ProAudio Review - February 2009 - (Page 23)

Virtual Instruments The Pro Tools 8 virtual instruments are not scaled-down versions of separately packaged products but rather full-blown instruments that have been designed and built ground up by Digidesign’s AIR (Advanced Instrument Research) group. Boom, a retro drum machine, features a drum-machine-style pattern sequencer and offers 10 different electronic-oriented kits each with extensive sound-shaping capability. DB-33 is Digi’s Hammond B3 variation. It includes rotary speaker cabinet and tube preamp emulation as well as drawbars, variable percussion, and several tone wheel models. It doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as Native Instruments’ B4 or Logic’s EVB3, but it sounds every bit as good, and the rotary speaker emulation is amazing. The Cabinet controls allow the Tube Pre-Amp settings, the microphone placement and the rotation speed to be tweaked but best of all, separate inputs with individual level controls [External and Organ — Ed.] allow the cabinet to be used as a plug-in on an audio track. This has quickly become one of my favorite new plug-ins, as it sounds fantastic on electric guitars and vocals. Mini Grand is an acoustic grand piano that includes seven selectable piano models, with eight velocity layers per key and built-in reverb. Vacuum is a unique monophonic virtual analog synth that employs something Digi has defined as Vacuum Tube Synthesis. Its dirty, distressed look provides huge basses and smooth leads matched to its vintage-slanted sound and packed with tons of sonic character. Lastly, Xpand!2 is another virtual synthesizer plug-in that offers a ton of cool sounds. It includes 1.5 gigabytes of content; everything from keyboards to guitars, basses, drums, orchestral instruments, and rhythmic loops. Each of the five instruments is extremely high-quality, doing a superb job of adding value to the PT8 package. —Konrad Snyder done by holding the shift key before selecting and opening the desired session. Since plug-in intensive sessions often take a long time to open, this lets you quickly open a session for immediate visual inspection and audio playback (without plug-ins). Even without this feature, the speed of opening and closing sessions is drastically improved with the implementation of plug-in caching. I experimented with some long recordings and was pleased to find that file sizes up to 3.4 GB (as opposed to the previous 2 GB limit) are now supported, pro- viding longer, single file recordings. I was happy to notice that gone are the days of having to stop playback every time you want to make a change to the mix configuration. PT8 allows most common changes, including adding or removing tracks, copying inserts and sends, changing I/O routing, and re-ordering tracks, to be made on the fly. I love the selection of new effect plug-ins. Each one is usable in the real world, and surprisingly there is not a bad apple in the bunch. My favorites include Vintage Filter, Spring Reverb, February 2009 | ProAudioReview 23 http://www.sadie.com http://www.sadie.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ProAudio Review - February 2009

ProAudio Review - February 2009 Contents From Razor Slice To Mouse Click Hot Gear At Winter NAMM ’09: Studio Prioritizing Good Acoustics In Tough Times Digidesign Pro Tools 8 Allen & Heath ZED-R16 Analog Mixing Console Mike Rivers Nevaton MC Series Studio Condenser Microphones FMR Audio Really Nice Series Pre-Amp and Dynamics Modules Mojave Audio MA-201 FET Condenser Microphone Genelec 6010A and 5040A Powered Loudspeaker and Subwoofer Massey Plug-Ins De:Esser Hot Gear At Winter NAMM ’09: Live White Space Regulation: What It Means To Us Recording Live Sound Summit Church in Fort Myers, Florida Bag End P-Crystal R Loudspeaker Mark Olson & Gary Louris’ “Turn Your Pretty Name Around”

ProAudio Review - February 2009

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