Help! Pro tools can't import Aiff

[nishant]

problem solved by reinstalling everything

[Gerk]

good to hear it's working again

Mark

[luisma1972]

Ya well, someone has to be, might as well be me.  This is something I did a lot of research into and a lot of reading about in the not so distant past so it's always nice to share the geekdom with those that don't enjoy being a geek as much as I do

Mark

I think it's time to jump in 

Mark has a good point, 44.1 Khz was chosen for good reasons.
from internet: "In order to properly sample an analog signal the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem must be satisfied. In short, the sampling frequency must be greater than twice the bandwidth of the signal (provided it is filtered appropriately)." so in theory a digital 44.1 KHz system is able to reproduce a 22.5 KHz frecuency, covering with some headroom the audible frequency range.

I tested this 15 years ago with a DAT recorder and a THD meter and a oscilloscope to "see" the signal @ 20KHz there were about 0.5 THD just what the manufacturer published (the exact figure may be diferent, i was a long time ago). So, there is no good reason to go higher than that if you're mixing for a CD project.

What may occur at higher frecuencies is "Intersample Transition Distortion" but that will occur also at 48 khz (no big differece really). But that will be covered in another episode of "Geek talk". 

[Gerk]

That's what we need to do, a podcast called GeekTalk for online recording enthusiasts ... volunteers?  I can certainly contribute from time to time!

Mark

[nishant]

what when where
that would b awesome

[meekofnature]

Good to hear it's working!  If you have a session in Pro Tools at 44.1 and you try to import a file at 48, 88.2, or 96 it will in fact import it, but it detects the different sample rate and converts it.  Pro Tools doesn't like the 32 bit part though, it's only 16 and 24 bit.  That won't change until they upgrade the big-boy hardware (192, 96..etc)

Most of all the major sessions in the Nashville studios (Sony, Ocean Way, Warner Brothers, Blackbird..so on and so forth) are more often than not done at 48 and 96 these days.  I've heard a billion reasons why, including: man it just sounds better, reverb tails get preserved more, the higher frequencies you can't hear alter the ones you can hear (often serves as an argument as to why the 44.1/nyquist theorem isn't enough)...so on and so forth.  If it's going to a legit mastering facility then recording at these higher sample rates is fine and sounds great.  Keep your quality as high as possible and let the mastering guy with the killer gear down convert it.  Unless you have that luxury, then working from tracking to mixing at the same sample rate as your destination makes sense...start and finish at 44.1.  I am a huge fan of keeping the bit depth higher than 16 though... You're always going to hear a bigger difference between 24 and 16 bit than 48 and 44.1 anyday...even if you're going to wind up at 16 bit in the end anyway...or in many cases, A FREAKING IPOD!

On that same note, I read an article recently at work that addressed the common complaint of why we haven't upgraded from the CD yet.  There's been all these formats, DVD-A, SACD.... but none of these have caught on.  The conclusion of the test they did is that people (engineers and average listeners) can't hear the difference.  I'll have to see if I can find a link to the article online. 

Cheers to the GeekTalk idea, I'm all about that.

Marc

[nishant]

wasnt something like that in sound on sound once?

on a side note-which console is that in your avatar?and which studio?you an engineer?    (sorry for too many questions)

[meekofnature]

Yeah, I'm an engineer, but I make a living as a studio tech for everyone under the sun: Rascal Flatts, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Julio Iglesias, Keith Urban, Ringo Starr, NASA, Sony...   The tech thing has taken away from my engineering passion, after spending all day putting recording studios together it's tough sometimes to head into the studio to work on my own stuff!   I haven't really gotten that many decent credits as an engineer, I only got one Platinum credit: Micheal W. Smith's Healing Rain as an assistant engineer (although all I did on this session was an digital to analog 1 inch tape transfer).  I've got to work on a lot of the crap that comes through Nashville...which is a big load of country and contemporary Christian albums.  Not my cup of tea, but it was great experience as a young engineer.

The console is a Trident Series 80 B in the Cabin at Dark Horse Recording in Franklin, TN.  I did a one year internship there where I got my start.  It's a beautiful facility, but somewhat lacking in the acoustics and electrical department.  Their website is www.darkhorserecording.com. 

That picture was taken in Dark Horse after engineering a string tracking session for a song the owner of the studio wrote.... which was cool because the vocalist was Jon Anderson of Yes.  Basically they did a bunch of tracks there years before that went nowhere and were left unfinished.  My friend who got me my current job was also a intern there and is a Yes freak, so he was dying to get in on the action.  My buddy convinced the owner to let us try to finish the project for him just for the hell of it... he was very reluctant to let interns touch it, but he let us give it a shot.   So we pulled out the old radar tapes, pushed up some faders and started listening to them and they were pretty cool.  Most of the tracks were just percussion, vocals and guitar.  So we got to writing parts and crap and eventually brought in strings, drums, guitars and a bunch of crap to try to finish the project.  We did our mixes and they got sent off to Jon.  He said he really liked it but that we made it sound too much like the old Yes albums... and it went nowhere...but it was a lot of fun!  Last I heard Jon wanted to release a compilation album of unreleased tracks and was talking about using what we had done.  Lets just say I'm not holding my breath!

I've got to say doing stuff here at MCS has been a wonderful wave of fresh air.  I'm getting play music again a little bit, which is something that has almost completely died since I took the studio route 6 years ago.  It's fun to play again and thanks to Nick for creating this playland!

-Marc

[nishant]

great ! thanks for so much information 

i'm also going to be an engineer.got into SAE byron bay for the degree.yet to begin,almost at the end of this year..this is my passion as well.


good luck with your career.some great band names u mentioned.

yea MCS rocks

-Nish

[meekofnature]

Yah,
  Got me blabbin...I do that sometimes.  LOL

-Marc

[Letizia]

Most of all the major sessions in the Nashville studios (Sony, Ocean Way, Warner Brothers, Blackbird..so on and so forth) are more often than not done at 48 and 96 these days.  I've heard a billion reasons why, including: man it just sounds better, reverb tails get preserved more, the higher frequencies you can't hear alter the ones you can hear (often serves as an argument as to why the 44.1/nyquist theorem isn't enough)...

same here in many NYC studios... 48 and 96... and similar reasons.

[Gerk]

That's so odd ... everything I read all over the place said "stay native where at all possible"

Is this something that us home studio users should be aware of?  I saw mention of "if you're sending out for professional mastering" ... in other words software dither == bad?  I have hardware that's capable, but never use it in that regard (MOTU 2408mk3)

Mark

[meekofnature]

Well, for most everything we're doing here I'd highly recommend staying at 44.1.  At the very least you know what you've got to work with as you listen to it go down. 

The SRC and dithering isn't really altogether terrible in software.  What I've seen in some mastering facilities is if they get something in at lets say 96k, they're going to use killer d/a's to high end analog chain...eq, compression/limiting or whatever...  At the end of that chain they're using another killer converter and bringing it back it at 44.1.  The idea is that they're trying to make sure as much of the higher quality audio and dynamics makes it to the final version that would have never existed had it originally been tracked at 44.1.  I don't think we're talking night and day differences here. 

I'll email my mastering engineer buddy and see if he has any light to shed on this.

-Marc

[luisma1972]

....The idea is that they're trying to make sure as much of the higher quality audio and dynamics makes it to the final version that would have never existed had it originally been tracked at 44.1.  I don't think we're talking night and day differences here. 

I'll email my mastering engineer buddy and see if he has any light to shed on this.

-Marc

I do agree. Not a huge difference, I see or hear tons of people complaining about how bad a 44.1 KHz 16 file sounds, but aren't capable of telling the difference between a good mp3 from it's source. Audio is very subjective and most people get caught in the tech marketing speech. Besides, to really hear the subtle differences beyond 44.1 an higher formats you'll need a great reference monitors and a well treated enviroment. I forgot to mention great, I mean GREAT ears. 

Peace

P.S. If you want to do a "real" geek talk, I'm in. 

[Gerk]

P.S. If you want to do a "real" geek talk, I'm in. 

That's what I was thinking .. would be great to have a discussion about file formats, hardware, that end of thing .. the parts where a lot of people go white and pasty when asked about it.  I have a workflow for doing podcast stuff (Brina and I worked it out but we never did the actual podcasts) ... so if you 2 guys can setup to work with skype as well as local recording we can try and get something together .. it's just going to be tough to work out an agenda and the timing since Luis is in spain

Mark