Finale 2010b is Installed

Its only a year old, but we finally upgraded to Finale 2010 in studio 4, 5, 7, 8, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4.

Finale 2008 was removed from all machines.

Digidesign Virtual Instrument Box Set

The Digidesign Virtual instrument Box Set is now in Studio 6 and Studio 7. This includes Strike, Velvet, Hybrid and Structure.

Complete Production Toolkit added to Studio 9 computers

Digidesign’s Complete Production Toolkit is now on the studio 9 computers. This adds the following to Pro Tools 8 LE:

Features

• Edit and mix up to 128 simultaneous audio tracks
• Mix in up to 7.1 surround sound
• Double your Instrument tracks from 32 to up to 64 simultaneous tracks
• Comes with over $2,650 worth of groundbreaking virtual instruments and professional plug-ins, including:
  • Digidesign Eleven™ LE hyper-realistic, vintage guitar amp emulator
  • Digidesign Hybrid™ 1.5 high-definition synthesizer
  • Digidesign Smack!™ LE foolproof compressor and limiter
  • Digidesign Structure® LE advanced sample player
  • Digidesign DINR™ LE intelligent noise reduction
  • Digidesign TL Space™ — Native Edition convolution reverb
  • Digidesign X-Form® time compression/expansion and pitch shifter
  • Neyrinck SoundCode Stereo surround-to-stereo down-mixer
• Multitrack Beat Detective™ rhythm analysis, extraction, and correction tool
• DigiBase™ Pro full-featured file management tool
• DigiTranslator™ 2.0 for import/export of OMF, AAF, and MXF files
• Time Code and Feet + Frames functions
• Powerful editing and session management features
• Pro Tools® MP3 Option for exporting MP3 files

Check out the website for more. http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?langid=100&navid=115&itemid=6282

VueScan Software installed in Studio 8

VueScan software in now in Studio 8. This tames the HP ScanJet and makes scanning possible again. If you own a scanner, check out this software. http://www.hamrick.com/ Thank Kyle Snyder for the tip.

DVI extended to SHA and SHB

If you look closely, Trevor and I installed DVI connectors in Soundhouse A (SHA) and SHB. The second DVI output of the Mac goes to a DVI distribution amplifier. From there the video is split to go out to the LCD display in studio 1 and the two DVI connectors in SHA and SHB.

What’s the big deal, right? This allows anything displayed on the secondary monitor in the control room to also be broadcast to the soundhouses. One good application would be for audio post production. Put the Pro Tools movie window on the secondary display and now the musicians can follow along in the soundhouse as the music is scored to picture. Or actors can do dialog replacement. Or foley can be recorded to picture. Or, …you get it.  Just don’t plug in a DVI display while the computer is running.

Our only trouble with the installation was being careful not to get the high resolution DVI cable stuck in the conduit. The DVI connector barely fit inside the 2 inch rigid conduit. Trevor gently pulled while I feed the cable into the conduit. When we hit a snag, I would pull back the cable a little,  gently twist it and Trevor would continue the pull.  For the record, the picture below is Trevor pulling cat5 cable for a USB extension system in studio 1.  We pulled the DVI cables later that day.

Trevor Frohberg using fish tape to pull cable in the North Machine Room

Final Result. Plasma in Soundhouse A

Melodyne Essential installed in Studio 9

Celomony’s Melodyne Essential is bundled with Pro Tools 8 LE. It is a separate application but will soon be a RTAS plugin.

manufacture’s website

Studio 9 now has Digidesign MBox interfaces

Studio 9 switched over to Digidesign MBox

You can run programs simultaneously.  I opened and successfully played audio through the MBOX for DP, MAX, Peak, Audacity, Kontakt, Reason, Tassman, Soundhack, Cecilia, finale AND Pro tools LE. All programs were left open and sometimes I was playing back audio from multiple programs.

This just in…Yamaha Subkick

I don’t know how it sounds but it certainly is pretty. Nice heavy hardware. I guess if we ever buy drums for the studio, we’ll have to get a similar stain color. Check out the manufactures website.

Studio 9, version 2.0. Now with Less Noise

I installed a new HP 5200 printer in Studio 9. Not only is it 6 dB quieter than the previous printer during idle times, it goes to sleep and hardly makes a noise 15 minutes after the last print job. Priceless.

More Memory Please.

Studio 1 and Studio 2 are getting 4 GB more memory.

The only complication that I had installing it was determining which slots should be used. Generally, computers like memory to be installed in pairs. Our Mac Pro machines have two memory cards (A and B) with four slots each (1, 2, 3, 4). They were shipped with 2GB installed.  That was four 512k modules installed in A1, A2, B1, and B2.

I didn’t know how to pair the modules so my first attempt was to keep the 512k modules where they were and add the new 2GB modules to A3 and B3. This resulting in the computer not even seeing the new modules.

Second attempt was to put the new 2GB modules in A1 and B1, then put the 512k modules in A2, A3 and B2 and B3.  This resulted in the computer only seeing 2.5 GB of memory (A1 and A3).  Mysterious.

By the way, I’m check total memory in the “About This Mac” under the Apple menu.  Then, if you click on “More Info,” it opens up the system profiler application.  Check out the “memory” section for details.

Third attempt was to put the two new 2GB modules in A1 and A2 and the existing 512k modules in A3, A4, B1 and B2.  This was the correct arrangement. The computer shows 6GB of RAM and the system profiler correctly lists all the modules.