Rich goes through the requirements for a surround monitoring system, including speaker placement, the ITU standard, calibration and bass management, and then looks at the best way to record for a surround project.
He gives practical outlines and examples using both traditional mics and more specialised ones like the Soundfield and Holophone mic systems. He also looks at how the different control surfaces available, both Digidesign and third-party, work in a surround facility, and outlines different multi-channel mixing concepts using case studies, explaining how to use the Centre and LFE channels, and how to work 'to picture'.
The final case study in this section is a look at how a DVD is designed, and explains the 'data rate and bit budget' calculations that go into the design and authoring of a DVD. Rich covers in detail a broad range of surround-capable plug-ins including the Waves Bundle , Digidesign's Revibe and Sony's Oxford Dynamics , as well as software available for surround encoding and external hardware processors like the Lexicon L and the TC Electronics M units.
Chapter 11, the final chapter, looks at other applications for surround like computer games and commercials. The DVD that comes with the book includes a number of examples, of which the first 11 are short clips showing extracts and elements of surround mixes, while the last three are complete mixes.
The DVD will play on any surround receiver with a Dolby AC3 decoder, and with its accompanying written notes, is much more than an afterthought. The examples are an excellent resource, which reinforce the very practical tone that Rich takes through this entire book.
I would recommend this book to everyone who works, or plans to work in surround audio projects. Now that I've outlined the limitations of the zero and low-latency modes for Pro Tools LE , depending on which interface you are using, let's look at a range of workarounds you can use so you can run smooth sessions with happy artists.
This works without having to resort to using the zero or low-latency monitoring modes and so should be the first choice for a solution. Go to Playback Engine menu item in Setups and adjust the buffer size as low as possible; samples is a good compromise, but you will need a very fast computer and hard drive for this.
The low limit for the options for hardware buffer size are set by which hardware interface you have. The and R can work down to 64 samples on my Apple Powerbook G4 1.
This has to do with the performance of the USB buss, so for low buffer sizes to work well you need a fast computer and a Firewire interface. However if you don't have either or both of these don't despair, as there are other workarounds to go at. Also, remember that plug-ins on tracks you're monitoring and recording will be bypassed as well. However, if you can work with the headphones having the same mix as your control-room monitors and don't mind bypassing plug-ins on the track you are recording on, the latency is seriously low in this mode.
This eliminates latency altogether by routing the input signals direct to the outputs in the analogue domain, so short-circuiting the path via Pro Tools. However, you need to note that you will hear both the input direct and the signal coming back from Pro Tools in this mode, unless you mute any track you are recording on to. One snag with this is that when you come to try to overdub sections, the artist will need to hear what they have already laid down on the track.
The workaround for this is to mute the record track at the drop-in point, but you will have to do this manually, as mute automation is suspended when you record-enable a track. Taking the M Box's zero-latency concept somewhat further, you can use a separate mixer to handle monitoring.
If you're using stand-alone mic preamps, these can be split to both the Pro Tools interface and the headphone monitor, or if you're using the mixer's mic preamps, you can put Pro Tools 'in line' like we used to do with tape-based multitrack machines. This workaround is nowhere as portable as any of the others but does give you a flexible zero-latency solution.
You do need to keep your track counts down and keep the use of plug-ins to a minimum, but it is the best way to work providing you have a fast computer and fast drives. So why does audio latency happen? All of these factors can introduce timing delays. Although each delay is very small sometimes just fractions of a millisecond , they can quickly add up into quite a sizable delay.
Whenever I notice an issue with latency during recording or mixing, I always run through a few points that usually solves the issue with no further problems:. Pro Tools contains a feature called the Playback Engine , where you can adjust some internal settings to help reduce Pro Tools audio latency. Some of the settings are:. The issue of audio latency can easily be solved once you know where to look inside your computer. But the good news is that many computers these days are powerful enough and quick enough to prevent the problems linked with latency before they even start.
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