Is this a Miracle, or just another day at the studio?

[KenElevenShadows]

Regardless, I'm pretty happy about this and figured I'd let you know!

 

I recorded drums and bass on an analog machine, an Akai MG1214. I transferred these tracks over to PT LE on my Digi001 system. Then we overdubbed guitars, keyboards, vocals, etc. Shortly afterwards, I got a much nicer Apogee AD16 A/D converter and wished that I could have used these with the drums and bass.

 

Yesterday, with the better converters, I transferred the drums and bass from the Akai over to PT LE and got them to perfectly lock up with the overdubs!!! I wasn't sure if this was even possible, since nothing was synced, etc., but I was really excited to get the drums and bass sounding good. I did this for about 6-7 songs.

 

Just outta curiosity, has anyone else successfully done something like this?

[jackpine]

You just gotta love it when stuff works.

[KenElevenShadows]

Yeah. It was amazing. I really didn't think it was possible, but something made me want to try it. The drums and bass have so much more clarity, definition, impact, sense of space and depth, and nuance. As most of you know, it's amazing to hear the difference between good and not-so-good converters, especially when the effect is cumulative (8 channels of audio). My band couldn't believe it.

 

Has anyone else ever tried this? Anyone successfully in doing this or seen it done? I'd love to know. It's a LOT of work, but apparently, it's possible.

[Philip OKeefe]

Flying stuff around or from machine to machine sans sync is always hit or miss, but it's certainly gotten easier with DAW's. I'd say you were fortunate since one of your devices was an analog deck with a mechanical transport... that's normally where you're gonna get drift from. But with PT (or any good DAW for that matter), there are ways to get around that... but you're pretty fortunate you didn't have to resort to that extra work - especially when working on so many songs.

 

Glad it went well for you Ken.

[KenElevenShadows]

I had to resort to that work, making it fit with the overdubs, on all six tracks. It was a lot of work. I just didn't think it was possible at all. Some songs were maybe 1/10 second short or long; one or two songs were about half a second too long. It took a lot of eyeballing and toggling around to get it to sync up, but I did it. I was told by several other people with DAWs that it probably couldn't be done (although they hadn't tried it), but I'm six for six so far. I'll do two more later.

 

The thing is that two of the songs had the rhythm tracks edited, and I even managed to line up all the edits and keep it the same. I just can't believe that something like this is possible. I'm just really grateful, and very happy about the whole thing.

[YourMotherShouldKnow]

Glad you got it to work Ken. Hell, I get that excited if anything works!

 

I recorded a CD 10 years ago on my brother's 1/4" Fostex (?) reel to reel. We used Cakewalk to program the drums and we had 8 tracks to do everything else on. (Not much of an artistic experience but it was a learning experience )

 

So, I rented a DAT player and an Aphex (?) sound shaper thing (from someplace in Tennessee; don't ask me why Tennessee, there's no good reason). Anyhow, after the very last mix was done for that CD, the Fostex never worked again. What's the chance of that happening? I worked like mad on it every week for 8 months and then after it's last session it decided to retire permanently. Crazy.

[Philip OKeefe]

Ken, when you have stuff like that and it's only a few seconds over the course of the whole song, you can slice it up into sections and TC/E it and nearly always "make it work" if you're willing to invest some time and sweat into the editing and time compression / expansion. What version of PT LE are you running? The 6.0 and beyond versions of LE have the TC/E tool included, and if you have not upgraded from 5.X, now would be a good time. It's certainly useful for the type of stuff you're trying to do. But even without it, it's pretty amazing what you can do to get things that were done wild sync to line up.

[KenElevenShadows]

Thanks, Phil. Yeah, I agree. I'm sometimes operating in a bit of a bubble here, so I was curious to see if other people on this board have managed to do this same thing. That was most of my curiosity. Yes, I used the very same method that you described and got it to match up perfectly. You of course have to line everything up and then toggle TC/E back and forth until you get it just right. You can get pretty close already just taking a guess, and then you just keep toggling until you get it just right, and then apply TC/E to the rest of the tracks that you are importing.

 

Hopefully I won't be doing too much of this since I already have the nice converters, but you never know...it just seems miraculous to me, especially after being told by a couple of engineers around here that my chances were "slim and none". Good thing I sometimes don't listen to people who say it's not possible! When you consider that a year ago, I didn't know how to operate the darn system and couldn't even find how to open the bloody Mix Window, it feels all the more miraculous.

 

LanceMo, so far, most everything works right except for that !$&^^$%! Monster Cable Toslink cable that I just purchased. What a piece of garbage...(see other thread).

[Mark LaCoste]

Ken, I hope the correct answer was "Just another day in the studio", because I need to do something similar and I'm not set up for miracles.

 

My Bud is all excited about a recording of his band at a recent rehearsal. He used a blackface ADAT. My whole project studio runs on ADAT lightpipe, so it shouldn't be a big deal to transfer the tracks (via Hammerfall) into Sonar. I hope it works by just hooking up the lightpipe and maybe the 9-pin ADAT sync cable and pressing "Record, you bastard". But if it's that easy then I'm gonna be thinking a miracle has happened.

[KenElevenShadows]

Mark,

 

Since you recorded it digitally, you shouldn't have the drift that that I got with my analog system (the Akai MG1214). It should be relatively easy, since you presumably don't have to toggle with the Time Expansion/Contraction like we have been discussing. And even if you do, it won't be as much as half a second off. I think you should be okay. Just keep everything locked together so when you switch one track that you are importing, they all switch with it, and you should have it pretty easy compared to an analog transfer...that requires a bit of work unless you are incredibly lucky.

 

Anybody else have experience with this?