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Edit Expertise: Audio Chops

Jan 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Gary Eskow

Four professional training resources to move your skills to the next level.

Pro Tools Overdrive!

By Matt Donner
Thomson Course Technology PTR
www.courseptr.com
Book/$39.99

Unless you've been vacationing on Saturn for the last decade or so, you know that Digidesign Pro Tools has become the de facto digital audio workstation of choice in the audio for video world. In the last several years, Avid has released versions of Pro Tools across the price point spectrum.

One of three books in the Thomson Course Technology (TCT) catalog that deals with Pro Tools, Pro Tools Overdrive!, offers the user a series of tips and tricks. This book addresses both the novice and expert user in a breezy, but highly informative manner. It starts by covering basic disk organization, and proceeds to show the reader ways to get the cleanest voiceover tracks, maximize Pro Tools' somewhat limited MIDI component, and achieve the best possible mix.

Author Matt Donner is clearly a seasoned Pro Tools user, and not a writer who has been assigned a task. His real-world experience (how to maximize digital signal processing when your resources are limited, for example) shines through in every chapter. As the author points out in his introduction, there are generally several different ways to accomplish a Pro Tools task, and one of his goals is to show you the quickest way to get around a problem. Wisely, he has enlisted a number of other specialists; the input they provide rounds out the tutorial nicely.

It would have been helpful to have a companion CD available for purchase. Many of the solutions Donner offers — inserting room tone into a voiceover track that has unnatural-sounding gaps, for example — are well explained. However, some users would benefit from pulling audio from a CD into a Pro Tools session and executing the task while following the text.

Absynth 3 Tutorial DVD

Hosted by Brian Smith
www.ni-absynth.com
DVD/$59

Ah, Absynth. Now in its third release version, Native Instruments Absynth stands among the legions of hardware and software that have tremendous expressive possibilities, but secrets that are not easily unlocked, particularly if you don't hold a doctorate from Stanford.

Native Instruments is known for making some of the coolest-sounding soft synths on the market. Unfortunately, the company is equally famous for releasing thin manuals and having a difficult-to-reach tech support team. Heir to the ancient Korg M1 and Roland D50, Absynth offers a hundred times more sound design potential. It is widely used in film scores, and can be used to create unearthly textures that can bring post projects to life. But can you ever figure out how to program your own Absynth patches?

Yes, thanks to this extremely thorough DVD tutorial. Narrated by Brian Smith, Absynth 3 Made Easy takes the user through all of Absynth's parameters, including envelopes, where a huge amount of Absynth's power lies.

The DVD does not ship with any accompanying written materials, but that's OK. In fact, I felt as though I was back at Albany State University, taking notes in a lecture hall along with a couple of hundred fellow students — but this time I actually paid attention.

If you're able to load up this DVD on one computer and the plug-in on another, so much the better; an artful use of the pause button and you're following right along with Smith, who speaks clearly and reassuringly.

My big gripe with Absynth 3 Made Easy centers around a playback malfunction that occurred repeatedly: the loss of audio. Often when I stopped the DVD and selected another chapter for playback, audio dropped out completely, and I had to restart the video (which takes about a minute) and hope that the problem wouldn't occur the next time. This was a drag, but the material is so thorough and beautifully presented that I didn't mind. If you're a fan of this tremendous plug-in and would like to know how to unlock its expressive potential, this DVD is a must-have.

Cubase SX3 Tutorial 3 Pack

Hosted by Steve Kostrey
www.askvideo.com
DVD series/$120

Askvideo, now celebrating its third anniversary, is run by Steve Kostrey, the voice behind the Cubase SX3 Tutorial three-pack DVDs. The company has just released a tutorial on Apple Garage Band as part of a series that covers Digidesign Pro Tools, Logic, and other audio applications, so our review is for those of you who use SX3 and those readers who use other products in the Askvideo tutorial universe.

I recently converted to Steinberg Cubase SX3 from MOTU Digital Performer, an excellent DAW that, unfortunately, is not bi-platform. When I decided to make the PC my main music platform, I had to make a change. Step by step, Kostrey takes us through SX3, and much of what he has to say will be helpful to users of Nuendo and other Steinberg DAWs as well.

Of all the functions associated with a digital recording application, file management is probably the most critical, and often it's an area where we become confused. Kostrey explains how to record, cut up and reassemble, and save audio files in a clear fashion. I couldn't find any corner of SX3 that he failed to cover that any user couldn't understand, and he shares his expertise without a trace of pandering. I give this tutorial set very high marks, and urge those who use other platforms to keep an eye on the evolving line of Askvideo tutorials.

If you don't feel you can spring for the full six-hour-plus package, all three DVDs of the Cubase SX3 Tutorial three-pack can be purchased individually, or in pairs. If you really want to explore Cubase SX3, and can afford it, I'd recommend that you buy all three volumes.

Production Mixing Mastering With Waves

By Anthony Egizii
www.sound.org
Book/$80

This book is a perfect example of how tutorial materials can dramatically help a user get more out software. All of the major DAWs offer some of the tools that Waves offers — including compressors, equalizers, and reverb plug-ins — but Waves is widely regarded as having some of the best (certainly not the cheapest) plug-in packages on the market. This company's products are widely used in audio post as well as recording studios.

Author Anthony Egizii is a composer and engineer, and he knows what he's doing when it comes to contemporary music. This book, and the companion DVDs that ship with it, take the user through a series of popular music styles. For each of the of styles (dance, R&B, country rock, and punk rock), a song complete with audio files, ready to be loaded on either a PC- or Mac-based workstation, is included.

I'm an old-school guy, so I really appreciate having a textbook to refer to — especially one that's as well written as this one. I tore through it from cover to cover to start out, making notes in the margins as I went along, then I loaded the dance song, “One and Only,” into Cubase SX3. Everything looked fine.

But none of the plug-ins were available, and it took some time for Waves tech support to figure out why. This book ships with timed demos of all the plug-ins that the songs use, but I already own them and use the VST versions on my dual Opteron. This caused a problem with the SuperTap and TrueVerb plug-ins, which were looking for Direct X versions. Waves emailed me a VST-only sequence of this song and “Call On Me,” the other song that manifested this problem, and everything was fine, but you should be aware of this issue — and so should Waves. I spent several hours sorting through things, and that shouldn't be necessary.

The book assumes that you have a song up and running, and takes you through mixing theory and practice. You solo individual tracks, study the settings on each plug-in, and then listen to them in context with plug-ins muted and then placed in-line to hear the effect they have on an individual track and the entire song. The audio is pristine, the mixes are excellent, and Waves' products shine. This product is a must-have for anyone considering the purchase of Waves plug-ins.

My only criticism is that there are no audio post examples, despite the fact that Waves has a great presence in our industry. Developing post engineers would benefit from a lesson in how to use a noise reduction plug-in to eliminate unwanted hum from an audio clip poorly recorded in the field, for example. Despite this limitation, I highly recommend this book to audio post engineers as well as those who work in the recording industry.

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© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.