EQ Magazine - September 2007 - (Page 38)

THE SOFTWARE POWER USER GUIDE surprised at how much your graphics card can affect audio performance). Keyboard Shortcuts — the Easy Way. Although some people believe that using a mouse is faster than keyboard shortcuts, I don’t agree. But the problem with keyboard shortcuts is programs include so many of them, and frankly, it’s not easy to remember what “Ctrl+Shift+Alt+7” stands for. So, many people just give up, and bumble around with the mouse. Instead, print out the list of available key commands and highlight those for functions that you use a lot. Pick one to learn, and use it every time you need to accomplish that particular function. When you’ve mastered that shortcut, learn another one. Keep adding shortcuts to your repertoire until you’ve learned the most important ones. Also, note that being able to customize shortcuts is a wonderful thing, as you can devise a “Rosetta Stone” of shortcuts that perform the same functions in every program you use. processing power; sorry, but you’re not going to get 412,574 tracks out of any host program! The reality is that past a certain point, your computer will simply not be able to pull any more audio tracks off of a hard drive, nor have the CPU power to process them. But there are also programs with limited track counts, and these tend to be “lite” versions of bigger programs. For example, while Pro Tools LE and MPowered (“LE”) can open sessions with up to 128 tracks, only 32 mono (16 stereo) tracks can play back simultaneously. Installing the Music Production Toolkit (reviewed 5/07) allows playing back up to 48 mono or stereo tracks at once, but you might still need more. The answer to getting additional tracks is the same as it was back in the days when people were desperately trying to squeeze another track or two out of their 4-, 8-, and 16-track analog recorders: bouncing, also called premixing. But matters are much better in the digital age, because you can premix without the generation loss (specifically, noise and distortion) inherent in analog. And also unlike analog, where premixing usually meant erasing tracks that could never be recovered, with many digital programs you can save the tracks you bounced, thus letting you bring them back into the project and try another bounce if things didn’t go right the first time. (Or in the case of Pro Tools LE/M-Powered, you can take advantage of the 128 tracks per session limit to store the disabled, original source tracks after you’ve completed the bounce.) Speaking of Pro Tools LE, let’s use it to illustrate how bouncing can save your session, and possibly, your sanity in those situations where you need more tracks than you have. Suppose you have an LE session with eight tracks left, and you decide a “Roy Thomas Baker” type of background vocal sound is really what the song needs. Trouble is, RTB sometimes recorded over 70 tracks of background vocals to get those huge parts on the Cars and Queen albums. Here’s the solution. 1. Record eight background vocal parts on the eight remaining tracks. 2. Use the Voice Selector buttons (located directly below each of the faders on the LE mixer window) to temporarily disable the audio playback of two relatively unimportant tracks (e.g., shakers). The buttons are normally gray and labeled “dyn” — the default dynamic voice allocation setting, and turn blue and say BEATING TRACK COUNT LIMITATIONS It’s not uncommon for programs to claim “unlimited track count. Of course, that’s ” in a land where computers have unlimited Fig. 4: Here’s how to treat an external piece of hardware as a track insert effect in Cubase.The VST Connections window is where you create a send bus that routes signal to the effect (in this case, through an E-mu 1820m interface output to a PODxt), as well as bring it back into the host sequencer through a return bus. In front of that window, the VST Audio Channel settings window shows the PODxt inserted as an insert effect. The frontmost window, Insert Edit, lets you adjust the Send and Return gain as well as “ping” (send a test signal through) the signal path. Cubase uses that data to compensate for the delay caused by going out through the interface and back again. 38 EQ SEPTEMBER 2007 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - September 2007

Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly Ben and Vesper Kaiser Chiefs Toolbox Ozma Porcupine Tree Rush The Software Power User Guide Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drumheads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Chameleon Labs TS1 and TS2 Primera Bravo Se Disc Publisher Roland MC-808 Magix Samplitude Professional 9.1 Massey Tape-Head Big Fish Audio Revolucion Reggaeton Sonivox World Beats Sony Pocket Diva Adobe Audition 2.0 Cakewalk Sonar 6 Room with a VU: J Street Recorders, Sacramento, CA

EQ Magazine - September 2007

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