HD to LE

  • Thread starter Thread starter lyricalcharms
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lyricalcharms

Made Man 4 Life
I have an opportunity to Record with an HD3 setup in someone elses studio, but to save money, I am curious how much quality is going to be lost when i take and Protools HD system recording, and mix it on an Protools LE system?

Is it pointless? or will i still maintain enough quality for there to be a difference?

I understand the HD's A/D converters are ALOT better then n e thing the LE has, but is there going to be quality loss in using LE Plugins? Oh an no I wouldnt be using any outboard gear, once it reaches the LE system.

N e thoughts?
 
there will be little to no degradation in quality going from HD to LE.

yes, we could argue against 48 bit and 32 float mix busses...but really, it's digital to digital...you won't notice a thing. Since you have already recorded the tracks in HD, you won't notice any difference in converters. You'll be fine.
 
The biggest problem with mixing in LE is the lack of delay compensation. When you add a plugin to a track you will add latency to that track. Basicly the plugin is doing math and it takes time to do it, so in comparison to the other tracks in your session it will be. As you add more and more plugins to the session the tracks become more and more offset from each other by varying degrees.

Back to the basics right quick.... two sine waves 180 degrees out of phase will cancel when summed.

This same thing is going to happen to your tracks all though they wont completely cancel. The processing time delay could potentially cause severe phase problems.

HD does something very cool. Automatic Delay Compensation. Say you put an EQ on one track and it takes 4 samples time to do its thing. Automatic delay compensation will move all the other tracks later by 4 samples to make up the difference, eliminating phase problems caused by processing latency.

The solution is to do your final mixdown on an HD rig. There are lo0ts of folks out there who record in the studio on HD, do all of their pocketing and editing at home, some with smaller budgets will even mix at home. Then head back to the studio, do a final pass on the mix to make corrections, and print using the delay compensation. This is in fact what I do.

If you try this, turn the delay compensation on and off a few times and hear the difference - its amazing. Also, chances are, the studio will have better monitors and a better listening environment which doesn't hurt on your final mixdown.

cheers!
 
dean1964 said:
The biggest problem with mixing in LE is the lack of delay compensation. When you add a plugin to a track you will add latency to that track. Basicly the plugin is doing math and it takes time to do it, so in comparison to the other tracks in your session it will be. As you add more and more plugins to the session the tracks become more and more offset from each other by varying degrees.
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LE does have delay compensation built into the playback buffer. Any delay that a plugin might induce that is less than the playback buffer setting...the buffer will take care of it. So simple EQ, compressors, etc (most Digi plugs) will be accounted for. It's not until you get into the reverbs and other processor intensive plugins that delay compensation starts to become a problem. Still, there are ways around this (ie. nudging your tracks)
 
Are you saying that the playback buffer will realign audio on a track by track basis as does delay compensation?

You certainly can nudge the tracks around or use the time adjuster plug in, I find that to be a serious pain, and god forbid you want to make a change later.

In the end, even if you are paying, it does not take very long to do a final pass and mixdown at the studio. In my opinion it is worth it. If it costs you a couple of hundred bucks you will basically be buying back all the time it takes to re-align things.

Some have the opinion that LE has been gimped in some way and would never print a final mix in LE. I don't know about this, but I can tell you my own personal experience, while experimenting with the LE vs HD arguments, the mix printed in HD sounded significantly better than the one in LE. I marked it up to delay compensation because there were no other differences in the processing.
 
false. LE has no automatic delay compensation for plugins. however, most plugins dont introduce any delay. you can check plugin delays by opt + apple (alt + ctrl on pc) clicking on the black level display until you see "dly". if there is a delay on a track, there will be a numeric value displayed.
 
foreverain4 said:
false. LE has no automatic delay compensation for plugins. however, most plugins dont introduce any delay. you can check plugin delays by opt + apple (alt + ctrl on pc) clicking on the black level display until you see "dly". if there is a delay on a track, there will be a numeric value displayed.
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again, the delay compensation is built into the playback buffer. Yes, it is not the same thing as the ADC on Pro Tools HD, but since we're dealing with a host based system the hardware buffer takes care of most simple plugins. Put a Digi EQ on a track and you'll notice that the delay on that track is 0. How is that possible if every plugin has to take some amount of time to process? The buffer holds the audio for a brief moment which effectively allows the plugins to figure out their math before you hear anything. Set your buffer setting to it's highest amount during mixing and plugin delays lower than that should be taken care of. You also should notice the delay amount on the track changes as you adjust the buffer setting.
There are plugins however (maxim, NR plugs, etc) that take much more processing and you'll have to work around those with the Time adjustor plug or by nudging your regions. Which actually, nudging isn't that hard to do. I do it all the time. Just glance at the sample delay and move all my regions back in time. If I decide later to remove the plugin, note the delay differences and move everything forward...it takes like two seconds (although I have qualms with how it measures the sample delay...I find it's not exactly precise).
 
wow, i really appreciate everyone hitting me wit this information. I'm basically on top of protools, but the info on delay compensation was new to me.

I guess more reasons why i really need to find my self a mentor. haha.

Once again thank u everybody for the info. finally i started a thread that had more then 1 reply in 24 hours, hahaha.
 
At the end of the day...it is probably a good idea to do final mixdowns in HD if you have access. To my ears, there is a major difference, and I have A/B'd the hell out of it. I did not want to believe that this is true when I was experimenting with it, but the difference was clear. Try it sometime with a big session, maybe that is the key. The session I was A/Bing with LE and HD was pretty big. 32 audio, at least 10 aux tracks, and a fair share of plugin's. It was definitely a case of "when it gets to be a problem."

Cheers!
 
After checking things out a bit closer the delay times do not change w/ buffer settings. When I load up Rcomp on a track it adds 68 samples worth of processing time which amounts to a phase problem, most noticeable in cymbal decays.

Does it matter, well, its audible, so yes.

Solutions: Use time adjuster, nudge the tracks, or mix down in HD.
 
dean1964 said:
After checking things out a bit closer the delay times do not change w/ buffer settings. When I load up Rcomp on a track it adds 68 samples worth of processing time which amounts to a phase problem, most noticeable in cymbal decays.

Does it matter, well, its audible, so yes.

Solutions: Use time adjuster, nudge the tracks, or mix down in HD.
Click to expand...


yeah, I stated that without checking first, sorry. I swear I've seen the delay time change as I've adjusted SOMETHING...but when I got in the studio after the weekend I couldn't replicate it. Most likely it's because the delay time listed doesn't take into account your playback buffer since that's actually a hardware thing. Still, what the playback buffer does for your plugin delays still holds true.

Most likely that 68 samples of delay you are hearing is actually much higher...the buffer should be taking care of the other delay amount you're NOT hearing. My only issue is the way PT figures out the delay amount....it's not correct on pretty much everything I try. I find it can be off from 10-650 samples.


At the end of the day...it is probably a good idea to do final mixdowns in HD if you have access. To my ears, there is a major difference, and I have A/B'd the hell out of it. I did not want to believe that this is true when I was experimenting with it, but the difference was clear. Try it sometime with a big session, maybe that is the key. The session I was A/Bing with LE and HD was pretty big. 32 audio, at least 10 aux tracks, and a fair share of plugin's. It was definitely a case of "when it gets to be a problem."
Click to expand...

I would think most likely what you're hearing has nothing to do with the delay compensation differences...but the resolution differences ITB. I'll try and hunt down a discussion I saw over at another forum. It was over using RTAS versus TDM plugins in an HD session and how it handles passing audio between different plugins and summing tracks on output...compared to LE
 
Hi Folks, just joined the forum today so I'm a newbie. but I am a veteran recording engineer with 30 years behind the mixer and the past 13 on Pro Tools. From my experience of working with both the HD and LE systems, and swapping sessions from one to the other regularly, you'll run into these two issues: 1) Latency on the Le system. 2) your TDM plug ins won't work on the LE system. Other than that you'll be fine as long as you can work with 48 tracks or less. It's digital so there won't be any degredation of the audio.
 
tnjazz said:
If it's really a major concern, try the Mellowmuse ATA plugin.
Click to expand...

Yeh, I tried this out on a friend's setup and it actually works really well. Brilliant piece of software, not really known by many people..
 
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