Taking the plunge

[nucjd]

Well guys
I am finally going to take the plunge and step into pro tools HD. I have been using my 002 (signature mod) for years and it has been great. One of my big problems is the latency however with firewire. It is minimal and probably does not bother a lot of folks but it has annoyed me from the get go. I track in pro tools 9 with a buffer size of 64msec which is extremely good for firewire and almost imperceivable, but notice i said almost. For us drummers tempo and time change is everything and even that delay can affect us. With pro tools the card ties directly into the pcie slot on your computer and does not use firewire or usb with dang near instant pass through of signal to the drummers headphones. Not only is this very advantageous but the audio engine on the card ( for hd native ) is 64 bit processing which is HUGE. This gives massive head room with even higher fidelity. Time delay compensation is another aspect as well. When we put plug ins on tracks this requires processing of the signal which takes a certain amount of time which will then offset the track in relation to other tracks causing very subtle phasing which will sum on the final bump down causing a muddy flat sound messing with our transients that we drummers love. Time delay compensation takes into account the delay and adjust all of the tracks to line them up. Also the 002 has too many things going on in one box IMHO ( preamps, Analog to digital conversion, digital to analog conversion, word clock, firewire interface, midi interface, ADAT, power supply) which causes massive amounts of cross talk and degrades signal quality. One way to combat that is to keep theses aspects phyically away from each other ( particularly the converters). Anyway it is going to take some time to get up and running but I will keep you guys up to date

[VIbes]

Sounds great Nucjd. I am going to try and upgrade this comeing year. Need a new computer and just get a little more organized. I notice too that when I record and useing a lot of plug in's the midi keyboard track seems a little off and have to freeze the efx on tracks to get things in sync. A faster processor and more ram should take care of that.

[nucjd]

It is just amazing Vibes how quickly things are evolving with the digital aspect of recording. You are correct about a quicker computer. Keep us up to date with your progress.

[nucjd]

Little update and impressions.
I have just finished getting the studio back up and running. First thing I did was sit on ebay and watch for an HD native card at a reasonable price and snatched it up. Then I sold my 002 sig mod and my ADA8000 (Black lion modified as well) on ebay. Finally I found a Digi 192 I/O for a great deal and picked it up. This got me back to where I was on the 002 for inputs and outputs but with much greater flexibility with routing and now with the ability to record in 192 Khrtz. One key aspect about this setup is I haad to have all separate pre amps as the 192 is a AD/DA converter only 16 analog inputs and 16 analog outputs with light pipe for SMUX, spdf, TDIF, AES/EBU adding another 16 I/O. This has to interface with HD native card in the computer via a cable that looks just like an HDMI cable (I found this very interesting as this is how they are getting essentially no latency as the bandwidth is massive on HDMI for video and it is only running audio). We then spent all of yesterday gutting, rewiring and testing the rig. So we are now up to date on our rig and sounds GREAT. We did some test runs last night with guitar DI into an A designs preamp and a Purple audio pre amp and the 192 Khrtz recording puts a depth into the track that is quite impressive. Anyway here are a couple of pics of our new control room setup. On the right in the upper slot is the 192 and underneath is a lucid 8 channel ADA light piped into the 192. The preamps, EQ, and compressors on the left