. -22 LeqA for delivery all day my man. I don't think you read my post correctly.
  18. They get 5 sound cards a day from the 5 sound guys. And then the cards from 9 Reds, 4 F3s, 4 5Ds (1 Heli, 1 steady, 2 Misc.) and 80 GoPros. The DIT guys have a lot of progress bars going all day and yeah, the sound is a very, very small part of it.
  19. There is a zero on every output bus, output or "Card Track" file in any recorder or DAW. The output bus can't go past zero. Fine, use the bits that you have more wisely, but there is a zero. The card track can't go past zero. There is a very different zero on a bus. A 64 bit bus will allow one to Turn files up or down, without clipping the bus or changing any single bit of the file. The output bus can be attenuated to suit the need of the program material. All without changing a single bit of the program material. For this type of DSP, zero becomes relative. Let's not breech floating vs. fixed, unless ya'll want to. If there is DSP on the track to alter it in some way dynamically...wouldn't that be a compressor/limiter/expander? DSP or not, turning things up or down is just that. You said never clip "effect the natural dynamics of the source." That is a compressor/limiter/expander is it not? So you are saying that never clip is a DSP compressor inside the Nomad? A natural sounding compressor, but a compressor. So then what were the limiter settings used on 2? What were the settings for never clip on 3?
  20. Can anyone hit me with the setting used for each of those three channels so that I, and other Nomad wielding soundies, may simulate the magic at home. With no great explanation of what is going on, I find it difficult to begin a loosly scientific understanding of how to use this with some empirical-based strategy. I want to perform that test, and then also see what this looks/sounds like in PT. Rubber meets road and what have you.
  21. I think they're great for what they are. But when production insists on using the audio from them because it seems "real," I get mad.
  22. Drastic? Nah. If the levels were peaking at -24 and -32RMS, it may be audible under lab conditions. Maybe. But peaking at -6, -18 RMS, not drastic. A fuzzy term, drastic. If we are going to argue this point, let's stick to the math. Since people are throwing in busses and floats, and all kinds of other stuff I just want to say that there is a lot of misinformation flying around here. Convoluted concepts of bit depth, floating point, mix bus bit depth, file bit depth. This is just no way to understand digital audio. Before anyone starts dissing PT as not having stuff that others did for years, let's clear this up. Their mix bus has been 64 bit (plugins at 56bit) for a long time. The other guys all did the 32 bit floating point to extend their mix bus depth and plugin processing depth which was the same 24 or 32 bit depth that the files were. PT could do 128 tracks at full range before their bus would clip. Gain changes in PT result in zero reduction in file bit depth, and thus hasn't required a dithered bus, unless of course you want to dither your bus. If your mix bus and file depth is the same, you have to dither any gain change, and a couple of tracks mixed at full scale can clip the bus as did Logic et all did. I don't know if any of them have changed their ways recently as I have't really paid attention to them. Until any of them can take a stereo track and make dual mono, or the inverse, I can't consider them. Dude was showing me Logic and was bouncing files out and re importing them. No way. Garbage. So Pro Tools hasn't needed to have 32 bit, and still really doesn't, but it let's PT go past 256 tracks at full scale without clipping. Bring on the Wagner! Mixers end up with 16 bit files all the time as so many folks are still mixing on FCP7, which has sync problems at 24bit. They just crush it down to 16 and up-res a 24 bit OMF later. Every day.
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