#989613 - 06/03/04 04:12 AM
Feeling retarded.....
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bdbklyn
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Just got a new mastering system here @ Paramount Recording. We went with Pyramix. The old Sonic Solutions System was nothing but a file management headache. Not to mention arbitrarily occaisionally putting other people's music in the middle of my client's CD's. Also the habit of sometimes putting in invalid ISRC codes which the glass mastering machines did not like at all.
One of the attractions of the system (which really sounds terric by the way!) was the abilty to use familiar key commands as the Pyramix can be selected to use Sonic keystroke commands as well as a variety of other platforms such as Avid, Sadie, ProTools...just to mention a few.
However, because it runs on a PC, there are enough different commands that I'm going to learn all the Pyramix native keystokes. I've been sitting here in frontof it for the better part of two days and besides being bleary eyed and confused, I'm pretty confident that I can pull of a client attended mastering project tomorrow morning. That being said.....we'll see just how much courage under fire I'll need in the morning!
I've yet to make a CD on the first attempt that has any audio on it! But their are provisions to load in the image file to make sure there is audio on it before burning.
I really felt like Rainman a few times today rocking back and forth in my chair muttering "I'm an excellent engineer, I'm an excellent engineer".
I let you know how it goes....
bill
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#989614 - 06/03/04 08:57 PM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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bdbklyn
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Session got postponed till tonight.
Bill Ravencraft had an interesting analogy about learning new operating systems. "The salt on the table is still salt.....it's just not called salt anymore....and there is no table......."
arggggghhhh......yeah and it's PC based so \\\\\
bill
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#989615 - 06/03/04 10:36 PM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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gtrguru
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Registered: 02/26/02
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Hope all turns out alright. Let us know.
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"Music is only heard by those that listen"
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#989617 - 06/04/04 03:54 PM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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bdbklyn
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It went OK. The client was pleased with the sound
and the time it took to get it done. I had one little bugaboo in that somehow it (I) inserted the song titles in the IRSC codes ...that's the first time that happend ...but at least I got audio on the during the first pass.
I was working from a different template and it's possible that a check box was selected to insert what your clips are called into the ISRC area. It could be a nice feature actually.
I've got Carter Humphrey coming in few minutes to do a 5 song EP. I'll keep you posted on that one....
Bill
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#989618 - 06/09/04 06:27 PM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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mbishopsfx
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Registered: 06/02/01
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Loc: Burton,OH,UNITED STATES
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Give this a try for running your Pyramix keyboard shortcuts:
http://www.piengineering.com/xkeys/xkpro.php
works great on ALL workstations!
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With Best Regards, Michael Bishop Chief Engineer Telarc International http://www.telarc.com
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#989619 - 06/10/04 12:42 AM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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bdbklyn
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Hey Michael,
Thanks for the tip. Looks like a cool product.
However...I'm getting around pretty good on this thing now. Just had to undo a lot of muscle memory stuff from other sytems. I'm still using the Pyramix keyset...I was hopelessly lost using the Sonic keyset. I have customized some of those as well for better ergonomics. Even in Sonic, I used a multi button trackball for single hand operation of multikey commands. According to my sources, that is not reccommended with PC's.
But thanks for the tip...this looks like a cool product. I'll give this a little while longer as I want to go at least 30 days without calling for help. You know what will happen then....The software guys will blame the hardware and vice-versa when I get stuck/
BTW, Todd Goetz from Audio Intervisual Design in L.A. has been terrific in helping me through the learning curve and during my bouts of complete idiocy. We've got it down so well now....I find the solution to my problem while I'm holding for him to pickup. he is still happy to take the call as he knows Mike Lazer (who took over mastering when I left Extasy) also just received a mastering system, will be calling him with the same question tomorrow.
Bill
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#989620 - 06/15/04 04:53 PM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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CWHumphrey
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Registered: 05/31/01
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Loc: Los Angeles,CA,UNITED STATES
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Hey Bill,
You must be doing something right. The Shards, who don't have a deal, just got spun on 103.1 the other night. The band BTW, was blown away by your mastering job!
Cheers,
Carter William Humphrey
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#989621 - 06/16/04 12:09 AM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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bdbklyn
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That's great news Carter. Good luck with this.
Bill
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#989622 - 06/23/04 12:58 AM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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bdbklyn
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Things are progressing really well. Keystrokes are now comitted to muscle memory, with the exception of a few.
There are so many "features" I still can't find the use for at all. Being in the mastering environment I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface anyway....
Bill
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#989623 - 06/23/04 11:52 PM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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Philip O'Keefe
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So now that you've been using it for a while, what do you think of the Pyramix Bill? How do you like it compared to Sonic Solutions? Anything you wish they had done differently?
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#989624 - 06/24/04 11:42 PM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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blas
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Registered: 03/06/01
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Loc: St. Louis, MO. USA
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Bill, Your "salt on the table" had me just about rolling on the floor. Thanks for the comic relief. At fifty, all this stuff is sometimes overwhelming, then too small of print to read the damn manuals anyway!
blas
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#989625 - 06/25/04 06:39 AM
Re: Feeling retarded.....
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bdbklyn
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Phil,
Simply put, it's a better platform. Sonic has you limited to 8 channels. You need 12 to do surround.
That's two systems and 35 grand worth of Sonic. The Pyramix with a computer is under $10k. File management on the new Sonic was good, but Paramount had the old Sonic system which was slow, slow, slow.
It would take me about 6 hours to back up a mastering project (source and processed material). CD's could only be printed in real time (well, real Mac 9600 computer time). Three gig processors are fun....
Yhe upgrade path to DSD and SACD mastering is $10k for Pyramix as opposed to $20k for Sonic...plus that pesky other computer for surround....
The Sonic had a sound...you learned how to deal with it. The Pyrmaix is more open on the high end and the detail seems much better. Now, part of this could be that I had a Protools system and the Sonic in there with two big CRT's so the desk had a lot more clutter on it. I needed both systems because converting files to Sonic AIFF format just took forever with that old computer so I had a G4 in there running Protools as well and would process from PT via AES and my analog chain into Sonic.
The system however...is very, very deep. I think my learning curve has taken a lot longer than it took to learn Sonic and ProTools together.
And.....in 3 weeks of operation and about 20 projects not one crash, freeze or need to reboot or restart!
I did have a situation early on where the system would stall during playback. However, it was my bad!, as I had media drives open with imported media having the same names e.g; CD Imort 1.
And as rumoured, they did get around the old SMPTE midnite problem. The time code is not just hours minutes seconds frames and subframes, but also year and day stamped. They did this for film sound production particularly in India where they just crank out features and most of the post guys have several things in production at the same time.
Overall editing is very good..there are a few quirks..
The master delete and ripple function does have an interesting "feature". When selected, a region highlighted and CRL+Del pressed, it removes a section equal to the length of the highlighted section but the section it removes is the section following the highlighted section.
Perhaps a cruel joke? Maybe someone can think of a use for this tool...but I can't
Also....my pet peeve which still hasn't improved with use is the selecting and zooming function. You highlight a section to zoom to it,now if you click on that section again as if you wanted to zoom in further, it makes a cut on the highlighted section.
You can get around this by pressing ALT and dragging the mouse in the small space between the two tracks you are dealing with...but if you miss and click in the waveform area,..you've made a cut.
You can lock the selection so that doesn't happen, but then you can't do anything with it.
So that's my three week review of it....I've done about 15 projects that everyone was happy with. I am redoing a project for free that a client wasn't very happy about. Upon listening to it today, I can't believe that anyone could butcher a record so badly. It was the second 15 song CD I did that day and maybe starting a session after working 11 hours isn't such a good idea? Or maybe having 7 people in room that's 23x14X9 and listening on stun isn't such a good idea.
The downside...
Went to the Waves website to see how some of their demo programs would run on Pyramix.
Had to check OTHER, in the survey.
bill
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