therage! said:
My problem is the lazy habits I have during tracking. I mostly use drum loops and once I have everything where I want it I place all the different drum loop tracks into one, though depending on what I'm doing I still could end up with several drum tracks. My problem is when I 'm tracking I start doing multiple takes of things and before I know it I've got 50 tracks, of which most will eventually be deleted. 24 tracks could be enough for me if I stop being lazy and start deleting crap I don't need.
On a positve note, thankfully, any submixing won't degrade the quality of the audio like it would have with analog tape.
When there are parts spread out all over the place, deleting things to make room is okay as long as care is taken to save as a different filename at each major change, such as just after doing a drums submix but before clearing any of the no longer needed audio regions from the tracks, and leaving a few extra empty tracks at each submix stage is probably a good idea, that way to make changes to a submix, you could just go back to to the correct edl and redo the submix to one of the empty tracks, then save the new submix as a different filename, and then import the new submix into the current "working" session right next to the earlier submix so you can a/b them.
I think this looks a lot more complex written out than the actual process is.
therage! said:
Does SS have anything like virtual tracks?
The lite version has 4 layers of tracks, and the full version has 8, unfortunately the basic version has only a single layer.
I could be wrong, but I think if there were enough users of the basic version, and if they asked enough, Bob might eventually relent and put a second layer in basic, it would be a nice addition.
therage! said:
I'm going to download the demo when I've got some time.
I used the demo for about a month before buying SS, if there had been the 300 dollar basic version available at that time I would surely have bought that first, I would recommend getting the demos for all 3 of Bob's plugins as well.
The Reverberator is simply the absolute best sounding reverb plugin I have ever used.
The Levelizer is just amazing, it is unbelievably transparent when used as a peak limiter for maximzing volume levels, there's a video for it that shows one way to use it, it can also be used for peak limiting in real-time post fader on the main output bus when mixing, the Levelizer is almost a "secret weapon" that's exclusive to SS.
The Frequency Analyzer may not seem to be the most exciting plugin at first glance, but when you hit "listen" and select a frequency band, you'll hear just that one band, you can widen or tighten the bands to really zero in on problem sounds so you know exactly where surgical EQing should be done.
All 3 are well worth the 100 bucks each.
Any plugins inserted into the pre fader FX patchpoint will be recorded, so if you have a guitar amp sim plugin, you can record it in realtime if you wish, you also have a choice about whether or not to record thru the channel EQ/comp, just monitor thru them, or not use them at all during tracking, you can also use the post fader FX patchpoints for plugins you only want to monitor while tracking, as well as the aux send/returns for reverb/delay/chorus for monitoring wet while tracking dry.
Using "Live Mode" and a multiple input soundcard you can actually use the virtual console as a real-time mixing console with effects, I use a MOTU 828mkII along with
a Behringer ADA-8000, with my laptop and a 4 space rack I have a portable 18 channel mixing console with effects that is leaps and bounds above anything like a Mackie 8 bus.
As I said in an earlier post, I could go on and on...
