Editors:
Mary (ISDN queen) Mazurek
and
Kathy (Splice Girl) Dunaj

Volume 16 Number 8
August, 2001

EARS meets at Sparrow Sound Design

3501 N. Southport, Chicago
(773) 281-8510
Tuesday August 28, 7:30 pm

In this Jazzfest month, we meet at this venerable, multifaceted operation that saw it's beginnings as the home of jazz musicians/recording artists/engineers/ business partners AND life partners Bradley Parker-Sparrow and Joannie Pallatto. Sporting a collection of vintage mics and processors you just gotta see, they've skillfully grown to include a well known record label and amazing list of clientele! We'll discuss their history and adaptations to the changes they've seen since rollin' their first reel in '77. A block north of the Brown Line [Ravenswood] CTA train station at Southport [1400 W.] 2 blocks south of Addison [3600 N.] on NE corner at Cornelia in safe and cozy Lakeview/Wrigleyville. It's a Cubs nite so avoid permit parking tho it's cool on the main streets. Exit LSD westbound or I-94 eastbound at Addison.
-Gary Khan-

EARS Recaps/ Appreciation File

The collaborative June meeting between EARS and AES was held at Engine Music Studios. Guest speaker Bob Katz, of Digital Domain, Altamonte Springs, FL, gave a fascinating presentation on several aspects of mastering. He spoke of the importance of metering and monitoring at consistent levels, recommending calibration at 83dB SPL. He demonstrated this with the use of software based "K Meters" (specified by Bob) and suggested the K 14 meter be used for music with limited dynamic range and the K 20 meter be used with audiophile recordings with a large dynamic range. (On the K14 meter, 0dB is 6dB hotter than on the K20 meter) He also demonstrated the use of "parallel compression" as a way to make the quiet passages sound louder without affecting the rest of the program. By blending the original program with the heavily compressed version resulted in a very smooth, transparent reduction in dynamic range without affecting the peaks. Despite fighting a flu, Bob pressed on to conclude his presentation with some of his research on jitter. He began by defining jitter as time based errors. He then stated that the problems lie "in the message, not the messenger" meaning that jitter has almost no effect on the digital transfer so long as the data could be read. The component most susceptible to jitter is the A/D converter. If the clock that drives the A/D is unstable, it can cause distortion that can't be eliminated later in the chain. In his experience, he said that there were only six A/D converters on the market that were jitter free, two of which are made by TC and Prism. (Well, he's not going to give up all his secrets. . .)

Bob has been engineering for nearly 30 years so far. He has held positions as Audio Supervisor of Connecticut Public Television, Technical Director of Audio - Chesky Records, and in 1990 started Digital Domain. His clients include The Chieftains, Johnny Frigo, Dizzy Gillespie, Arlo Guthrie, Wynton Marsalis . . . to name a few. Bob's recording "Portraits of Cuba" on Chesky Records won a Grammy in 1997 for best Latin Jazz album. He has written several articles that have appeared in Mix and the AES Journal and is currently writing a book due out at the end of the year. For more info on Bob Katz and Digital Domain, call 1-800-DIGIDO-1 or check out his web site at www.digido.com. If you would like to purchase the K metering system; for PC: Pinguin www.masterpinguin.de for Mac: Spectrafoo www.mhlabs.com. To contact Engine Music Studios: 773-772-6200 or www.enginestudios.com. And thanks all to who helped get the computer and projector running, especially Dan Stout who also gave tours of his Colossal Mastering facility after the meeting.
-Mary Mazurek-

July Appreciation: First to our V.P. who, besides her other hats as EARS co-editor and now Naras-Chicago "Govenah", hosted our July meeting and secured her home court - 25 year old Sound/Video Impressions. That's nearly as old as she, right ? Their Pro Control equipped "Studio A" control room provided an excellent forum for our "topic-o-the-nite". She even roped in our esteemed area Pro Tools rep, normally swamped "Swami" Jeff Komar, who regaled us with practical tips, tricks, news and demonstrations we EARS pro's need sans the sales hype. Thank you, Jeff, for continued support of EARS and our craft. Since your days at Full Compass, you always gave straight answers or followed up when others "punted" their replies.

Finally to SVI partners, Bill Holtane and Paul Snead who generously fed and "watered" our summer-sweaty herd. They also continue to donate label stock and use of their formidable graphics infrastructure in support of this very rag! FYI: SVI offers audio and video production, graphics, shoots, "trusty old" cassette duplication and red-book CD replication.

Thanx to Joan Hammel for yer dues and to those of you delinquents who are looking for your checkbooks as you read this! Suggested donations of $15/year, tho many of us kick in more when we can or have in the past like "mysterious" Mike Konopka, "curious" Mary & I, "Dandy" Don Morris and "travelin" Timmy Powell, to name a few, who dug in our smelly pockets when EARS coffers were anemic.
-Gary Khan-

Here's some notes on the evening contributed by Jeff Komar. EARS attendees at Sound/Video Impressions were treated to an evening of demonstration featuring Pro Tools 24 Mix Plus running version 5.1.1 software and equipped with an expanded Pro Control tactile interface. I demonstrated a number of the new software features in 5.1(.1) including Tab to Peak Transient, Beat Detective, Strip Silence, and Import Tracks. I also showed a number of signal processing plug-ins available for the various Pro Tools formats (TDM, AudioSuite & RTAS) including Pitch 'n Time from Serato, Analog Channel from McDSP and Reverb1 from Digidesign.

Tab to transient allows you to easily jump (tab) to the sample just before a peak transient occurs in the audio material. This is great for editing drums, VO or sound effect elements. Strip Silence allows a user to globally remove the silence between audio chunks based on a user set threshold and pad. This is a very helpful feature in assisting with the monotonous task of removing ambient noise, breaths, and headphone or instrument bleed in a recording. Beat Detective is a tool for conforming audio to a specific tempo, groove & feel. It is included with 5.1 TDM systems and helps correct musicians (great for percussion) who are having trouble keeping the beat by detecting bars, beats and sub-beats in the audio material and conforming to fit a given tempo. Pitch 'n Time (AudioSuite) is a Time-Compression/Expansion and Pitch Shifting tool which I used to time compress a percussion loop to fit the session's existing tempo. It can also be used in the Morph mode to change the pitch or timing of just one note or element out of a performance. This is very useful for singers who are having a rough day or engineer's spotting a long post session. Sometimes time compression algorithms leave a lot to be desired. Pitch 'n Time is one of the most transparent tools out there for stretching or expanding a bed of stereo music to fit a time requirement.

Next up for discussion, the application and operation of Digidesign's Pro Control. Pro Control is a modular and expandable digital control surface add-on for Pro Tools TDM systems which offers precision touch sensitive faders, a comprehensive control room section, and dedicated editing and signal processing sections. The main unit can be expanded with fader packs or by a module called Edit Pack featuring 2 motorized surround panners, QWERTY keyboard and trackball, editing specific buttons & a dedicated machine control section. Since it's connected via Ethernet it works as fast as you can. Automate every move and update it instantly. EQ, effects, panning, sends, level, can all be controlled via Pro Control. It even inherits its control personality by automatically downloading new software/firmware as Pro Tools feature set grows and versions change. And since it uses standard Ethernet, you can run hundreds of feet and it can coexist peacefully in a LAN environment. Pro Control allows you to work faster and smarter in Pro Tools.

For more information about these products visit the Digidesign website.
www.digidesign.com
-Jeff Komar-

Laying Up 101
by: Kathy Dunaj

Locking up audio and video can be somewhat of a challenge. When SVI purchased a Pro Tools Mix Plus System, I had to learn how to lock PT 5.1 with our current system, which I will share with you. I have been a Sonic Solutions user for a long time, so now I have the best of both worlds. I can say that they are equally conducive to post production, and sure beat locking up the 24 track with the Adams Smith Synchronizer (yikes!, those were the slow old days).

Here's my setup. House sync (video black burst) has been run about 200 feet from our video department to my machine room, which feeds the betacam deck, the USD (Universal Slave Driver) and the Sony 7030 time code DAT machine. Digidesign suggests you feed all machines from the same house sync source. Believe me this will allow perfect sync locking dead on every time, it was worth lugging the cable. Time code is also run from our video department patchbay through tie lines, and sent to the USD LTC (Longitudinal Time Code) IN and the 7030 IN. When generating time code, I have learned in the video world, that the betacam master is always the Master and the DAW or DAT machine is always the Slave, this seems to work fine all the time.

I have my own paranoid rule which I stand by 99% of the time, and that is to have the betacam master in my hands at least a day before the session. Obviously this can be impossible. I always layup the audio (to PT), stripe time code (to the 7030, because this is what I will mix to later) and watch the entire program to make sure it locks perfectly (while listening to PT phase with the beta master). You never know what quality you will get from other sources, and this gives me added assurance that the session will go well. Don't wing it, be prepared!

The first thing I do is decide whether the master is drop frame or non-drop frame. Remember this tech tip? "What's the difference between drop and non-drop frame time code? Drop frame "drops" 2 frames every minute (except the 10th, 20th, 30th, etc...). This is so broadcast clocks stay accurate to time code over 24 hour days. All you need to be aware of is whether your source and or destination is drop frame or non-drop frame. It is never a good idea to mix them. A very general guideline is broadcast projects tend to be drop frame, most others tend to be non-drop frame." -Paul Snead, Partner, Sound/Video Impressions. All machines need to be set to the correct matching frame rate. This can be accessed in the PT Session Setup window and also changed in the menu of the 7030.

The next step is to prepare PT for the actual layup and make sure you are receiving stable time code with no annoying bleed. For this reason, time code is patched through a separate patchbay to avoid this problem. The goal is to record the audio from the betacam master. PT will read the incoming time code and time stamp the audio with reference to the betacam time code. In PT under the Setup pull down menu is Peripherals. Make sure all preferences are set correctly. Under Synchronization the Device is USD, and Port is DigiSerial.

I bought the Machine Control option (which allows PT to control various decks, in this case PT controls the betacam deck via a 9 pin serial connection), so enable 9 pin serial and choose the correct port. I have it connected to P#2USA... (a Keyspan USB to Serial adapter) and PT will automatically choose your (betacam) machine type if it is one it can recognize. Also enable Use Serial Time Code for Positional Reference- in the Machine Control/Peripherals dialog for faster machine lock.

Back to the Session Setup window. This is where you can choose your sampling rate, sync mode: internal, session start time (usually beta tapes start at 00:59:00:00:00, with tone for 30 seconds and then the actual show starting at 01:00:00:00:00...FYI, hours, minutes, seconds, frames, subframes.) Continue setting preferences; frame rate, you can choose to generate time code using the USD, but we are slaving for this example; Time Code freewheel is selected to 8 frames which prevents time code drop outs if your code is interrupted; Sample pull up or down is not used because we are recording at a straight 44.1 or 48 kHz; Clock reference is set to Video Reference and Positional Reference is LTC.

After checking all those preferences we can move on to the actual layup which we will record directly into a new session that has been named and record armed. Quick tip: make yourself a template with all these settings saved to easily start a new session.

• Roll betacam master and make sure the time code numbers match on PT and the actual window burn of the beta.
• Set audio levels. Hopefully there is plenty of bars and 1 kHz tone so you can set levels and have time to lock up.
• Rewind to the beginning of beta master, and be sure to be cued at least 20 seconds before tone starts.
• On transport of PT select "Pro Tools" (because we want to record into PT not the betacam or "Machine") and arm the record button.
• On the transport panel, select the upper left clock icon. In the lower left corner window of PT it will read: waiting for sync.
• On the transport panel hit play and the betacam will start, PT will lock and record. On the transport panel the upper left clock icon should glow steady to let you know all is well. In the lower left corner window of PT it will read: record in sync.

Record the entire program into PT and then bring up the outputs of PT and the betacam master through the console and listen to it in mono. It should sound phasy. If it doesn't there is a problem and you can usually fix it by offsetting the audio to phase to the betacam master. However, it should lock with the initial layup, and if it doesn't you may have a serious problem...start by checking preferences again and do the layup over. Good Luck!

Special thanks to Jeff Komar for his helpful technical insight.

Who have you been working with lately? We want to know! If you have any ideas for stories, wish to contribute an article, want to include any upcoming events, or have a tech tip, please contact:

Mary at pegasusrecording@ameritech.net. Or write to:
Peagasus Recording P.O Box 578903, Chicago, IL 60657.

Kathy can be reached at SVI, or
kathy@soundvideoimpressions.com.