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Archive for May, 2006

An important (if obvious) location recording tip

Always check your recordings…

I’m reviewing some of the location recordings that I did in Europe last month. Since the recordings were more for documentation than for release, I brought a very simple and compact setup: A Sony MZ-R55 MiniDisc and a Sony ECM-909A Stereo powered microphone. As we traveled, I would periodically whip it out and record. In order not to attract attention, I would usually stick the mic head out a pocket of my bag and have the recorder inside the bag. This let me be unobtrusive and also let me very simply get the sound as I travelled. I had done this previously in Italy to great success. I was busy having a good time, so I wasn’t checking my recordings as I went. This was a big mistake. I would have learned something obvious and important. In Italy I had a backpack, but in France I had a messenger bag. The differences are subtle but essential. All my French recordings, where I’m moving, contain the sounds of the bag shifting as I walk (the bag bouncing off my back) and the metal on metal sounds of the strap where it connects to the bag. So no matter where I was, it sounds like I was on a ship! Luckily I realized this halfway through the trip (when I actually checked my recordings) and made some adjustments, but it was too late for a lot of the sound. Either I will need to do an insane amount of editing or just chalk this one up to experience.
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Soundtrack Pro needs some work

What kind of audio program doesn’t recognize external audio hardware?

Soundtrack Pro is pretty much a rip-off of Adobe Audition, including its single-track edit/multi-track record interface. One benefit would be its integration with Final Cut Pro, if there was any integration with FCP. I’m doing a soundtrack for a video project right now and I’d like to just product some tracks in Soundtrack Pro’s multitrack UI and them bring them directly back into FCP, but of course that is impossible in a direct way (like opening a FCP project in Soundtrack Pro). In the end, I had to export the video out of FCP and import it into Soundtrack Pro. Then I found my next problem, Soundtrack Pro doesn’t recognize my Firewire Audio interface, it just recognizes the built-in audio interfaces. That is just ridiculous. Even FCP recognizes my Firewire interface. Finally, I just gave up and imported the video file into a Cubase project. I’ll have to generate full-length stem mixes I guess and import them manually back into FCP, which will give me about the same level of integration that I was gonna get from Soundtrack Pro anyway, I guess.

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Novation almost gets it right

http://www.novationmusic.com/news.asp?id=134

Novation just announced the ZeRO SL, which is essentially their ReMOTE SL without they KeYBOARD (see, I can play the capital letter game too, Novation). I’ve been lusting after Novation Controllers since the X-Station (which I still think looks awesome), but they have been too expensive for me to kick my Oxygen 8 to the curb. The ReMOTE SL definitely made me think about it again, but it was still kind of expensive and I don’t use a 25-key controller that often. The ZeRO SL is almost perfect in this department. It will fit above my computer keyboard, it will fit on top of my Keystation 88, it is small enough that I can bring it along for a gig, I could maybe even replace my trusty Peavey PC1600x.

EXCEPT

WHERE IS THE X-Y PAD?!? It is one of the coolest things about the Novation controllers and they drop it? That is just plain stupid. Faders, buttons and knobs are great and all, but every controller has them. They are not hard to find. I would rather have a controller with 4 XY pads and 2 D-Beams that spit out midi. That would be worth the 229 pounds they want to charge for this. Honestly, for 229 GBP, you could buy a couple faderfox controllers (excluding VAT) and be happier.

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