AudioMedia - January 2009 - (Page 48)

Revolutionary. Epoch-changing. A technical achievement deserving of high praise indeed. MIKE AITON finds Source-Connect 3.1 is just audio alchemy to his ears. n this festive season, I find myself beside my crackling fire and writing my audio wish list to Santa. I find myself asking to be rid of low bandwidth high latency, high cost ISDN, and the nightmare of the incompatibility of ISDN Codecs. I find myself dreaming of remote broadcast audio without the nightmare of latency delay testing when trying to do remote ADR, and of having near sample accuracy. I dream of being able to connect worldwide at the touch of a button to a linked Pro Tools session in a far away land… a new era in global broadcasting… and then, as the cat trips up over Grandma quietly overdosing on satsumas in the I Worthy of a mention is that Source-Connect will happily work (as it is an RTAS plug in) using Pro Tools LE or M power – even with remote transport sync. How cool is that? The Source-Connect plug in, cleverly implementing Rewire technology, is smart enough to work out any latency and auto offset when you hit ‘play’. The net effect is that when you hit ‘play’ using Remote-TransportSync, your remote talent’s Pro Tools session moves too. Your remote talent does their ADR to their picture/guide audio perfectly in sync with their pictures, and when SOURCE ELEMENTS SOURCE CONNECT 3.1 Audio Contribution Tool corner, I wake up. It’s here, it’s now, and it’s even better than I ever dreamt of. I haven’t had so much fun in years. I have had sessions with full duplex stereo (i.e., sent and received simultaneous stereo) at Kb/sec each way (as good as a cable to most ears!) between Mikerophonics (my studio) in Twickenham, and Andy Morris at Buzzy’s Recording in Los Angeles (premier LA voice over studio), merrily controlling each others transports and dancing up and down the timeline, whilst watching simultaneous local pictures, and best of all, it cost me nothing! Stick that up your ISDN pipe (bad pun) and smoke it! By way of a recap, as SourceConnect has been previously reviewed in this publication in February , this epoch-changing RTAS software plug in for Pro Tools, Audio Units, and VST was created by the team at Source Elements, founded by two audio engineers, John Binder and Robert Marshall. Source-Connect was first released in March and allowed real time audio connection with broadcast audio quality using a high quality, very low latency AAC codec between two Pro Tools sessions over the Internet. As if this wasn’t enough, in April , version . was previewed at NAB with the following new features; Stereo, Multi Connect, higher bit rates of up to kbps; timecode support, and a very fair rent-to-own option (where once you have rented the plug in enough times up to the cost of the plug in, you then own it!). December saw the release of Source-Connect . ; which is where the fun really started. And, if you weren’t paying attention in the back row up till now, you really need to be (WAKE UP!), as this version allowed the Remote Transport Sync feature to control the remote Pro Tools session. Remote synchronisation over the Internet? Black magic! And not a clumsy synchroniser or a timecode stream in sight. ADR or overdubs over the Internet are now very viable without all that tedious working out of offsets and the consequent sync roulette of, ‘is it in sync? Is it the offset or the performance?’. the clean audio take arrives at your Pro Tools session, it will be perfectly in sync with your Pro Tools pictures/ audio (accurate to six samples); as your plug-in has chased the remote end and auto-calculated the required offset. You have to see it to believe it – impressive stuff! Synchronisation takes place almost instantaneously – none of that four second LTC lock up, or gnarly wrestling with nine-pin synchronisers, or hoping one of your three ISDN codecs isn’t going to burp or hiccup, or have a telecom tantrum and come out of lock. There are two modes of Remote Transport Sync, which are subtly different dependent on who is sending the audio and therefore who needs to offset to receive it: ) Remote ADR mode is where you have talent in a remote location and your producer is sitting with you, and you wish to receive the audio from the talent. You will effectively control the remote session’s transport. Having selected ‘Send’ in the RTS panel, and the remote studio having selected ‘Receive’ (i.e., you now control the transport), you send them a play command (using the RTS play button in the plug in transport section). The remote end goes into play, and you lock to their transport (with a cunningly worked out offset) so that you lock to the talent’s outgoing audio – i.e., your ADR incoming audio is frame accurate. This is somewhat analogous to chase locking to an attached ninepin machine (whose transport you control), which is something we all do day in and day out. Two R oads, S ame G oal 48 AUDIO MEDIA JANUARY 2009

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AudioMedia - January 2009

AudioMedia - January 2009 Contents Recording News Post News Broadcast News Geo Focus: India What's Up UK? Special Report: Pimp My Ride AKG C214 Sony Acid Pro 7.0 Final Cut: Mirror's Edge Opportunities in the Reality World She's Got the Look The X-Factor Sadie LRX2 Source Elements Source-Connect 3.1 Buying a Recorder In Control Product Sampler: Trade Shows Video Guide AMSR News Digico SD8 The Last Picture Show File Server

AudioMedia - January 2009

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