In part 1 I explained the challenge and a potential solution. In this part lets see if the solution delivers... Once fully installed, I inserted an instance of Repli-Q in the session to see how well it would work in this situation. This is how I had laid out the session. I put the reference take on one track and then the muffled take on another track. This is so I could adjust the EQ on the muffled track but still hear the reference file untreated. When making comparisons like this, don’t listen to short snatches of the reference, followed by the region you are treating, as you can easily get fooled into thinking things are better when they are not. I always listen to the full reference region and then a good chunk of the region to be treated to make sure I was going in the right direction, yes it took longer but was well worth it in the end. So with Repli-Q in the session, I bypassed the EQ plug-in on the ‘muffled’ track and moved the reference region down onto the muffled track so I could switch from one to the other with Bias’s plug-in. Learn once Next I opened up the Repli-Q plug-in, selected the reference region, hit Play and then Learn Spectrum in the Repli-Q window, and let it play for as long as possible through the reference region. Bias recommend that you should always start playing before you hit the Learn button so that Repli-Q doesn’t try to learn digital silence and the same at the end, so I clicked the Learn Spectrum again before hitting the Stop button in Pro Tools. Now I had a green trace on the graph that represented the ‘reference’ files signature. When I saved the profile by hitting the Save Spectrum button the trace turned to yellow. Learn Twice Now I highlighted the muffled region, hit Play again, hit Learn Spectrum and let Repli-Q learn the signature for the region I needed to treat. Whilst it was learning I got a green trace together with the yellow trace presenting the reference file. Again hitting the Learn button stopped the learning process, and I remembered to leave it run a long time to get a good average for the ‘muffled’ region’s profile. Having clicked the Learn Spectrum again the plug-in displayed then three traces. The yellow trace represented the profile for the reference region, and then two traces for the ‘muffled region, a green trace for the input profile and a blue trace for the output profile. Now I could adjust the amount of EQ added to the muffled region with the Matching slider. I found that as I slid the Matching slider from its default 50% down to 0%, the plug-in had no effect on the treated audio, through to 100% where the output profile was identical to the input profile and so the maximum EQ change was applied to the muffled region. Graph to EQ I found it much easier at this point to see this in action by changing the display from Graph to EQ. I could then see the EQ that Repli-Q was applying to the muffled region to get it to match the reference region. Does it work I hear you ask? Well yes it does, it produced a much more natural treated region than I had achieved with an EQ plug-in alone. But having listened to the treated version carefully I noticed that there was an increase in low frequency background noise and it was still not quite bright enough for my taste. However with Repli-Q’s EQ curve pointing me in the right direction, and with the help of an EQ plug-in, in my case an instance of Waves Renaissance EQ 4, I applied a low frequency shelving to compensate for the increase in low frequencies shown above and also a fairly tight parametric boost centred around 7k to add to what Repli-Q was already doing. With the two together I had a very close match and all done in about 10 minutes. All I needed to do was to render the treated files so they were the same length as the originals to make it as easy as possible for the video editor to replace the muffled regions with the treated ones. To do this, I copied the settings across from the real time plug-in to the corresponding AudioSuite version so I could process the files and then disable the real time plug-in to save computer processing power. Finally I send the processed file back to the client using the Sharing function on my Mobile Me iDisk. Conclusion The Repli-Q did a much better job, than I did, especially once I had helped Repli-Q along the way with a bit of extra targeted EQ and at around $149 for the single plug-in was well worth the money. Yes I could have persevered with EQ and matched it better but to have a simple to use tool that produced a very good result quickly is well worth it, after all time is money!

Yesterday I started work editing the new series of The Choice for Radio 4. Michael Buerk interviews people who have made life-altering decisions and talks them through the whole process, from the original dilemma to living with the consequences. I can tell you its going to be another excellent engaging series produced by Dawn Bryan for BBC Religion & Ethics but as yet, I cannot say who is on, what the stories are this year, as nothing has been announced. As soon as it is, I will keep you posted.

The problem A client had recorded a video voiceover but for some unexplainable reason several of the takes were ‘muffled’. They sent an example and a reference file over via ftp and I had a listen and sure enough it was muffled but it didn’t sound like just an EQ problem but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, I thought that the muffled takes may have been recorded as an mp3 but apparently not, it was one complete session. I was able to match them with EQ reasonably but I thought it would be worth doing a search on the Digidesign User Conference and found a very interesting current thread. It was all about this very subject. Don’t you just love when that happens? The Solution The first suggestion was to use Dynamic Spectrum Manager from Pro Audio DSP with the advice to use sparingly and then a number of posts outlining how hard it was to get DSM to function as an EQ Matching application as it is described by Pro Audio DSP as a “groundbreaking adaptive techniques to capture both the frequency-domain and dynamic characteristics of audio program, and uses this as the basis for a highly developed large scale multi-band compression process.” To this end the advice is it can do great things but needs careful use and as so often in my workflow, time is tight, so I moved onto the next suggestion. Bias Repli-Q from their Master Perfection Suite. As it happened, I already had Master Perfection Suite on my computer, which was even better news! However if you aren’t as fortunate, you can download a free 14 day trail from Bias, all be it the complete Master Perfection Suite which also includes 5 other applications and comes in VST, AU and RTAS plug-ins. In part 2 I will show you how I used it and whether it delivered the goods or not.

BBC Radio 4 are repeating a programme "The Greed Imperative" I worked on with Rosemary Foxcroft first broadcast on 23rd May 2010. The repeat goes out on Monday 28th June 2010 at 11am. Having worked in the City before becoming an academic and a nun, Dr Catherine Cowley is well acquainted with the temptations and the financial risks that city workers face each day. Dr Cowley questions whether money is the only motivation for those who work in the City and discusses whether greed is in fact a necessary and vital dynamic behind a successful economy. Is greed linked to the endless growth demanded by our capitalist society? Dr Edward Skidelsky, lecturer in Philosophy at Exeter University, says that the economists in the past assumed that growth was a process with an end, and once that end came, people would enjoy the fruits of wealth. And as Karl Marx put it, "we'd hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon and discuss poetry in the evening". Although the finance sector at the moment is being characterised as a hotbed of greed, would any of us, given the opportunity and the circumstances, act any differently? Are we focusing on bankers' greed so we don't have to look at our own? Do catch it if you can otherwise catch it on iPlayer next week.

Here is part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 of this review. The final section in this series reviewing VPre is the De-esser section and drawing together my conclusions on VPre. Again here is VPre’s tutorial on this section…. Removing Sibilance with VPre's De-esser from Bennie Cook on Vimeo. My comments It is very nice to have a de-esser in VPre and it is what I describe as a proper de-esser in that it is a band split de-esser that will leave the low band unprocessed and only compress the HF component of the signal where as some simpler de-essers will compress the wide band signal. Also the monitoring options of being able to listen to the low and high bands separately makes it so much easier to set up to just get the sibilance and nothing more. Overall conclusions This is an excellent dynamics package that has clearly been designed for speech. The range of controls has been pitched just right between too complex and not enough control. The support from the web site is stunning especially for a new product with tutorials and an excellent FAQ already in place. I am pleased that the guys at VPre are looking into my comments about the metering displays and I look forward to the next version to see how they have achieved this. My final point is I think the price point at £299 is just a little high although to be fair to get all these features you would have to buy quite a few different plug-ins.

Here is part 1, part 2 and part 3 of this review. Metering Unusually for a dynamics plug-in VPre contains a comprehensive metering section including a new type of meter that they describe in this tutorial… Setting an Input Level with VPre's LDPM Voice Meter from Bennie Cook on Vimeo. My Comments I remain to be convinced on how the LDPM meter with its slow attack and release can display the true digital peaks but it is easy on the eye. I asked VPre about this and this is what they said… The LDPM works by lagging behind the signal by a few ms. It remembers the highest digital peak measured during its rise time and doesn't release until the needle has reached that peak. So it does show true digital peaks, albeit a fraction of a second after they happen. In practise the delay is normally too small to be noticeable to the user. However the VU meter display style confuses me because the LDPM isn’t a VU meter.  It looks like a VU meter but the ballistics can’t be the same as a VU meter, which is designed to be a volume (loudness) meter and not a peak display meter. I understand that VPre are now looking into making the LDPM look different to both the VU and PPM metering. I have to say though as a UK broadcast engineer it is very nice to see a BBC or EBU PPM meter as one of the metering options but for me needle meters on screens don’t work. The needle appears to flicker. I would like to see horizontal and vertical bargraph metering as ZPlane’s PPMulator has as these are much kinder on the eye when viewing on a screen. I understand I am not the only one to say this and VPre are looking into adding bargraph metering as an option in future versions. More on VPre in subsequent posts – next the De-esser section and my conclusion.

Following my posts on the problems with Canopus boxes and Pro Tools 8.0.3 here, here and here as well as the jerky video problems I have posted on and the video compendium I posted about here and here, there has been another interesting post on the Pro Tools 8.0.3 Big Bug thread on the Digidesign User Conference 'redj' posted after the 8.0.4 release... Thanks Avid for the update ! But thereʼs already a mistake... For me, this bug happened by two ways : The first one is now resolved (opening a session). But the second one is not : when I remove video from firewire (deselect Video Out Firewire) PT crash ! But only if video track is offline. If video track is online, it works. Strange. Does anyone can confirm this bug ? 'TommyT' confirmed it... Damn,,, you're right, Bug confirmed here... Guess we should change the Thread name to 8.03 Big Bug & 8.04 Smaller Bug :) .... DigiTechSupt officially confirmed the 'small bug' and the work round... Ok, thanks for the report - we've been able to repro this and are looking into a fix. Not sure whose end it's on yet - us or Apple, but we should be able to determine that shortly and I'll reply when I know more. For now make sure to keep the video online when enabling/disabling video out FireWire (stating the obvious, yes..!). Avid Audio Tech Support

Here is part 1 and part 2 of this review. In this continuing series reviewing VPre we are going to look at the Compressor section. Again VPre has an excellent tutorial on this section Compressing a Voice Recording with VPre from Bennie Cook on Vimeo. The compressor section does what it says on the tin and I did like the separate limiter section and there appears to be a significant amount of headroom in this section so it can cope well with sudden loud sections like laughter. I did find it easy to over compress with this section but thinking about it that may be because I didn’t get the artifacts I would normally expect. That said I am not sure the compressor section will become my compressor of choice, I just love Waves Renaissance Vox with about 4 to 6dBs of gain reduction. I spent time a/b ing between the two and although I could get VPre close it never got the exact sound I like from the Ren Vox. More on VPre in subsequent posts – next the metering section.

I have been getting a number of calls from clients asking what to do when they get this message... Quite often it comes up when they have moved a session on a drive from one system to another, its fine on system one but this message comes up on system 2. So what to do? Go into the Workspace window which you find in the Window menu of Pro Tools and when it opens it will look something like this... We are interested in the letters in the A (audio) and V (video) columns. The letters set the status of the drive. Any drive that isn't formatted correctly will be set to T (Transfer) drive as these drives can only be used to transfer sessions from one system to another. They cannot be used to host active Pro tools sessions. However it is my experience that these settings can 'change' on drives that can support Pro Tools sessions, so it is useful to know how to reset them. You will notice from this screen shot that 'Work Disk 2' is set to T which is what caused the error message above. Assuming the drive is correctly formatted, to reset it back to normal, click on the T and a little menu will appear. Change it to R if you want to be able to Record onto this drive or if you want to prevent recording onto the drive you could set it to P so you can Playback a session from this drive. Now that Work Disk 2 is set to R, the session will open and all will be fine. Another way to solve this, especially if a drive repeatedly goes back to T or P on one system but is fine on another is to delete the Volumes folder in Unicode - Databases - Digidesign - Application Support - Library on the start up drive of the system that won't play ball. Be careful though, not to delete the Catalogs folders though as this is where any catalogs you might have created are stored. Once you have put the Volumes folder in the bin and emptied it, restart the computer and when you relaunch Pro Tools it will create a new Volumes folder. You could of course use the excellent Pro Tools Prefs and Database Helper application to do this for you, just select the Volumes button from the options..

Here is part 1 of this review. Next up in my review of VPre is the expander section Here is VPre’s tutorial on this section…. Using VPre's Expander to Clean a Voice Recording from Bennie Cook on Vimeo. My comments This is the best bit of this plug-in for me. I don’t know what is going on under the hood but it does exactly what it says and reduces the room noise without the artifacts of gating and pumping. It definitely helps to turn an average studio into a very quiet space. Unless I really try to overdo it I can’t hear the background come and go in the gaps. The 80Hz filter is excellent at containing the rumble that we seem to get from so many studios these days. More on VPre in subsequent posts – next the compressor section.

VPre is a brand new voice processing plug-in from a brand new company VSonics Ltd. This is what they say about their plug-in… Introducing the only Pro Tools plug-in specifically designed for processing human speech... VPre is a new RTAS plug-in consisting of a series of signal processors which can be used in any combination to process speech recordings quickly and transparently. It's easy to set up and you'll be able to achieve a standard of work not normally attainable either with multiple processors or in a single plug-in. Tailored to human speech, VPre's compressor, expander, de-esser and intelligent breath reduction interact in real time to produce exceptionally clean, natural sounding results with no hassle. Adjustments are easy. Metering is comprehensive. Over a series of posts I am going to put VPre through its paces and see if it lives up to the claims VSonics make of it especially at what the manufacturers claim is “the only Pro Tools plug-in specifically designed for processing human speech” In this first post I am going to look at the breath reduction module VPre have produced an excellent range of tutorials for each section, here is the one on breath reduction… Removing Breaths from a Voice Recording with VPre from Bennie Cook on Vimeo. So what is my opinion? The tutorial seemed impressive but of course we are listening to compressed audio and so I was pleasantly surprised when I tried it for myself. As with most dynamics processing when you over do it it doesn’t sound very pleasant but back it off to around 12dB of reduction, get the thresholds right and it works well. The only problem I had was with a presenter who had quite a bit of throat noise in the breath which VPre didn’t handle and once you had reduced the breath it tended to make the throat sound more noticeable. However with a lighter setting so that that not so much of the breath was being removed VPre produced a very respectable result. More on VPre in subsequent posts – next the expander section.

Some folk have had trouble finding the Release Notes for the 8.0.4 update, so here are some URLs... Release notes... Read me file!! (Known issues list)... Mac leopard 10.5.8 and snow leopard 10.6.2 & 10.6.3 download page... Also a new bug has already surfaced in Pro Tools HD 8.0.4. You read the full thread on the Digidesign User Conference. 'Mark the amazing guy' posted... Apologies if this has been posted already- I couldn't find anything about it. When working with Timeline and Edit selection unlinked, if you -select an area with edit selection, then -move your timeline marker, your edit selection gets wiped every time. Can anyone else confirm this, or know of a workaround? 'laki' added.... Well Mark, I saw this just today. Oddly enough, it's not the selection that gets wiped (the markers are still where they were in the timecode track). PT is actually deselecting the tracks that were selected. If you have track selection follows edit selection enabled, you can reselect the tracks and you'll see that your selection has not been lost. And, not to be a stickler for the rules, but you might get some more responses if you specify your system specs. See the "Help us help you" sticky in the PTHD Mac OSX forum. Good luck. I usually don't work in unlinked. 'DigiTechSupt' quickly chipped in and confirmed... Mark - Thanks for the report. We've been able to verify this and will get it in the queue for a fix asap. The best work around we can find (and it’s not really a valid workaround) is activating “Link Track and Edit Selection” and then when your edit selection has been blown away from the timeline just selecting the track again remakes the selection (it’s still stored in the timeline, just not in the edit). __________________ Avid Audio Tech Support

VK have announced a special time limited offer to celebrate their 5th anniversary.... We are celebrating our fifth anniversary of service to the post production world and the countless productions that VK has enabled to survive the hotbed of deadline with a time-limited sale.   We call this our "5/10/20" sale.   In celebration of our 5th anniversary, we’ll give you a 10% discount on the purchase of a full license or upgrade from a VK product that you've previously purchased for the next 20 days.  It's our way of saying thank you to the audio community for your loyalty over the past five years.    From now until July 5th, you can purchase a full license for VK Premium Collection for $1,800.00USD; a $200.00USD savings off of our regular list price.   Upgrades from VK's older, discontinued products are also discounted by 10% during this period.    Contact Lynn Ryan-Loeb or your local pro-audio reseller for more information or to take advantage of this limited-time offer!

If you have Waves WNS Suppressor and their Q10 Waves have released a Processing Chain that you can download... In response to the widely publicized complaints from TV viewers and broadcasters of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Waves is proud to unveil a solution which dramatically reduces the problematic sound of the omnipresent Vuvuzela trumpet favored by South African soccer fans. Working in conjunction with a major television broadcaster, we've precision-crafted a preset processing chain which drastically decreases Vuvuzela noise: The WNS Waves Noise Suppressor and the Q10 Paragraphic Equalizer. Together, they not only minimize Vuvuzela noise, they increase the intelligibility of the game announcers' play-by-play action and color commentary. The processing chain for Vuvuzela noise reduction is now available as load-and-use sessions for Pro Tools, Waves MultiRack, and Cubase. Click here for more info. Prosoniq have gone for a different approach.Firstly they quickly produced a demo to show how their sonicWORX Isolate application could reduce the impact of the Vuvuzelas... Using sonicWORX Isolate To Improve Dialog - No doubt sonicWORX Isolate has been recently used for a lot of creative work in the music business. But as this sound snippet demonstrates, it is far more than just a creative tool to extract and suppress instruments in a mix. This audio clip demonstrates our technologies' ability to get rid of the annoying Vuvuzela noise from a Worldcup commentary and clearly demonstrates its use to improve dialog in cases where all other options have failed. So don't forget to check out our sonicWORX Isolate demo today Then the next day they have produced a free application based on their Isolate product... Prosoniq is proud to announce the world's first realtime Vuvuzela filtering plug in based on sonicWORX' audio de-mixing technology.  This technology does not use a notch filter or parametric EQ to remove the noise. VuvuX is a free Apple AudioUnit plug in that suppresses the noise created by the South African trumpet called "Vuvuzela" in realtime without affecting the audio commentary or the stadium atmosphere, allowing you to enjoy a noise-free World Cup 2010.

Following their offer on Project Studio Bundle McDSP are now offering another 3 day special offer this time on the Retro Pack.... For 3 days only, McDSP offers huge savings on all Retro Pack bundle purchases! Retro Pack HD is available for only $395 and Retro Pack Native is available for only $195! This special only lasts 3 days so place your order now! The McDSP HD product line supports TDM, RTAS and AudioSuite formats, and operates on Pro Tools HD, LE and M-Powered, and the McDSP Native product line supports RTAS and Audiosuite formats, and operate on Pro Tools HD, LE and M-Powered. This offer is valid only until June 17, 2010. Visit the McDSP Store to make your purchase today!

Here are some more details on using Right Click in Pro Tools. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here Transport Window There are contextual menus on four of the transport buttons accessible by right-clicking them. They work on the transport buttons on both the Transport window and the Edit window if you have the Transport function option selected from the View menu for the Edit Window. Play This shows the options for the Play button. Half Speed - This is the same as Shift and Spacebar. Prime for Playback - When playing back a large number of tracks, Pro Tools can take a little while to actually start playing back audio. To avoid this delay you can put Pro Tools in Play Pause mode (Prime for Playback) so that when you do hit play you get an instant start. Loop – This is the same as selecting Loop Playback in the Options menu and enables Pro Tools to play the same selection as a loop to help select a good loop point. Dynamic Transport – This is the same as selecting Dynamic Transport from the Options menu. For more on the Dynamic Transport functionality see the Pro Tools workshop article in the May 2007 issue of SOS. Record This shows the options for the Record button and you can see that you can get to any of the record modes from the one contextual menu. As with most of the right-click menus there isn’t anything new but they bring together all the relevant options in one little menu. For more on QuickPunch and TrackPunch see the Pro Tools workshop article in the December 2006 issue of SOS and July 2008 for Destructive recording. Remember TrackPunch and Destructive Punch are HD only features. Return to Zero & Go To End (HD only) These show the options for these two buttons and they enable you to access automation commands that you would otherwise access from the Automation window.

2 of the programmes I have worked on recently for All Out Productions have both been featured on Radio 4's "Pick of the Week" this week. Hardeep Singh Kohli makes his selection from the past seven days of BBC Radio.  It's difficult in a week festooned with the frivolity of football NOT to mention the beautiful game. Hardeep Singh Kohli's Pick of the Week selects some more unusual angles on the game from as far afield as Milan, Robben Island and the Highlands of Ethiopia. There's a beautiful feature about the tragic demise of Schumann, an exploration of the iconic interviewing skills of David Frost and Nicholas Parsons recalling his days in Glasgow. The picks the week. Today - Radio 4 The Power and the Passion - World Service Football's Freedom Fighters The Carabinieri Art Squad - Radio 4 Thoroughly Modern Mary - Radio 4 Philip and Sydney - Radio 4 Start the Week - Radio 4 Hello, Good Evening and Welcome - the David Frost Story - Radio 4 High Hopes - Radio 4 The eSportsmen - Radio 4 Doon the Watta - Radio 4 If I Loved You - Radio 4 Robert Schumann and the Music of the Future - Radio 4 Home Thoughts From Abroad - Radio 4 Firstly "Football's Freedom Fighters" produced by Jo Meek When South Africa's Bafana Bafana kick the first ball of the 2010 World Cup on the 11th June in Johannesburg's revamped Soccer City stadium there will be several men in the crowd who's appreciation of the match will stretch well beyond national pride. For Mark Shinners, Anthony Suze, Sedick Issacs, Lizo Sitoto and Sipho Tshabalala this is the completion of a long journey that started for them in the 1960s, when they first started playing the beautiful game on a rough football pitch on one of the ugliest islands on earth. We hear how the Makana Football Association was formed, based on the principles of collective discipline and fair play. A 16-year-old Dikgang Moseneke was elected Chairman, an act that underlined the Association's commitment to excellence and FIFA-like technical rigour. We speak to Mr Moseneke, now 63 and the current Deputy Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, about how the football pitches of Robben Island were the training ground for the leaders of the future. As the World Cup starts in South Africa, Fergal Keane travels to Robben Island with these men to the pitches where some of the country's most prominent political leaders now used football to create a space of dignity, respect and democracy at the infamous prison. and then the first part of a 3 part series "Doon the Watta" produced by Lyndon Saunders. Nicholas Parsons was only just 16 when his parents sent him from his relatively privileged home in London to the industrially hardened city of Glasgow. It was January 1940 and with the country still at war, the Parsons felt the best place for their teenage son was serving his country north of the border. So with the help of an uncle, Nicholas secured an engineering apprenticeship on the busy River Clyde. For 5 years he combined his studies at Glasgow university with work for the Drysdales firm. 60 years on Nicholas Parsons goes back to the place where he was sent as a boy but grew into a man. By day he had a tough education from the uncompromisingly tough men of the Clyde, but by night he had the freedom to discover his talents on stage and perform to packed out theatres and concert halls full of the men with whom he was clocking on and off. In this series Nicholas returns back to Glasgow and retraces the life he once had, starting his journey in the YMCA digs he came to call home. He'll also revisit Glasgow University and the department of Engineering where he studied. It's still at the centre of expertise in teaching and research in shipbuilding today. He'll find out how the profession of shipbuilding has changed. Enjoy some excellent radio even if I say so myself, but I think I can safely say the Pick of the Week team agreed!

There have been a couple of threads in the Digidesign User Conference and the problem has been traced to an incompatibility with iZotope plug-ins and Pro Tools 8.0.4. In this thread 'subwoof' asked.... I just spent 90 minutes with Digi (Avid) only to be told there is an "issue" popping up with 8.0.4 and Audio Suite. On my system, I am getting -7453 errors when trying to preview. On some plugins like Pitch N' Time Pro and Izotope RX, they simply don't preview, and then they render out a blank file. Some of the Digi plug ins work, but I get an "Access Violation" error, and sometimes Pro Tools just quits. I sent in the error log to them, and they are going over it. In the mean time, they told me to go back to 8.0.3 cs2. They also recommended that my colleagues here in town not go to 8.0.4 yet until they do more research into Audio Suite issues. It may work for you, but have your 8.0 installer disc handy just in cast you need to regress!! 'SessionKat' otherwise known as Tim vdB - Digidesign Engineering suggested... Its likely this is dependent on some 3rd party component(s), as many of us in-house and others can not reproduce unless we have IZotope Audiosuite installed... Then DGould - David Gould - Product Manager - Audio Post Production - Avid confirmed... We have discovered a problem with 8.0.4 specifically to do with -7453 errors when previewing iZotope AudioSuite plug-ins. We have today posted a warning about it on the download pages. Thank you for helping to bring it to our attention. We suggest that iZotope users remain on 8.0.3cs2 until this issue is resolved. At time of writing it is our understanding that this issue only affects users with iZotope plug-ins installed (even if the problem is manifesting itself with other plug-ins). We will provide an update as soon as we have more information. So there it is iZotope users should say on 8.0.3 or lower until iZotope release an update that is compatible with 8.0.4

Avid Audio have announced an 8.0.4 update for Pro Tools HD.... In our continuing effort to provide you with the best software experience possible, Avid has released Pro Tools HD 8.0.4, a free update that provides many of the most requested enhancements and fixes - for details of fixed issues see the Release Notes PDF. 8.0.4 for Pro Tools LE and M-Powered is coming soon… Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 is a free update for all Pro Tools HD 8.0-8.0.3 owners. Version 8.0.4 supports the following operating systems: Mac OS X 10.6.1, 10.6.2, and 10.6.3 (Snow Leopard) Mac OS X 10.5.8 (Leopard) Windows XP Service Pack 3 (Home or Professional, 32-bit) Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (32-bit) Although not officially supported, Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 can be used on Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit) continuing the public beta program for Pro Tools HD. Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 Updates For details and downloads, see the following pages: Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 Update for Mac OS X Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 Update for Windows Compatibility issue with Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 and iZotope plug-ins: Users of iZotope AudioSuite plug-ins should not upgrade to Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 until an issue regarding DAE-7453 errors, and incorrect audio rendering has been resolved. Please Note: Pro Tools 8.0.3 and higher does not support some retired products, including: Macintosh PowerPC Computers Expansion|HD Chassis Please read the EOSS (End of Software Support) Announcements for more information. Nothing yet for LE users but I am sure it will be along soon. But good news for Canoupus box users as in the Release notes pdf under fixes for 8.0.4 it lists... Crash when opening a session with Canopus ADVC 110 or 100 attached. (Item #PTSW-120430) Area: Canopus ADVC 110 or 100 OS/Platform: Mac/HD Pro Tools could crash when opening a session saved with video playing out via Canopus ADVC 110 or 100. However Wolfgang Bartsch has confirmed in this thread on the Digidesign User Conference that.. 8.04 installed in the morning, no problems with canopus advc110 the whole day which is great news for users that have been suffering problems with Canopus boxes since 8.0.3 was launched as reported here.

If you use Structure for Post as I covered in this post a while back then you should update your Structure plug-in according to Avid Audio... Avid is pleased to announce that updates are now available for our A.I.R. virtual instruments on Mac and Windows computers. See the pages below to learn more about, and download, these updates. Mac and Windows Structure 1.0.5 and Structure LE 1.0.5 Update The Structure/Structure LE 1.0.5 update resolves issues in the following areas: Structure Import of EXS files on Mac and Windows Pro Tools hangs when scanning plug-ins if Internet Explorer 8 is installed Windows The following updates resolve an issue with these plug-ins on Windows systems: Pro Tools hangs when scanning plug-ins if Internet Explorer 8 is installed. Hybrid 1.5.4 Update for Windows Strike 1.0.4 Update for Windows Velvet 1.0.4 Update for Windows _________________ Avid Customer Support