Top marks to my Pro Tools Expert colleague Russ Hughes for catching up with Scott Pederson from Waves to give us a definite version of where Waves are up to and their development programme.....   So March 2012 is going to be very busy for Waves as they plan to bring out 64 bit versions, out, as well as v9 of Waves, then a "no iLok authorisation" method also due out in March. As to AAX, Scott has announced they definitely plan to support AAX Native but "v9 is priority" and so no firm dates for release of AAX version of their plug-ins. As to the AAX DSP versions, it isn't a no, BUT they have no firm plans as to when they might do it and it still could possibly be a no. So AAX Native "will be supported 100%" but it is still a maybe on AAX DSP and no time frame but I think we can assume AAX Native isn't going to happen before March.   Well I am sorry Waves, I am not sure I can wait that long, I want good quality plug-ins that will work on my HDX card, so just as you can't guarantee that you will have Waves AAX DSP plug-ins I can use, I cannot guarantee that I am going to be able to wait that long. In my opinion you have you priorities misplaced however I accept that I am possibly one of a small percentage of Waves users with Pro Tools HDX system.

My Pro Tools Expert colleague Russ Hughes has managed to catch up with Chris from Gobbler and there is some good news for Windows users and iPhone users, watch and enjoy....

My Pro Tools Expert colleague Russ Hughes has been busy interviewing folk on this issue of the new AAX format and he managed to grab Dan from Eventide.   It is good news that they are bringing some of the Anothology II plug-ins across but my growing worry is that I may end up with a raft of sessions that use TDM plug-ins that I won't be able  to open properly because they contain TDM plug-ins that haven't been ported over to AAX. At the moment, it is less of a problem if there is an RTAS version as Avid have made sure that PT10 will use the RTAS version, BUT for those TDM only plug-ins that doesn't work, which potentonaly is going to mess up the carefully planned backwards compatibility map that Avid have devised.  I can see that the AAX transition is going to be somewhat more bumpy that Avid might have wanted. So you TDM only manufacturers please concentrate on porting your TDM plug-ins over to AAX as quickly as possible.  

My Pro Tools Expert colleague From the AIR Users blog, Russ Hughes managed to grab an interview with some key folk to discuss and put to bed some of the myths about the new AAX plug-in format.  

We are live, and so now we have a home page with the latest stories from the 3 best Pro Tools sites, AIR User Blog, ProToolerblog.com and this one of course. When we originally announced the partnership back when Avid launched Pro Tools 10, the buzz we generated both with the trade and users has been remarkable; already pre-launch our Twitter account is just about 1,000 followers.     Today at NAMM 2012 we launch the new Pro Tools Expert site www.pro-tools-expert.com Our intention is that Pro Tools Expert will become a one stop shop for all things Pro Tools and to remain independent of Avid so we can bring you all the news, information, tips, and reviews and tell it how it is.   This stage we consider to be phase 2, an aggregation page bringing all the best from our respective sites, but over the coming months expect a growing amount of exclusive content to the Pro Tools Expert site and in the future who knows....  Tell us what you would like.  

  Flux have been busy recently and have released a new true peak limiter Elixir aimed at the audio post production market for those producing content to one of the new loudness specs like the EBU R128. But this isn’t a loudness management plug-in, it is designed to manage the true peak levels to keep them within the broadcaster’s delivery spec whilst being as transparent as possible and not unduly adding to the loudness. I think this is the first product of its type and so I wanted to see if Flux had managed to meet these expectations.   I set up a session with a range of different programme types to see how it would perform and also followed it with a loudness meter to see if it changed the loudness too much.   I found it was very good with very few side effects even when working it hard.  It is very simple to use with the main Threshold control often the only one I would need to set.  Once I had got to grips with the basics I studied the manual because there was a couple of controls I didn’t expect to see on a limiter.

This is the announcement from Gobbler...   We’ve released our most ambitious build yet which includes multi-factor authentication & OAuth. We now store your photos, movies & over 20 new project file formats that YOU requested! The Gobbler Team has also fixed many bugs that were reported to us through the community. Keep using Gobbler & we’ll keep building a better product for you! Version: Gobbler 0.9.8, January 13th 2012

  The Plugin Alliance is the coming together of a number of smaller plug-in manufacturers under one umbrella.  They say....   As the new official service provider for all Brainworx, SPL, elysia and Vertigo plugins we would like to introduce you to our new license-management system. Finally, we are offering world-class audio plugins that require no more USB dongle or external hardware. One license file is all it takes to manage all your ALLIANCE plugins.     To get you started, we are offering some FREE plugins. Open a FREE account here, grab some installers and start rocking! You can use all of our plugins on 3 computers, and we will always keep your license count at 3, even if your computer dies.  

  Soundfield who are well known for their microphones also branched out a couple of years ago into the plug-in market by producing the Surround Zone plug-in that would take the B format signal from the Soundfield mic and enable you to produce a 5.1 output.   Now they have released another plug-in the UPM-1, which has nothing to do with their microphones, and this is an upmix plug-in taking stereo content and produces a 5.1 output, otherwise known as an Upmix plug-in. They are following the TC Electronic Unwrap and the Waves UM225/226 upmix plugins, but what Soundfield say they are trying to do “is to produce a very stable and natural sounding 5.1 without destroying the original stereo image.”

The Pure Analyzer from Flux  is a big application with loads of options that displays and measures your audio in so many ways.   Separate App The first thing that is different about Analyzer, is unlike their other products that function as plug-ins within the host application like Pro Tools, Analyzer doesn't. It is a separate application that picks up signals from a Sampler Grabber plug-in (similar to ReWire) and routes the data to the main Pure Analyzer application.  This threw me at first as I was expecting a plug-in and having run the installer I couldn't find the plug-in. However once I had read the manual the configuration and arrangements were very clear and I had Analyzer running very quickly.

I have just sent an email to comments@waves.com asking them to port their plug-ins across to AAX as soon as possible.  This is what I said...   I have just upgraded my HD2 Pro Tools rig to HDX and I feel stranded. I have so few plug-ins that will run on the DSP chips on my new HDX card.  As Waves plug-ins regularly are my 'go to' plug-ins like Ren EQ - when I want eq, L2 for my master limiter for broadcast work, Renn Vox for voiceover and insert compression and so on, I am really disappointed that my only option now is to use the RTAS versions, leaving my expensive investment largely unused.   Please, please, please port all your plug-ins across to AAX Natve and DSP, by all means offer two products as you do now so the DSP products are more expensive, but please do it and do it soon. The longer you leave it the more people will find an alternative and then you will have a serious struggle to get people to come back to Waves.   So if you want access to Waves plug-ins then I suggest you do the same.

Waves have announced the release of a new plug-in the Waves Loudness Meter or WLM which will be available separately or included in the Mercury bundle. This is from their press release...   The Waves WLM Loudness Meter plugin provides precision loudness measurement and metering for broadcast, movie trailers, games, packaged media and more. Ideal for content creators and post production houses as well as cable head-end facilities, WLM is an affordable, all-in-one cross-platform, multi-format loudness metering software solution.   ITU, EBU and ATSC compliant Foreground, dialog, and average loudness measurements Momentary, Short Term, Long Term, and True Peak readouts Intelligent dialog sensor detects and measures speech Mono, stereo, and 5.1 components   The price makes it reasonably competitive in that the regular price is $400 and the introductory price is $299 Looking at the specs and screenshot, I do like the easy way you can set it to the different standards with dedicated buttons for EBU, LM1 etc but although they have logging options with csv export the display doesn't offer any history options like the TC Electronic LM5 and LM6 as well as the Nugen Audio VisLM-h

In part 1 I installed the new Mac Pro, and in part 2 I started the Pro tools installation.   Lack of AAX plug-ins Having now got a stable system it began to dawn on me how few AAX plug-ins were installed on my system despite the PR to the contrary on the launch of Pro Tools 10.     This shows the complete extent of my AAX plug-ins, notice that not even the Avid AIR plug-ins are there, even they are still dpm plug-ins. So I started to research what plug-ins were available starting with the list of “some 35  3rd party companies” that Avid announced on launch day having “AAX-compatible plug-ins ready or will have them ready shortly—please visit their website for specific plug-in information.” And are listed on their AAX compatibility web page. I will keep this page updated as announcements are made above AAX support, so do pop back to check for the latest info. UPDATE 27/01/2012. We have created a database on our Pro Tools Expert site which will be crowd sourced information so please follow the link to check on the latest news about your favourite plug-in and whether and when it will be available as an AAX plug-in. I have transferred and updated all the information that was here to the Pro Tools Expert database.

So in Part 1 I got the computer set up and had started the Pro Tools installation.   Check your plug-ins Before considering running Pro Tools I wanted to check that all my plug-ins were up to date, although the Avid site is getting better for providing this information there are so many plug-ins to keep track of it still isn’t an exhaustive list. So yet again I turned to a little application called Plug Tools, which I looked at back in August 2010 in Sound on Sound.   This application, built by Mark Trombino, compares the plug-ins in your plug-in folder with an online database, that can be updated by users, as Mark has wisely used crowd sourcing to help keep the database bang up to date. Even so when I did me install the database was thrown by a number of v10 plug-ins that it considered out of date. I will be updating the online database with my findings to contribute to the accuracy of the data.

So I finally did it, having made the decision as outlined in my post about it, the gear arrived arrived during the Christmas break and so over the last week I did the deed and here is my story. Trust me, never do a major upgrade in the middle of a busy spell when deadlines matter. These upgrades rarely go smoothly and end up taking much longer and I find that the knock on effects rattle on long after the main upgrade process is complete.

Editing Using The Keyboard - Save time and protect yourself from RSI by learning to edit audio in Pro Tools from the QWERTY keyboard.   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.

There has been an issue for Avid HD Native users in that you needed to be on Mac OS 10.6.7 to update the firmware on the HD Native card but then to use it the compatibility specs quote that 10.6.8 is the minimum Mac OS to run HD Native systems on. That isn't too much of a problem if you are installing your system on a Mac with 10.6.7 but what if your system is already on 10.6.8 or even 10.7.x, what do you do?   Well Avid have realised this problem would be pretty common and so have come up with an application that will update the card's firmware what ever version of the Mac OS you have above 10 .6.7. Here are the details and the links...

Recently I posted about mine and others experiences of starting to mix content to the new loudness specs to see how easy or otherwise it would be.   Well there has been an interesting thread on the Linked In Pro Tools Users group which has some interesting posts on it.   Firstly here are links to the key documents. The R128 spec for Europe from the EBU and the ATSC spec for the US.   Other useful articles are the EBU loudness site and an article in TV Technology which will be of more use to our US friends.

  Here is your chance to get Waves product at a serious discount                      

Avid have announced today that they have released 10.1 which adds support for the new HDX hardware.   Avid is pleased to announce the release of Pro Tools HD 10.1 Mac. This release adds support for our new Pro Tools|HDX hardware for Mac OS X. Customers that purchase an HDX system (or do a Hardware Exchange from HD) and activate Pro Tools HD 10 will see the Pro Tools HD 10.1 Mac installer in their Avid accounts. See the kb430151 for Download info.   Well that will be going on my new system when it arrives then!