What production tools do you use....

Bobby Watson · **on:** June 13, 2006, 10:02:10 AM

I guess this question comes up sooner or later on all these sites..
It's good to know what kind of environments folks are working with.

I know lots of folks on CC and even on my own use N-Track.. I suppose for what it does, and the price, it will stay popular. I installed it a couple of times to get a picture of what people were working with. And, to try to understand more of what they were talking about when they referred to it.. However, it didn't get along very well on any of my DAW's with my existing software.

But, without getting too long winded, personally, for mixing audio, I use Adobe Audition.. Sequencing work, I use a combination of XGWorks (because of my Yamahas'), Voyetra Record Producer, and Reason...

So, is there a "norm" here?

BW@

NickT · **Reply #1 on:** June 13, 2006, 10:48:38 AM

My DAW is Sonar 5 PE. I've been with cakewalk since the dos days.

I have "tried" the majority of DAW software for the same reason, to get an understanding of what people were talking about.

I am a "go with what you know" person!

NickT

BassPlayer · **Reply #2 on:** June 13, 2006, 01:43:52 PM

I use the popular NickT mastering suite.

Seriously I'm a Sonar 5PE user.
I use Goldwave from time to time.

Sharpola · **Reply #3 on:** June 13, 2006, 02:17:47 PM

Same as Nick, been using Cakewalk forever.
Acid rewired through Sonar for drums (very cool if you use Drums on Demand)
Soundforge for misc tweaking & editing

Ray

NickT · **Reply #4 on:** June 13, 2006, 02:56:29 PM

Quote from: Sharpola on June 13, 2006, 02:17:47 PM

Same as Nick, been using Cakewalk forever.
Acid rewired through Sonar for drums (very cool if you use Drums on Demand)
Soundforge for misc tweaking & editing

Ray

Ray - Are you using Acid for your DOD loops? I just drop them into Sonar.

Nick

Sharpola · **Reply #5 on:** June 13, 2006, 03:04:18 PM

I like using rewired Acid because I can try different loops on the fly, not to mention editing.. when writing drums I can be in Acid and Sonar will slave as I add or edit

Once in a while I'll have a sync problem which will cure if I start the tune a little ways in, other than that I wish I had these toys 15 years ago

Ray

Bobby Watson · **Reply #6 on:** June 13, 2006, 03:29:36 PM

I use rewire in Audition to Reason, for the same purposes... It allows me to edit on the fly... And, helps to overcome one deficiency in Reason (sort of). That's the fact that Reason does not do tempo changes....
Rewire is a good tool... And, more products are beginning to include the ability...
BW@

Gerk · **Reply #7 on:** June 13, 2006, 04:04:13 PM

I'm the complete rebel, being a mac user and all LOL

I use Digital Performer 5 ( http://www.motu.com/products/software/dp/features50/ )

I use it for mostly everything. Great midi environment within it -- in fact one of the best I've had the opportunity to use. Really awesome for soundtrack work (which Real Life has given me the opporunity to do more of recently). About the only thing I don't do with it is actual wave editing, for which I use an old app byt T.C. Eletronics called Spark. Sadly they stopped supporting it a while back, and the project it turned into (Quatro) is not as nice and doesn't fit my needs. I've tried Bias Peak on several occasions, having purchased a full license of it once. Long story short, after 5 weeks of hell, about $200 worth of long distance calls to their tech support and a lot of overall stress (like it crashing, hopelessly corrupting the current files that were open, random pops and static throughout everything --- none of which tech support had any solutions for) I got my money back from them and don't use their products any more.

I used Steinberg products for many years starting at Nuendo 1.0 ... but again the bugs in that environment, which i somehow ALWAYS triggered, were too much for me. That and the fact that I had bugs open with their developers that stayed open for literally years (yes almost 3 years for one of them) that never got fixed. Their bug fix approach is "buy the new version , it will work better". After them promising for 2+ years to properly support my hardware at the time (Yamaha DSP factory cards -- which they claimed were fully supported all along but weren't) and then them finally just outright dropping support on that hardware without ever delivering what they promised the first time around ended my multi year run with their products (and about $2500 in purchases and upgrades to them in the process across 3 different products).

Am I Bitter? YES hehehe. That said Digital Performer is the total opposite of both those experiences, have nothing but good things to say about their products, support and pricing!

Mark

dogbizkits · **Reply #8 on:** July 12, 2006, 06:28:58 PM

Hey, Mark.... you old MAC rebel.... DP is most likely to be the way I'll go in the future. I've always considered this product amongst the best - and the reviews seem to bear that out. Unfortunately for us PC based DAW users, DP (at the moment) is only available for the MAC - so unless there's a change there, I may end up with a MAC myself if funds allow. I have a confession to make though, Mark...... the force is strong - and I may join the rebellion !!!!

For the moment, I use a very cut-down W2000 Pro O/S because XP just takes over, is full of stuff that your audio PC doesn't want (or need) for a DAW - and as a result, I feel I've a more solid / stable box to work from. Cubase SX is what I use to mixdown on and automation is used regularly. On the production gear side of things, I have 2 TC Powercore 2's in the cubase box and outside it there's a range of the "usual" rack gear that can be used for various puropses. For example, I sometimes use a TL Audio 8 channel tube pre amp for drums (works great on good digital tracks) just to give a different feel to the kit. Sometimes, I'll take vocal tracks out of the digital domain and them into a TL Audio 5051 MK2 - again to give a different feel and better mix placement of the main vocal. Yes, tubes can be very useful for digital. My MOTU 24IO deserves special credit though because it's just so flexible as a "production" mixdown interface as well as being used for 24 track live recording. As evidenced by the TC Powercores, I'm a bit of a TC Electronics fan, I also have the TC Finalizer 96K mastering processor and a pair of TC / Dynaudio BM6A (active) monitors to present the sound to my ears. It's just a question of using the appropriate "tool" at the pre-production stage if necessary and letting the Powercores do their thing. I tend not to use the "Finalizer" on the mixdown to produce a "mastered" sound there-and-then. The preference is to use it after the mix has settled into the "final" mix. I've seen some bad press on the TC Finalizer - but this generally comes from people who have not spent enough time learning how to use it. For sure it's not an "instant fix" tool - but when used intelligently on decent audio signals, it can make a pleasing enhancement. And, finally, my ending note would be that in all collaborative works, the final "production" can only be as good as the quality of the mastertracks. No amount of high-end gear will make a poorly recorded set of tracks into a sonic masterpiece. So, there you have it.... that's the way I go about things.

Rab

Gerk · **Reply #9 on:** July 12, 2006, 06:33:14 PM

I'm really curious to see what Apple debuts for the Intel pro desktop solution ... this could drastically change things

Would be great to have your hardware all installed in a unit that could boot both OSX and XP ... and allow you to use your hardware in either! It's not far off, and this is the way things will end up in my studio without a doubt.

I have Sonar on my intel mac mini and it runs wonderfully (thanks to the audio driver update apple released today hehe). Sadly can't add PCI cards to it, but for a tiny little machine man does it smoke! Intel Core Duo 1.6Ghz ... packs a big punch for a little machine. Makes my old XP2800+ windows workstation look bad hehe.

Mark

Cary · **Reply #10 on:** July 19, 2006, 11:32:33 AM

What production tools do I use?

Right now, I run three 'critical' pieces of software. N-track 3.x, Samplitude 6.0, and Cool Edit 2000.

I do all my mixing in N-track, Mastering and some noise reduction in Samplitude, and detailed wav edits in Cool Edit. Cool Edit lets you do sample level waveform edits, which are useful if you need to correct a digital over or other transient noise.

There was a time when I had resolved in my mind to do all my mixing in Samplitude. As far as the pros say, it has one of the best sounding summing out of the bunch. Consequently, the summing is not my weakest link so I've went back to N-track about a year ago. I believe the editing in N-track is superior as well as the fader automation editing. I've since upgraded my A/d converters and still have yet to discern the quality difference between N-track and Samplitude.

I still believe Samplitude does an awesome job for the mastering process. Now when I say mastering, I'm not just speaking of the eq and limiting, I'm speaking of the stuff you need to do when putting a (multiple song) CD master together for replication.

I only use a handful of shareware plugs for 95 percent of my processing. Anwida reverb, Glassverb, Blueline compressor and delay. I have one plug which I paid for - Voxengo Elephant which I use during mastering. Well, two paid plugs - I have Autotune and use it regularly, but clients don't like to heard that I needed to tune their vocal. I have a version of Ozone 2 which the company gave me as a think you for some testing I did. I don't use it any longer. I have HarBal but mostly use it for hints when trying to fix a mix I feel needs large amount of EQ adjustment. On a good mix, Harbal can easily do more harm than good - IMO.

More about Autotune - I've used it to fix parts other than vocal. I can remember three specific instances: I had a bass guitar track supplied for a mix and it seems the guitar was completely flat to the rest of the band. There was no way to re-track the bass so I was able to bring the whole part up to pitch. I had another situation with a flute part which was flat on a few notes. I believe the instrument needed some work. I used graphic mode and tuned the offending notes. Another one was a lead guitar solo where the guy hit a few bad notes. Once again, re-tracking was extremely inconvenient, so I moved three or four notes in graphic mode.

I have a few other tricks I use. I have a freeware plug called Dyno-2 which is basically a tape saturation emulation. It works great on rhythm guitar, piano, and drums. I also use Izotope vinyl for low-fi stuff. Either I'll use the plug to degrade echo returns or even run it on vocal tracks. The trick is to just use the eq alteration of the plug. The pops and click stuff (which makes it sound like a record) seems to be a fad that has faded.

ootle · **Reply #11 on:** July 29, 2006, 07:31:52 PM

Mac, Pro Tools LE, digi002, Reason, Altiverb (now I believe also available for 'other' platforms, get it: it's Dutch!!! and its GOOOOOOD!!!!), Ozone, Mindprint Envoice, and my main mic is a Studio Projects C3. This and a lot of crap and bits of scrap I never use. Missinvestments, now that would make a cool new thread, I'll start one right away!!!!
Main Plugins:
Amplitube2 (VERY cpu-heavy, but VERY good, I think)
Ozone
PSP vintage
Altiverb
FXpansion VST/RTAS converter
Aptrigga2 (check it out!!!: http://apulsoft.ch/aptrigga/index.php this is a bang for the buck deal, it's a very good soundreplacer, one of my most used plugins. Not to replace, but to fatten drums up.

teledork · **Reply #12 on:** August 05, 2006, 09:32:52 AM

I'm using Cubase 2sx to track on these days. I still use n-tracks 3.3 to mix on, but the Cubase gives me midi implementation I can actually use. I've got the Waves Platinum series of plugs, but try to limit my use of them by getting the sound I really want before going to the mix-down stage. I *will* use plugs for things, but try not to go overboard.

anyway...I mix in n and generally throw stuff into Sound Forge for wave editing, mastering and burning. I've had decent success with this setup since I got the Audigy 2zs card in my computer.

I use a CAD sdc for acoustic guitar, and a cheapo MXL 990 ldc for most other stuff. Electrics go generally go through a Behringer V-amp II, although if I want to be really tweaky and my kids aren't at home I mic up my old '57 Valco Oahu amp.