editing/mixing
Digital Audio Workstations:
Working with ProTools Free
Getting Started | Setups & Troubleshooting | Basic Production | Voice Editing
by Jeff Towne
There are so many facets to the physical work of making radio programs,
that it's hard to know where to start the discussion. Given that some of
us will be
out collecting sound in the field, others will be conducting Q and As in
radio studios, and yet others will be logging personal confessions in the
quiet darkness of a bedroom, the one common denominator is the need to
assemble
raw elements into a finished product. So that's our starting point: the
technical side of getting your raw audio chopped-down into a final
production.
There is little argument now about the most efficient way of doing this,
only debates about the details. You need a Digital Audio Workstation. This
could be a stand-alone unit like those made by Roland, Akai or Yamaha, or
more likely, based on a computer that you may use for other functions as
well.
There are many options now, for both Mac and Windows platforms, ranging
from freeware to hardware-heavy systems that can cost tens of thousands of
dollars. We'll focus on the lower-middle ground, especially on Digidesign's
ProToolsFree. If you are just starting out, or thinking of upgrading from
an older system, ProToolsFree or LE is an inexpensive way to get
significant editing power.
There are good reasons to choose a different workstation, better suited to
one's
particular needs, and the Transom Tools section provides guidelines and tips
that should translate to several systems, but we have chosen to concentrate
on ProToolsFree for these reasons:
- It's free. Amazingly, it is not just a teaser that makes you want to
upgrade as soon as possible, it is a flexible and full-featured editor and
mixer that seems almost ideally suited to the needs of radio production.
- It's available for both Mac and Windows.
- The program ships with helpful plug-ins, such as EQ, Compression and
Limiting.
- It's free
- It provides 8 channels of audio, which should cover most producers'
needs for narration, actualities, ambience and music.
- ProTools in its various incarnations is so widely used, odds are that
you'll run into it in some production facility. It will be helpful to be
conversant with the conventions of this system, especially if your project
may move to a different studio at some point.
- Did I mention that it was free?
It can be downloaded from
the digidesign site, but be ready, it's a bear: main program files are
about 10 megs, the documentation is about 5Megs. Download the
documentation, it is worth it, as there are some unintuitive things about
running this program. I downloaded successfully to two different machines
on standard 56K dial-ups, and while it took some time, over an hour, there
were no problems. A better choice might be to purchase the CDROM. It's
only $9.95 and has some extra plug-ins that would have made the download
too large. Having a CDROM is always helpful if one needs to re-install, and
the price is not prohibitive.
One the program has downloaded, or you insert the CDROM, installation is a
breeze. Just double-click the installer icon on your Mac, or on a PC,
choose "run" from the windows menu, and navigate to the downloaded file,
and choose the installer .exe file. That's it.
Of course, there is a catch. The program is free, but there may be some
infrastructure expenses: it will not run on that 8 year old computer that
you inherited from your cousin. You need lots of RAM and a big hard-drive.
You may need to invest in a hardware interface. Even so, the financial
outlays are significantly lower than purchasing an entire system, and many
of the options can be added as the user becomes more sophisticated.
Will your current computer be sufficient?
Even Digidesign won't guarantee that your particular machine and
configuration will be
trouble-free, but their website provides some basic guidelines. Click these
links for specifics:
Mac
Compatibility
Windows
Compatibility
The short version is that on the Mac side, they highly recommend the G4,
the PowerBook G3, Power Macintosh Blue & White G3 or the iMac. Mac OS 9.x
or 8.6. Some older systems may work, but you are taking a risk.
On the Windows side, they highly recommend an Intel Pentium III , although
"some success" is reported with Intel Pentium II - 300 MHz or faster, Intel
Celeron, 300 MHz or faster, and the AMD Athlon . System Software: Windows
Me or
Windows 98, Second Edition
Memory
On either box, ProToolsFree will not run with less than 128 megs of RAM,
192 is recommended, and even more is preferred. RAM is fairly cheap, and
there's little you can do to improve your chances of smooth operation than to
drop lots of RAM in your machine. Seriously consider upgrading to 256Megs
or more if you can afford it.
Storage
Digital Audio eats up disc space, so you will want a large, speedy hard
drive. Built-in IDE drives on many newer Macs and PCs are generally large
and fast
enough to provide several channels of 16-bit audio. The conventional
wisdom is that high-performance drives are critical, and Digidesign has
minimum tech specs on their site. But in real-world use, most of our
radio productions do not tax the hard drives as much as a multi-track music
mix might, and often times, the built-in drives or less-expensive IDE
drives will do the job.
Despite the previous comments, it is a better idea to have a separate drive
for audio, and it is safer to have drives with low seek times, and high
rotational speeds. 7200 RPM drives (either IDE or SCSI) are preferable to
5400RPM drives, and 10,000 RPM drives are even better. These higher
performance specs really only come into play when one has many tracks of
audio playing simultaneously, or the session has a very large number of
edits, or the drives are badly fragmented. One can often work around these
limitations by bouncing complicated elements to disc, which reduces the
number of files that need to be accessed in rapid succession, and by
keeping the drives optimized by defragmenting them.
Interfacing
You need to get audio in and out of your computer. Most Windows machines
ship with some sort of soundcard, and until recently Macs all had built-in
sound capabilities. But these interfaces are often not up to the task for
serious audio production. Ideally, you will want an interface with digital
inputs and outputs, so that you can transfer audio from DAT or Minidisc
without additional conversions, and so you can do the analog-to-digital
conversion of other elements (such as narration) outside of the
electrically chaotic environment of a computer chassis.
ProToolsFree does NOT work with Digidesign hardware (in general --
there is a specific configuration with the Audiomedia3 card on a certain
flavor of Windows that will work.) So if one wants to use Digi hardware,
one needs to use either the full-blown ProTools software which requires
specific PCI cards and interfaces, or the less-expensive ProTools LE, which
ships with the Toolbox and digi001 cards.
ProToolsFree will work with some third-party interfaces, or there is always
the option of recording into a separate bare-bones program, and then
importing audio files into ProTools for editing.
One of the most promising developments is the arrival of USB interfaces,
which do not require installation of a card, will run on some laptops, and
often offer additional functions, such as mixer and transport controls, or
even signal processing. See the discussion about USB interfaces on the Transom
discussion boards for more details.
If you have access to a CD burner, audio tracks can be burned to CD, and
then imported as data into ProTools, avoiding the input issue entirely.
Outputting the final production can take several forms: at the most basic,
you can play the audio out of the analog outputs of the soundcard (or Mac
built-in sound,) recording it to DAT, or whatever medium you prefer.
Better is to output a digital signal from your PCI card or USB interface,
and perhaps even better would be to burn the data to audio CDR in the
computer. For this you will need a CD burner attached to your computer.
Many new machines are shipping with this hardware, and all one needs is
software to prepare your CD audio, a topic we will address in a future
column.
Starting from scratch.
If you are starting from nothing, buying a computer specifically for this
purpose, here are some scenarios, from simplest and cheapest, to best:
Simple and Cheap
Computer: iMac or basic Pentium3 Wintel box.
RAM: 192 megs.
Hard Drive: 10 gig (or larger) internal IDE
Interface: Mac built-in, or basic PC soundcard.
|
Better
Computer: Mac G4, or fast Wintel Pentium3
RAM: 256 megs
Hard Drive: Second 7200rpm IDE or SCSI drive (internal or
external) used for audio only. 20 gigs or larger.
Interface: USB
|
Best
Computer : Mac G4 or Fast Wintel Pentium 3
RAM: As much as you can afford.
Hard Drive: External Fast SCSI, or internal 10,000 rpm IDE.
Interface: Firewire multichannel interface (may not be directly
supported by ProTools at this time.) Or Digidesign Toolbox PCI Card
(stereo I/O), or digi001 multichannel (8 channel I/O) PCI card and breakout
box (requires ProTools LE).
|
Using Your Current Computer
Hey, it's worth a shot, the computer you have might do just fine. Download
the program and see how it runs. Or purchase the CD-ROM, it's worth the
$10. You might need to upgrade a few components of your system, but you
probably don't need to start from scratch if you have a fairly new computer.
~Jeff Towne
Tools Editor, Transom
Working with ProTools Free
Getting Started | Setups & Troubleshooting | Basic Production | Voice Editing
Coming Soon:
OK, I've got everything set-up, now what?
 Discuss
|
 Email a Friend |
 Print Page
|
