Back in March 2010 Flux:: announced a partnership with IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics and Music) in Paris, France. Well at last its out. this is from their first press release.... IRCAM is one of the world's leading public research institutes within the fields of musical expression, musical research, sound, and acoustics. The first result of this partnership collaboration is the software audio plug-in suite, IRCAM Tools and is released to the public today! Read more about the IRCAM Tools here. This is the specs.... IRCAM Tools, as all Flux:: plug-ins, provide Up to 8 channels Input/Output. 64-bits internal floating point processing. Sampling rate up to 384 kHz DXD (Pyramix DSP based). Sampling rate up to 384 kHz for native (AU/RTAS/VST). All major native formats are supported Windows - XP, Vista, 7 all in both 32 and 64 bits. VST (2.4) RTAS* Mac OS X - 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 in 32 bits. VST (2.4) AU RTAS* *The RTAS version requires ProTools 7 or later. I cannot wait to get my hands on them and see how good they are.

Hitler's Muslim Legions is a history documentary I worked on with Jenny Chryss about use of Muslim recruits to strengthen the German army in the second world war. This is from the BBC web site. It was after Germany's invasion of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1941 that Hitler's attention was first drawn to the potential for Muslim recruits to swell his ranks. For the many thousands of captured Soviet Muslims, the opportunity to serve in the Wehrmacht offered an escape from the brutality and starvation of the prison camps. Elsewhere, a major recruitment drive amongst Bosnian Muslims led to tens of thousands signing up for the Waffen-SS. Formed into exclusive Muslim units, these men fought in some of the most brutal campaigns of the entire war. This programme investigates why Hitler and Himmler apparently cast aside their Nazi ideal of an Aryan master race, justifying the admission of Islam into their ranks. It asks what attracted these men to fight for the Third Reich, how they were treated by their German officers and how they conducted themselves in the bedlam of war. Were they hopeless soldiers who committed unspeakable atrocities; or did they fight bravely for the Fuhrer? We examine the fate of these Muslims at the end of the war. With Hitler dead and the Third Reich defeated there was nothing to protect them, and most were killed as traitors. Presented by Julian O'Halloran. Producer: Jennifer Chryss A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4. The story was a revelation to me and you will hear an eyewitness account from a German, now in his 80s, who lived and worked with Muslim soldiers when he was 19. For more on the background to the programme go to the Radio 4 blog to read a post from Samir Shah who is the Executive Producer of Hitler's Muslim Legions. The programme goes out on Monday 26th July on BBC Radio 4. If you miss it then pick it up on the iPlayer.

Prosoniq have announced the end of download support for Windows products, and the planned release of sonicWORX Pro for 2011.  This is from their press release.... Prosoniq Announces End of Download Support for Windows Products Karlsruhe, Germany, July 16th, 2010 -- Prosoniq announces today that its Windows products will no longer be available for download to registered users starting January 1st, 2011. Prosoniq has discontinued development of its few Windows products in June 2009 and has announced to focus development effort entirely on its Mac product line, as well as on upcoming platforms and products. Registered Windows users are advised to download a copy of their product at their earliest convenience and/or crossgrade to the corresponding Mac version (where available). sonicWORX Pro Scheduled for 2011 Karlsruhe, Germany, July 16th, 2010 -- Prosoniq announces that the release of its sonicWORX Pro software has been scheduled for 2011. sonicWORX Pro is an extended version of Prosoniq's novel sonicWORX Isolate software. Isolate is designed to allow extraction and suppression of instruments and voice within a mix and has been shipping as of May 2010. It has received great attention since its introduction at Musikmesse 2010 and is currently one of Prosoniq's top selling products - a limited demo version is available from the web site. sonicWORX Pro will contain more specialized tools and algorithms intended to be used for mastering and restoration in addition to the extraction and suppression capabilities of Isolate. An upgrade path from Isolate to Pro will be made available so there will be the opportunity for Isolate users to upgrade at a reduced rate as soon as the Pro version is shipping. Purchasing Isolate now and upgrading to Pro will even be cheaper than purchasing Pro when it comes out, Prosoniq says.

Tim Prebble on his blog  has posted a series about metadata. A while back he asked various software developers how their products supported metadata and he has just published the answers as well as showing some experiments with Sound Devices free application Wave Agent.

Following on from my experiences with finding a plug-in that helped to remove reverb from recorded material posted here. The thread was picked up on the Pro Tools User Group in Linked In. For those who are Linked in members you can view the thread here. For those you aren't here are some of the comments. 'Andy remembered seeing a De-reverb plug-in at NAB near the Neyrinck stand. 'Carl posted... I remember seeing that plugin at Nab or IBC. The guys were Japanese and were only sharing a stand with Paul I think! Which of course takes us full circle as it was the NML RevCon–RR plug-in from tacsystem.com which I referred to in my post as being the expensive option. 'Beto M' posted... I've tried SPL last night and it's working fine to me.  I'm still running on demo mode but i'm thinking to buy it.  But the japanese....i don't know....there weren't much informations about the plugin and about them.... and later posted having tried the demo.... yes it really works fine Jeff H posted... I've used the SPL plugin. Doesn't work perfectly on everything but you can't beat it for the price. and then 'Ryan H' posted this advice for achieving similar results using different techniques... The new Waves WNS Noise Suppressor (which is a lot like the Cedar DNS) is great for getting rid of some reverb as is the Cedar. put all the frequency faders down all the way. then lift up the threshold til it sounds good. turn up the smoothing a bit as well. Another way but tedious is drawing the volume automation down in the spaces between words and syllables.

Following my posts on the problems with Canopus boxes and Pro Tools 8.0.3 here, 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 jerky video thread on the Digidesign User Conference. 'DigiTech Supt' has posted.... There are several fixes in 8.0.4 and 10.6.4, but at least one outstanding issue when playing video on a 2nd monitor that appears to be OS related, which we're working with Apple to implement a fix. Can anyone on 8.0.4 and 10.6.4 who is seeing jerky/stuttering playback when using a Mojo or Canopus device let us know the specifics of your configuration and the size/codec being used for the video? Also 'Anibal' has posted.... using Canopus, DV and different sizes, very smooth playback but eventually crashing when opening sessions with video in firewire

More and more of our work can revolve around games audio where there is a need to reliably and accurately label audio files with the correct file name. This thread came up on the Digidesign User Conference recently. 'JamesSosound' asked... The company I work for are embarking on a project recording Speech for a AAA computer game for the first time. We will need to be able to label audio regions in between takes during recording as efficiently as possible. Pausing recording, then double clicking a region, copying from a script then pasting the text back in to Pro Tools would be quite time consuming for thousands of files. Is there a more straightforward solution using a plugiin or feature of Pro Tools I am currently unaware of that will ease this process. Would anybody be happy to shed light on standard industry practice for this type of process. 'nucelar' came back with this suggestion.... Take a look at voXover. It is not Pro Tools-based but it fits these kind of jobs perfectly. Once the recording session is done, you can of course import the files to PT for further tweaking. 'clusterer' suggested a workflow that uses Excel, Pro Tools and Quickeys..... The excel-sheet had titles for each cue/take BELOW each other. so I recorded a few work steps with quickeys..: In the excel-sheet - I recorded the double click of the first title/cue, then command+c, Record the "down arrow key" to select the next title (the titles of course have to be below each other). The next recording was command+tab (to change to Pro Tools). there I hit "enter" (set marker); then command+v (to paste the name of the first title/cue); then enter again; then I recorded the PT-short-cut to move the curser forward/NUDGE for 30 seconds (nudge must be changed to 10 seconds or anything you prefer) . next step was change over to excel (command+tab)again. the next/following title in the sheet should be selected now. so with that - you have got a "loop". Save this as a Quickey and a shortcut.. and let it work for you. When you've finished the recordings you have to record a quickey that allows you to copy the marker-names into the regions regarding to the markers.. 'mjryder1' suggested another workflow using Strip Silence.... I've done a bit of this before using the strip silence function on Pro Tools in the edit drop down menu. This allows you to duplicate and name lots of regions in 1 go but is only useful if they need sequential names. (eg: VO1, VO2, VO3, etc) Don't know if that's any use? if you got them named like this though you could give a folder of them to someone to rename somewhere else therefore not clogging up you studio. 'JamesSosound' rounded up with a thank you.... Thank you all for your excellent suggestions. The voXover software fits the bill perfectly and is a very worthwhile investment for only £250. I have been using the trial version this morning, very straightforward and versatile. Problem solved. Thanks again.

I have just finished editing and uploading the series of 4 "The Choice" produced by Dawn Bryan. Still can't tell you who the interviewees are yet as Radio 4 have yet to announce them but they are another excellent set of stories all very different from each other. They are due to start going out on 12th August. 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.

Bias have some interesting offers on through the summer until August 31st. Some of these are of interest to Pro Tools users like... Buy SoundSoap Pro 2, Get Master Perfection Suite Free, or vice-versa ($599 US value): Customers purchasing SoundSoap Pro 2 or Master Perfection Suite - both powerful audio plug-in suites for AU, RTAS/AS, and VST hosts on Mac and Windows - may receive the complementing product at no additional charge. SoundSoap Pro 2 ($599 US SRP) is the critically acclaimed high-end edition of the company's popular SoundSoap audio restoration software and features additional parameter controls while integrating four comprehensive restoration tools in a single plug-in - including adaptive noise reduction (ANR), a powerful broadband dynamic noise reduction technology added in version 2 and lacking in most competing solutions. Master Perfection Suite ($599 US SRP) is a powerful collection of six plug-ins designed for mixing, mastering, and sound design including; Reveal (7-tool analysis suite), Sqweez-3 & -5 (linear-phase multi-band dynamics), Repli-Q (linear-phase spectral matching), PitchCraft (pitch correction/transposition), SuperFreq (4,6,8 & 10-band paragraphic EQ), and GateEx (gate with downward expander). The combination of SoundSoap Pro and Master Perfection Suite at effectively 50% off represents an astonishing value for anyone interested in enhancing their audio production workflow. Buy Any Single MPS Plug-in, Get One Free (up to $149 US value): All six plug-ins from Master Perfection Suite are also available separately (prices from $59 to $149 SRP) - customers purchasing any one of them may receive an additional single Master Perfection Suite plug-in of equal or lesser value at no additional charge through this special promo for a limited time. Availability and promo terms: Qualifying customers must purchase, register, and activate new editions of select BIAS products (excluding academic editions, upgrades, and cross-grades) from July 10 through August 31, 2010 from authorized BIAS resellers or directly from BIAS. To receive the free complementing product (delivered via download only), a rebate request form (available from the BIAS web site) must be completed and returned to BIAS (via fax, email, or physical mail) along with a copy of the original purchase receipt. This should be of interest to anyone who followed by posts here and here on EQ Matching as it is possible to buy Repli-Q on its own very cost effectively.

Here is the full details of all the v8.0.4 updates... Pro Tools 8.0.4 Downloads & Details June/July, 2010 — Avid is pleased to announce the availability of Pro Tools® 8.0.4, a free, downloadable update for Pro Tools 8.0-8.0.3 owners. This latest update offers many performance enhancements and fixes, including: Automation Editing Avid Unity and Interplay Workflows Recording MIDI Relinking and importing Stability For a select list of fixes in Pro Tools 8.0.4, please download the following PDF document: Pro Tools 8.0.4 Release Notes Pro Tools 8.0.4 also adds Windows 7 support for Pro Tools LE® and Pro Tools M-Powered™ systems. We've also included new PC drivers for Pro Tools LE 8.0.4, greatly expanding the number of compatible laptop and desktop computers. On the Mac side, Pro Tools LE and M-Powered 8.0.4 adds support for the latest i5 and i7 iMac and MacBook Pro models. For more information about Pro Tools 8.0.4, please see the following page in the Products / Pro Tools / What's New section: Pro Tools 8.0.4 Announcement Summary of Updates Pro Tools|HD® 8.0.4 Includes many performance enhancements and fixes Pro Tools LE 8.0.4 Includes many performance enhancements and fixes Full support for Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) Full support for i5 and i7 iMac and MacBook Pro models Adds new Windows drivers—broadening compatibility on PC desktops and laptops Pro Tools M-Powered 8.0.4 Includes many performance enhancements and fixes Full support for Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) Full support for i5 and i7 iMac and MacBook Pro models Compatibility Summary Pro Tools 8.0.4 supports the same Pro Tools core systems as version 8.0.3, with the following operating systems: Mac OS X 10.6.1 – 10.6.3 (Snow Leopard) While 10.6.4 is not yet fully qualified with Pro Tools, our preliminary compatibility and performance testing has found no issues Mac OS X 10.5.8 (Leopard) Windows XP Service Pack 3 (Home or Professional, 32-bit) Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (32-bit) Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit) Windows 7 is officially supported with Pro Tools LE and M-Powered version 8.0.4; and Pro Tools M-Powered Essential version 8.0.3 Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 can be used on Windows 7 as a public beta Please Note: Pro Tools 8.0.4 will be the last version of Pro Tools to support Macintosh Leopard (10.5.x), and Windows Vista operating systems. It will also be the last version of Pro Tools LE and M-Powered to support Windows XP. Please read the EOSS (End of Software Support) Announcements for more information. Not Compatible Pro Tools 8.0.3 software and higher does not support some retired products: Original Mbox Expansion|HD Chassis Macintosh PowerPC Computers Please read the EOSS (End of Software Support) Announcements for more information. Download Pages with Additional Details Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 Updates — June 8, 2010 Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 Update for Mac OS X Pro Tools HD 8.0.4 Update for Windows Pro Tools LE 8.0.4 Updates — July 7, 2010 Pro Tools LE 8.0.4 Update for Mac OS X Pro Tools LE 8.0.4 Update for Windows Pro Tools M-Powered 8.0.4 Updates — July 7, 2010 Pro Tools M-Powered 8.0.4 Update for Mac OS X Pro Tools M-Powered 8.0.4 Update for Windows Note: These updates are for the full version of Pro Tools M-Powered; Pro Tools M-Powered Essential remains at version 8.0.3. Please Note: The Pro Tools 8.0.4 Updates are only available by download. You will need to use a broadband connection to download the update for your system. If you are not able to download on your Pro Tools system, you can download the update from any broadband connection, then transfer the update to your Pro Tools system. Additional Downloads Pro Tools 8.0.4 Optional software Downloads Links to downloads and installation instructions for owners of optional software, plug-ins, toolkits, MP3 Option, DigiTranslator, MachineControl, and more: Pro Tools 8.0.x Additional Downloads iZotope Updates Required For AudioSuite compatibility with Pro Tools 8.0.4, users of iZotope plug-ins should download the latest versions from the iZotope website: Alloy (v1.0.1b) Ozone 4 (v4.03b RX (v1.3) Spectron (v1.14b) Trash (v1.14b) Vinyl (v1.73b)

Following on from my EQ matching experience here and here when I heard about a plug-in that might help just at the right time, I had a similar experience with some interview clips that had been recorded in a reverbant space.  Again I turned to the Digidesign User Conference for advice and found a relevant thread running on the Digidesign User Conference The Solution There were two main suggestions on this thread, one expensive and one cheap. The expensive one is the NML RevCon–RR plug-in from tacsystem.com  It is listed in their store at 123,900 Yen, which comes out at around £900, so I moved on to the other suggestion. This was a plug-in not unsurprisingly called DVerb from SPL and is part of their MicroPlugs range (see fig 11). What’s more this plug-in won’t break the bank and there even a trial version anyway so you don’t have to risk anything! Once downloaded there isn’t much to explain as to how to use it. There are only two controls, one controls the amount of reverb reduction and then other is to adjust the gain to compensate for any level changes. Does this one work? The answer is again yes it does, I was able to get about 12 to 14 dB of reduction before it sounded odd. It came across as a multi-band expander and just as you can overdo it, when you use an expander, so you can overdo this little plug-in, but again as time is money. Conclusion This plug-in got me out of another little corner quickly and effectively and so I had another happy customer. I shelled out 59 Euros and bought the plug-in before the trial ran out so I can make more happy customers. Yes I could have used an expander, possibly the Waves C4 or the WaveArts multi-band dynamics plug-in and got a good result after some time messing about but as with the Repli-Q plug-in to have a simple plug-in that does the job quickly and well is invaluable.

Had a scary problem earlier this week at BBC North with a Pro Tools system appearing not to write session files to the disk, either normal Saves or Save Session As or even Session File Backups. Audio files, AudioSuite processed files and Fade Files all have been written to the drive so it doesn't appear to be a permissions issue or a drive failing. I did a search for all files created or modified yesterday and no session files came up, just the audio and fade files. It is as if Pro Tools was appearing to save but not actually writing the files to the disk. I did a Deleted files scan of the drive with Data Resue 3, having taught it what ptf files look like, and found no recent copies of the session in question. System is a G4 1.25 Mac Mini running Mac OS 10.4.x and Pro Tools 7.4LE with a 002R interface and all drives have Oxford Chipsets. In researching the problem on the DUC I came across this post... We're investigating this and see a few other web reports of this happening with other apps, so we're looking at possible causes, including OS services that may play a part. __________________ Avid Audio Tech Support I have subsequently done a full deep scan with Data Rescue 3, and having taught it .ptf session files, it found over 1000 session files on the drive. I opened the 500 sessions that were larger than the latest session on the drive (300k) and although I found about 10 session files from the project in question, they all preceded the latest session on the drive.  This to me confirms that Pro Tools never wrote the files to the drive during that last day. Having satisfied myself I couldn't retrieve anything from the drive, I then ran a benchmark test on the drive, which is a Seagate 2.5" Momentus IDE drive in a MacPower case with Oxford chipset. I benchmarked it to a recent Seagate SATA 2.5" drive and it compared very well. Then I used the Integrity Test in Drive Genius II, set to write 16M files in random write for 30 minutes, and it proved to be very reliable. Finally I completed a full surface scan with Drive Genius II and it found no bad blocks so I believe the drive to be in A1 condition.

Our Mike Thornton writes the Pro Tools Notes, Techniques and Workshop articles for Sound on Sound as well as reviewing many of the new Pro Tools related products. Note that you will need to be a subscriber to view the recent articles or you can choose to Click & Buy individual ones.   Xpand Xpertise - It might be a free plug-in, but the Xpand! sample player bundled with Pro Tools has some serious potential.

Our Mike Thornton writes the Pro Tools Notes, Techniques and Workshop articles for Sound on Sound as well as reviewing many of the new Pro Tools related products. Note that you will need to be a subscriber to view the recent articles or you can choose to Click & Buy individual ones.   Flux Syrah - Flux’s innovative dynamics processor adapts to your programme material in a much more sophisticated way than conventional compressors. But how does it sound?

IZotope have announced updates to their plug-ins which fix a problem there was with Pro Tools 8.0.4. David Could - Product Manager for Audio Post Production, has posted on this thread in the Digidesign User Conference.... Today iZotope have released updated versions of a number of their plug-ins (Alloy, Ozone 4, Trash, RX, Spectron and Vinyl) that address the issues encountered in Pro Tools 8.0.4. The updates can be downloaded from iZotope's website. see below for direct links. There are also updates for the other iZotope plug-ins For AudioSuite compatibility with Pro Tools 8.0.4, users of iZotope plug-ins should download the latest versions from the iZotope website: Alloy (v1.0.1b) Ozone 4 (v4.03b RX (v1.3) Spectron (v1.14b) Trash (v1.14b) Vinyl (v1.73b) Finally iZotope have announced that the update to the RX restoration plug-in and application is more than a fix... iZotope RX 1.3 Product Update We've been working hard to update RX and just added these new features: 64-bit Audio Unit support for native operation in 64-bit Logic Pro 9.1 and later. New peak finding feature will automatically locate exact peaks in the Spectrum Analyzer faster and more effectively than manual zoom. Learn more about the Spectrum Analyzer. New shortcut to choose time selection bounds in the RX application: simply listen and press the [ and ] keys during playback to set selection start and end points. Many minor fixes and performance enhancements. Download the update All good news folks.