I’ve been waiting for the near-ubiquitous ExpressCard slot on laptops to see some audio goodness, so one of the more welcome announcements of NAMM is that there’s now finally an ExpressCard-enabled version of the Universal Audio platform. The UAD is a DSP platform for computers, with an emphasis on high-quality, boutique mastering and effects plug-ins, including some recent, familiar emulations of classic Roland and Moog gear. UA’s stuff really does sound great, and host support has been improving (look for the key words “latency compensation” in your host of choice). So it’s about time that laptop users get in on some of the fun the desktop users have had.

The surprise is, the UAD-2 SOLO doesn’t cost that much – $500 includes the card plus the “1176SE Compressor/Limiter, Pultec EQP-1A Equalizer, RealVerb Pro Room Modeler, and CS-1 Channel Strip.” That’s a premium over native plug-ins, but then you have access to other UA plugs later on. In other news, Antares and Manley Labs signed onto UA’s platform, so more stuff is coming.

And by the way, while the forums rip into the choice of DAW, this stuff will work everywhere – even, via RTAS, Pro Tools.

Universal’s stuff isn’t for everyone, but I’m pleased that laptop users are getting something more out of a slot on their machine. (You’ll find ExpressCard on most PCs and the MacBook Pro, as well.) I hope this is the first of more hardware to come.

http://www.uaudio.com/

Mastering – spoiled for choice? This means in mastering choices, you’ve got the UAD, IK’s T-RackS 3 announced at the end of last year, and iZotope’s Ozone 4 announced at NAMM. I’ll be talking to some folks in New York who know something about mastering (i.e., are not me). (One of them is a big Cubase fan, so I expect he’ll also be all over Cubase 5 – and he makes records that make real money, whereas I make records that go nicely with experimental modern dance.)

Each of these products goes a different direction, but the honest truth is almost any DAW will start you out with a pretty great selection of effects tools, and for a small chunk of change, you can add on with something like the UAD, T-RackS, and iZotope. None of this changes your actual skill level or the quality of your ears, but it does help keep your wallet from being the major barrier.

Thanksgiving is an American holiday on this international site, but the basic ideal for which the day has come to stand – giving thanks – is a noble one. So we want to do three things here for CDM:

1. Ask you what for you’re thankful, musically speaking. It might be a synth, or a collaborator, or an album, or a song, or the metronome you’ve used since you started playing, or having more discipline practicing. It could be tech (you know the slant of this site), or not. I’ll be putting together the answers in a big, warm heap for us to share, like virtual pumpkin pie.

2. Meet CDM Notes. Like you need another mailing list, I know. This one will be different – it won’t just be an automated dump of headlines; it’ll actually be an email from me with personal notes on the week’s events in music and motion, and some exclusive tidbits not elsewhere. You don’t have to sign up for the mailing list, but this is a chance to do it if you like. And it’ll include some things to be thankful for.

3. You could win a copy of T-RackS 3 Deluxe. Whether you opt for the mailing list or not, you’ll be entered to win a copy of IK Multimedia’s latest release of their mixing and mastering suite. (I’m playing with it now; watch for a review soon.)

Enter now: http://cdm.thanksgiving.sgizmo.com/

T-RackS 3 has a bunch of new stuff in it, too, so I expect we’ll make someone very happy. It’s basically a bundle of emulations of tube and digital models for mastering, with new mixing, metering, and models. (Mmmmm, alliteration.) The latest release adds new vintage and analog emulations and modeling tech, additional chaining options, extensive new metering, new oversampling, and both standalone and plug-in versions in all the formats. We’re giving you the Deluxe copy, so you get an extensive collection of tools. And if you lose, as I said, stay tuned for our full review once I’ve had sufficient time with it. (I’m calling in a couple of my mastering friends, since they have better ears than I do.)

Unlucky in these things? IK reminds us that they’re doing the one million installation giveaway; you can win up to $17,000 in toys and everyone gets to choose from one piece of free software.

1 Million Installation Celebration / giveaway / contest

… but of course, we hope you enter ours, too!

But on to being thankful – we look forward to hearing from you.

Fill out the embedded survey, or head directly to:

http://cdm.thanksgiving.sgizmo.com/

DP6 is here (or will be here soon, say commenters), with a badly-needed UI update and a number of new features. The results still look like DP – in the way that should appeal to current users, that is – but enhancements demonstrate that the ongoing DAW battles carry on.

DP6 New Features

In the usability category:

• Updated UI with vertical track resizing (about time, jeez!) and better zooming and resizing
• Window tabs, which are a pretty cool way of switching between windows and tabbing views a la Firefox, Safari, et al (I’m surprised we haven’t seen more tabs in music software, given their popularity in browsing)
• Inspector palettes
• Build comps by selecting from different takes, which would be exciting if we hadn’t just seen similar features elsewhere

New Effects

As welcome as these features will be, most of the buzz I’ve heard from DP users centers around the new effects plug-ins. The MasterWorks Leveler models the “Teletronix LA-2A optical leveling amplifier.” Translated into plain English, it’s an automatic gain adjustment that can have some of the dynamic-smoothing qualities of compression without their soul-sucking quality – it’s an arguably better way of adjusting dynamics. I know at least one very prominent Ableton Live and Logic lover who wants DP6 just to run this plug-in. See the full description on MOTU’s site.

The ProVerb convolution reverb joins convolution reverbs in various other DAWs, with a few twists. It claims to be more CPU-efficient, which is generally not something you associate with convolution. There’s drag-and-drop convolution support, which allows you to drag audio right into the reverb for convolution use. It’s not the first reverb to support using your own audio files, but drag-and-drop is very hot. And MOTU adds automatic ducking features, called Dynamic Mix. And there are surround features, including the ability to use the convolution reverb to upsample to surround.

Combined, these features should allow you to get cleaner, higher-fidelity mixes th…

Um, excuse me. I need a moment. I feel my Jekyl-like alterego coming on here. Let me put on my mad scientist outfit.

[evil murmuring cackle, growing into loud evil laugh] So, MOTU thinks we’ll use these sound features for good, do they? Drag and drop convolution, to destroy my sounds! Let the world cower in the shadow of the new–

Ahem. Okay, moving on. Other features.

Still-Improved Film Scoring Support

While Apple customers complain that there aren’t more extensive integration features between Final Cut and Logic, MOTU has gone and created their own, with a dynamic link system for translating edits in Final Cut to scores assembled in DP. DP already has a surprisingly-strong corner on the film scoring niche, and this is yet another reason. You can even output visual cues over FireWire. Logic doesn’t come anywhere close to DP’s capabilities here. There’s just no competition. For composers doing actual scores, DP will remain king. It’s not a very big niche, but it’s DP’s domain, period.

There’s also improved Pro Tools front-end support, which I expect may be important to this market, as well.

Plug-In Features

You might think that Apple would lead the industry with AU support in Logic given that it’s all in the same building in Cupertino, but don’t count out MOTU – after a rough start in the early Mac OS X days, they’ve been really close to the Audio Unit spec and development tools. In this version:

• AU side-chaining support (‘bout time)
• Sample-accurate timing
• Cocoa graphics support (I’m not actually sure which plug-ins are using Cocoa – anyone know?)
• Ramp automation
• Prioritized MIDI for support for plug-ins like Access Virus TI

Not terribly exciting, but good to have. The one feature I think people will find exciting is the new, integrated plug-in manager. Boy, would I like this in some other hosts.

There’s also improved soft synth hosting for more efficient CPU use. One trick here is really interesting: DP now pre-renders instrument tracks so that already-recorded soft synths are rendered in advance instead of playing live. Update: See comments; readers are divided about just how useful this will be, and there are still some complaints about the way DP routes instrument tracks. I think we’ll have to see it in practice.

The combination of the pre-rendering with some of the other features here means that DP may be your best choice on older hardware, not to mention a very strong choice for people who want to load up on lots of plug-ins and experiment with sound design.

Bottom Line (Preview)

DP may be a niche player at this point, but boy, does it rock out in its niche. For film scoring, it remains dominant. And I think that the combination of a better UI, CPU-efficient features, a plug-in manager, and the reverb and dynamics additions here could actually increase its appeal to people who want a host for doing creative sound design and scoring, too – as well as continuing to make it a favorite for backing tracks in live performance. I’m still personally happier in some other hosts for various reasons when it comes to creating stuff, but you have to give some props to the things DP does differently. And it’s a relief that DAW competition continues to remain heated-up, even in 2008. If you wonder why Logic hasn’t become the one and only DAW on Mac, look closely at some of the details here. Composers and producers are very picky about the finer points, and as long as that remains true, we’ll have more than one DAW.

To audio lay people, though, it may be tough to describe exactly what this means. One music fan has taken the battle to YouTube, with a graphical and aural demonstration of exactly what the technique (technically “brick wall limiting”) does to the sound. Rather than approach this the traditional way, he takes a nice, clean 80s track and imagines what it might sound like in 2007. It’s actually not an implausible result:

(thanks to Matrix of Matrixsynth fame)

More experienced engineers have pointed this out, and can even demonstrate visually using actual examples, but this does as good a job as any explaining what happens — in particular, when you re-adjust dynamic levels for different equipment. A common misconception is that compressing audio levels makes it sound better on cheaper equipment and at more listening levels. That can be true to a point, but squash dynamic range, and poorer equipment can actually make things sound worse.

This said, I’ve noticed some important points often get left out of this discussion:

1. Brick wall limiting should not be blamed on digital recording — or visa versa. The whole idea of pumping up tracks’ loudness to boost record sales is largely a result of FM radio as the mechanism for promoting tracks.

2. Not every track you hear in 2007 uses heavy compression. On the contrary, there are some beautifully-produced albums out there, and with the explosion of indie labels, a lot of albums are aimed at aficionados with headphones, not mass-market loudness.

3. Over-compression isn’t always bad. It’s a stylistic hallmark of a lot of modern hip-hop — which in turn might be thought of as a nod to dub and other traditions. It just tends to get applied without artistic intent in some albums.

With the growth in home recording, in fact, this example doesn’t have to just be a criticism of the record industry — it can also be a cautionary tale for being careful with how you use compression. Dynamic range is just as important an area as frequency range, and any reminder of that is worth considering. So before we start whining about other people’s recordings, it’s worth thinking about what different dynamic ranges do to our own music.

For more information: There’s a very knowledgeable rant on this topic in engineer Bob Katz’s book, Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science, which is an unparalleled reference on mastering in general. (And it’s worth separating the art of mastering from what a lot of us do, which may or may not have a delivery medium in mind. Not to mention, the basic rule of mastering material well is, give it to someone else who knows what they’re doing and touch it yourself as little as possible.) Katz most definitely knows what he’s talking about, and his frustration with this evolution — or devolution — of mastering comes from years of experience. That’s not to say people can’t disagree with him on some of his points, so I’d be curious to know what others think.

Elsewhere: Tom at Music thing linked to a helpful visual aid showing the evils of “Living La Vida Loca” as a new, digital wall of sound. More discussion there.

Now, thesimplicity has illustrated his answer, and I’m beyond words. Tasty:

Yes, we’ll work out how to put some sort of t-shirt version together of these. Meanwhile, what’s that? Dylan shilling for Apple, so he can sell his new CD, the mastering of which he’s trashing in Rolling Stone, in a lossy, compressed digital format encoded with DRM?

Actually, it is a good song. I think I’ll skip iTunes and buy the CD.

Previous image (and my personal favorite), ready for application at your local CD store:

Bob Dylan puts it thusly [boombox.se]

Truly great work, Arru! I’m not sure whether to throw these on a t-shirt or print stickers and apply them to my jewel cases. (Or, even better, slip them onto the CD racks at the local Starbucks.) But if you are thinking of t-shirts, my friends over at Make have a great tutorial:

DIY t-shirt designs [Make video]

Here’s the original quote:

â€Å“New records … have sound all over them.â€Â?

â€Å“CDs are small. There’s no stature to it.â€Â?

CDM forums thread on Dylan
Wired on Dylan quotes

“New records … have sound all over them.”

And goes on to say:

“CDs are small. There’s no stature to it.”

(CDs actually prefer “portability enabled.” And what’s this obsession with size?)

Now, let’s see. At this point, I could talk about how I’m no fan of over-compressed and over-produced music, while criticizing the fact that Bob has ignored the bulk of music production in favor of the big-selling labels from which he himself has made colossal wads of cash and untold fame and glory, or … come on, who am I kidding? Why are we arguing with a guy who says “I don’t know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really”? Not a single album? (See further discussion on Music thing and, before that, on the CDM forums if you do want to discuss.)

No, I think there’s only one proper response to this quote:

Make a t-shirt.

Bob, you’ve just become our Ted Stevens / “the internet is a series of tubes.”

So, CDMers, I encourage you to take Bob’s quote as a call to action, and design us some graphics / t-shirts / undawears / frisbees fully embracing these records with “sound all over them” and the fact that CDs are small and lack stature.

To the winner, we’ll give not wads of cash, but definitely untold fame and glory. And we’ll link to your cafepress store. Maybe that will give you wads of cash.

Software companies are constantly claiming they offer “console-grade” processing, and comparing their effects to the legendary console effects from SSL (Solid State Logic). Well, now SSL themselves are getting into the DAW game, with a software/hardware solution called Duende. SSL has announced Duende is now shipping for Mac, coming to Windows in the fall:

Duende — Console-Grade Processing for your DAW [Solid State Logic]

SSL Duende includes channel and dynamics processing and the Stereo Bus Compressor for mastering. These are not native plug-ins; you connect a sleek, silver DSP hardware rack to your computer via FireWire. It’s too early to say whether the resulting product will live up to the hype, and you certainly shouldn’t ask me, since I’m about as far as you can get from a mastering engineer. Audio Damage’s Chris Randall has developed a minor obsession over the gear at Analog Industries, and points to first impressions at gearslutz.com.

There is reason to be skeptical, as always, about the ability of digital processing to live up to analog processing. Legendary engineer George Massenburg noted in comments earlier this year that digital compressor emulations lose something versus the analog originals, even as EQs are fairly easily emulated digitally. That makes sense given how digital audio processing works, though I’m sure nothing is likely to resolve the analog vs. digital debate in our lifetimes. The big question here to me is really value, and in that category, the SSL offering will have to compete with other DSP platforms. Universal Audio’s UAD-1, TC Electronic’s PowerCore, and, at the higher end, Digidesign’s TDM platform all have a much broader selection of plug-ins, and there’s the affordable new Focusrite Liquid Channel. I’ll be anxious to hear how Duende fits in, though you can’t beat putting the SSL brand on the faceplate.

If you want to win one of these, Music thing gets the scoop on a Peter Gabriel remix contest; the prize is the Duende.

A test performed by Mac developer AudioEase recently took a shot at the sound quality in BIAS Peak, the flagship audio editor and perennial Mac fave. I’ve chatted with BIAS about this, and needless to say they were unhappy about the AudioEase tests and wanted to investigate (partly because they thought they’d have no problem refuting them). Now it’s their turn to fire back, with an extensive white paper and sound fidelity test of the new Peak Pro 5 and how it converts sample rates. Peak’s new SRC engine should not only sound better than competing products, but it also drives Peak’s new tape scrubbing feature, a feature competing editors lack that sounds better than anything I’ve used. (It’s great fun, scrubbing to find exact edit points like you would with analog tape.)

I have to say, the results are pretty compelling: their evidence seems to suggest that Peak 5 has the cleanest sample rate conversion available. The results are subtle — images like the one shown here have been modified to bring artifacts into relief — but they would be audible. I’ve been very happy with the SRC I did with Peak, and with POW-r dithering for bit rate conversion, plus batch processing features, it could become your primary file converting powerhouse if you’re on the Mac.

Still skeptical? BIAS has released a full explanation, and lets you not only download their white paper but try to reproduce their results. I’d love to hear someone more knowledgable than me on these matters weigh in.

BIAS Resampling White Paper Page

Pierre Hilaire writes:

Thank you for taking my e-mail. I am a Recording Engineer who has [Cakewalk] SONAR Producer Edition Software. Can I Master songs on SONAR? I know the ideal mastering tool is Pro Tools, but how about SONAR?

This sounded like an important opportunity to correct some common misinformation — namely, that Pro Tools is the only “real” digital audio tool. Secondly, mastering, which traditionally meant making a final 2-track stereo mix from which you could produce a stereo record (though a master these days might be in surround), is a process that can be done in any Digital Audio Workstation app.

Different DAWs have different facilities for mastering, so I went to the source, and ask Steve Thomas from Cakewalk. Steve has some great insider insight into what SONAR can do on the mastering front. Read more for Steve’s answer . . .

“Peter: thanks for the opportunity. Of course, it’s not a question easy to answer in a few sentences. First I am curious as to why Pierre believes PT provides the “ideal mastering tool” and, of course very pleased to see he uses SONAR PE. As we know Pro Tools like SONAR are DAWs that provide powerful music production tools and, unlike two-track digital audio editing programs designed specially for “Mastering” they provide more overall flexibility.”

“One of the most powerful features in SONAR introduced with Version 3 is Universal Bus Architecture. This feature provides dynamic bussing flexibility at its best: route buses to other buses or to the main outputs; use buses for subgroups, effect sends, headphone mixes, alternate monitor mixes, or insert buses on the fly pre- or post-fader, yes and of course there’s more ;-)”

“So, when it comes to mastering a project in SONAR its flexible bussing is key. All you do is assign certain tracks to busses then bounce those tracks out. You can think of this as creating subgroups or for a more sophisticated term “stems.” Now you have your guitar, bass, drums, and vocal all on separate tracks, all at unity gain. So, if you need a little EQ boost at 1.5 K to punch up the vocal you are not shrilling out the high hat or affecting the guitars. If you need to compress the bass a little more you are not squashing the entire mix! Once you are satisfied with the tweaking of the plugs you have on all your subgroups or stems then, bounce all down to a stereo mix. And, at that point if you feel the entire mix could use a little sparkle then, add a 1 or 2 db bump at 12k, it works wonders ;-)”

Other SONAR features that can help:

SONAR has Pow-r dithering and plenty of options to tweak the algorithm to fit your project Ed: High-quality dithering algoirthms mean that when you go from higher audio resolution to lower, as you would when mastering a 16-bit CD from a 24-bit project, for instance. And yes, Pow-r dithering is a very good thing. -PK

SONAR’s bussing makes it easy to audition effect chains (A/B’ing).

Using markers and SONAR’s looping, users can quickly target loud and soft passages to test their FX chain (a slightly different form of A/B’ing)

Bus Envelopes: very helpful for setting up fades and crossfades while mastering from stems

MIDI control of external gear: Ok, this one is for experts – you can use SONAR to automate MIDI-capable outboard FX units. So, for those who own say a Weiss EQ1, you can change EQ settings automatically via MIDI to better match each song in your project.

So, Pierre, hope this is useful to you. Let us know how it goes!