AVID is dying a slow and painful death

  On 2/28/2014 at 7:02 PM, gmanyo said:

 

  On 2/28/2014 at 12:03 PM, mcbpete said:

Here's a typical oblique error I get from my daily use with MC -

 

What do you think the following errors signify:

 

 

 

If you guessed

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I had the project set at 25p but was exporting a file as 25i

 

You'd be right, and I imagine also work for AVID

 

Technically if you knew computer lingo then "Assertion failed: Ame_ProjectTypeUtils::ProjectTypeIsProgressive(GetProjectType()) == isProgressive" could give it away. But what a bunch of crap.

 

Not only would you have to know computer lingo, but you would also need to be intimately familiar with their code base. I understand that code, but it means nothing. It either means they have hilariously bad error handling, or someone did a build without swithcing it out of debug mode.

Yeah, it looks like they left the development build debug messages on in the production version. Which is sometimes done when the code is so unstable that removing the debug code makes the software behave weirdly..

  On 2/28/2014 at 7:58 PM, mokz said:

I thought digital mixing was just a weighted sum of the inputs? Is there something I am missing?

you're correct

(i have a background in signal processing)

I like it how someone made an assertion to check it and they didn't even bother actually handling the assertion failure. I'm a junior computer science major and even I know that's stupid.

  On 2/28/2014 at 7:58 PM, mokz said:

I thought digital mixing was just a weighted sum of the inputs? Is there something I am missing?

Not really. Mim has been brainwashed by Gearslutz so he's talking about warmth and summing.

If mixing tracks together resulted in a change in sound, be it warmth or wider, I'd personally see that as a problem in my software not a benefit. I don't want my NLE to be adding any character to the sound other than what I change myself via EQ, dynamics compression, stereo width plugins.

What about the NULLs?

What's happening to AVIS is typical top-of-the-stack syndrome. Same thing happened to microsoft after they beat netscape in the browsers wars in the late 90s. The product quickly goes to shit when there is no perceived competitor.

Ultra summing is like a magical magic that can work if the user is a magician with IDM gold ears and a heart of lazer. Despite the hypothetical possibility of input=output with regards to digital summing, this never ever happens, because human programmers need to adjust everything to result in an audible output (as opposed to just binary code). Just like digital cameras, there can never ever ever be a camera that can take sensor data and output it purely, because 100% pure would not even result in an image. There is always human interpretation when converting digital to analog (the image or sound that can be perceived by the senses), and this is where different manufacturers have their own theories on whatever is best.

Taking out the human element though, as much as possible... There is still the issue with the DAW's superficial working bitz and the working space for processing. So if you project is going to output to 24-bit and all processing is done at 128-bit, there still needs to be truncation of 01010101001001s to give an approximation of da tingz at 24-bit, so there can never be some ultra pure input=output DAW.

That being said, the ultra summing concepts are more do with perception and aesthetics anyway, and that is what counts. Some sort of linear perfection is only useful for monitors and mixing purposes, but the overall result should be 100% aesthetics focused. And that is where summing boxes come in, that cost as much as a car; filled with angel pubez and virgin menstrual blood to sum your stemz like Gandalf.

It sounds shit that a DAW would change sound through summing, but I think that's just a form of software character. I feel like Apple would be the type of company to add gold to their output, just for the sake of making you think your shit is better than it is.

Anyway- long live aesthetics.

In the few years that I've been using ProTools occasionally, I have never understood how or why it gained the (good?) reputation it had/has. It's a pile of shit - every other DAW I've ever used has had a much faster workflow. Since there's been any competition, PT has always been behind in terms of technology, feels like slamming one's face into a brickwall sometimes.

Wow, so much Pro Tools hate! Was a little bit surprising. I use Pro Tools for work (audio post) and nothing can touch it for audio editing, especially when working with video. The workflow is superb and allows me to edit and manipulate audio in a variety of ways far quicker than any other programme I've used. I might use Ableton or Logic for things like composition or live work, but in terms of just handling audio, Pro Tools is miles ahead of the rest. Paranerd highlighted a few problems with it, and until the whole 64 bit/AAX thing is sorted out I think there's a lot of places that are sticking with PT10, but in general I think some of you underestimate why it's a popular programme in certain industries, and it has nothing to do with it being 'cool' or whatever other facetious reasoning that gets thrown around.

  On 3/2/2014 at 5:09 PM, b born droid said:

Wow, so much Pro Tools hate! Was a little bit surprising. I use Pro Tools for work (audio post) and nothing can touch it for audio editing, especially when working with video. The workflow is superb and allows me to edit and manipulate audio in a variety of ways far quicker than any other programme I've used. I might use Ableton or Logic for things like composition or live work, but in terms of just handling audio, Pro Tools is miles ahead of the rest. Paranerd highlighted a few problems with it, and until the whole 64 bit/AAX thing is sorted out I think there's a lot of places that are sticking with PT10, but in general I think some of you underestimate why it's a popular programme in certain industries, and it has nothing to do with it being 'cool' or whatever other facetious reasoning that gets thrown around.

Ever try Reaper? I find it far faster when wanting to slip, slide, edit and move clips...I have however sadly experienced frustrating sync sliding issues when working with long'ish videos, but i'd like to think that's something that's already been fixed with the constant updates they release.

  On 3/2/2014 at 6:31 PM, TRiP said:

 

  On 3/2/2014 at 5:09 PM, b born droid said:

Wow, so much Pro Tools hate! Was a little bit surprising. I use Pro Tools for work (audio post) and nothing can touch it for audio editing, especially when working with video. The workflow is superb and allows me to edit and manipulate audio in a variety of ways far quicker than any other programme I've used. I might use Ableton or Logic for things like composition or live work, but in terms of just handling audio, Pro Tools is miles ahead of the rest. Paranerd highlighted a few problems with it, and until the whole 64 bit/AAX thing is sorted out I think there's a lot of places that are sticking with PT10, but in general I think some of you underestimate why it's a popular programme in certain industries, and it has nothing to do with it being 'cool' or whatever other facetious reasoning that gets thrown around.

Ever try Reaper? I find it far faster when wanting to slip, slide, edit and move clips...I have however sadly experienced frustrating sync sliding issues when working with long'ish videos, but i'd like to think that's something that's already been fixed with the constant updates they release.

  On 3/2/2014 at 6:43 PM, b born droid said:

 

  On 3/2/2014 at 6:31 PM, TRiP said:

 

  On 3/2/2014 at 5:09 PM, b born droid said:

Wow, so much Pro Tools hate! Was a little bit surprising. I use Pro Tools for work (audio post) and nothing can touch it for audio editing, especially when working with video. The workflow is superb and allows me to edit and manipulate audio in a variety of ways far quicker than any other programme I've used. I might use Ableton or Logic for things like composition or live work, but in terms of just handling audio, Pro Tools is miles ahead of the rest. Paranerd highlighted a few problems with it, and until the whole 64 bit/AAX thing is sorted out I think there's a lot of places that are sticking with PT10, but in general I think some of you underestimate why it's a popular programme in certain industries, and it has nothing to do with it being 'cool' or whatever other facetious reasoning that gets thrown around.

Ever try Reaper? I find it far faster when wanting to slip, slide, edit and move clips...I have however sadly experienced frustrating sync sliding issues when working with long'ish videos, but i'd like to think that's something that's already been fixed with the constant updates they release.

Not tried Reaper to be fair but those sync issues you mention are a prime example why PT is so widely used in post production. No studio would even consider switching.

 

Indeed, but oh man, get yourself a nice scroll-wheel mouse and download Reaper and you may never look back...(at least for your personal work)

ya I love reaper. They are way more modern in terms of license model and software development strategy. There are bugs in logic which are literally 15 years old and have never been fixed, where as you can pop in the reaper issue tracker and up vote bugs and they get fixed in the next release (which are almost weekly).

Reaper... is fucking good. My Windows DAW of choice (still demo'ing it for a couple years... pretty deep, yo).

  On 2/28/2014 at 9:45 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 2/28/2014 at 7:58 PM, mokz said:

I thought digital mixing was just a weighted sum of the inputs? Is there something I am missing?

 

Not really. Mim has been brainwashed by Gearslutz so he's talking about warmth and summing.

 

Not really....

Take 8 wav's at 16bit 44.1khz whack them all into each daw, ableton, cubase, logic, pro tools etc... do not adjust any levels or pans and render to stereo wav.

they will all be slightly different...i don't know the science behind it and you would have thought it would be simple but they've all been coded by different people so how could they possible be the same. You would think it's a case of just number but it can't be.

I don't go on gearsluts this entirely based on experience from over 10 years working on various projects.

When i want a transparent daw for mixing i use Pro Tools is my go to Daw, but it's not brilliant for composition.

Analogue summing is completely different when you get into the realms of mixer and outboard as youre adding in signal differences as it passes thru each device.

I'm not saying that any daw or method is greater than another cause i've done great things with most of what's available on the market.

  On 3/5/2014 at 11:04 AM, miim said:

Take 8 wav's at 16bit 44.1khz whack them all into each daw, ableton, cubase, logic, pro tools etc... do not adjust any levels or pans and render to stereo wav.

 

they will all be slightly different...

And by 'different' - actually audibly so, or just that if you run some statistical analysis on the files they come up with slightly different results ?

  On 3/5/2014 at 11:30 AM, mcbpete said:

 

  On 3/5/2014 at 11:04 AM, miim said:

Take 8 wav's at 16bit 44.1khz whack them all into each daw, ableton, cubase, logic, pro tools etc... do not adjust any levels or pans and render to stereo wav.

That's quite interesting - has this test been done somewhere ?

 

I've done it a year ago when deciding which software to invest in. i Did cubase and pro tools too see if there was any difference and then tried all the others.

i was stoned and thought it was interesting.

I'm sure it's something to do with floating points and then the dithering down

I have heard a few artists (might have been Villalobos) say that Ableton has a certain 'colour' to its sound on output compared to others. Couldn't decide if they were talking shite though.

I think Ableton had a downsampling/dithering issue that might've affected the final mixdown, since 9.1 that's been sorted though (ffwd to 30secs):

  On 3/5/2014 at 11:40 AM, miim said:

 

  On 3/5/2014 at 11:30 AM, mcbpete said:

 

  On 3/5/2014 at 11:04 AM, miim said:

Take 8 wav's at 16bit 44.1khz whack them all into each daw, ableton, cubase, logic, pro tools etc... do not adjust any levels or pans and render to stereo wav.

That's quite interesting - has this test been done somewhere ?

 

I've done it a year ago when deciding which software to invest in. i Did cubase and pro tools too see if there was any difference and then tried all the others.

i was stoned and thought it was interesting.

 

I'm sure it's something to do with floating points and then the dithering down

 

Did you look at differences in the waveforms?

It should be pretty straightforward to put 8 wavs of sine waves at different frequencies and mix them together and then take a look at the waveforms for any differences. If you could synch the samples exactly you could also calculate the difference between two mixes by reversing the phase on the other one and then mixing together.

Also could you tell the difference if you did the audio test blind without knowing where each sound was coming from?

I'm not saying there's not any difference, I'm just curious what the difference is and is it actually audible.

i used live drums tracks cause i was trying to see if the phase relationship of the tracks was different in the summing as well as audio quality.

technically if there is no different you should be able to put 2 of the stereo mixdowns into an audio editor and flip the phase on one and it would completely cancel each other out. this didn't happen but it could be due to adding milliseconds to the beginning of the mixdown.

I could hear definite differences between the cubase and pro tools mixdowns which was the whole point of the process. pro tools sounded more "open"

Are you using the same audio interface for all DAWs? If you are, which one are you using?