Mike, Dan, and Julian chat through issues from the week's news as well as the usual tips, tricks and questions answered.

New Podcast Sponsor - e-instruments

Thanks to e-instruments who are supporting the podcast this month and this week we are featuring the Session Keys Grand Y which captures one of the most used Grand Pianos. It's designed to be transparent yet have a dynamic sound to make it the go-to Grand for Pop and Jazz artists offering powerful bass-lines as well as sparkling right-hand runs and with a multitude of modern features, the sound possibilities don't end there.

Deals

• Save 25% on Zplane ElastiqueAAX Pitch And Time Plug-in for £230. Check out the comparisons between the ElastiqueAAX and other pitch and time manipulation plug-ins, and read what Alan Sallabank has to say.   If you need to change the time and pitch of content, especially if you work in post production then do not miss this deal.  
• Don’t forget to check out the deals from our Partners in the Partner Deals section on our Deals page. 

Talking Points Kindly Sponsored By Universal Audio

Until May 31st you can save up to 60% on classic Neve compressors, EQs and channel strip UAD plug-ins. The “Neve Sound” has been integral to legendary pop, rock, and hip-hop albums for over 40 years. From the sheen of a 1073 EQ to the smack of the 33609 compressor, get the only genuine Neve plug-ins on UAD and Apollo hardware during UA’s Neve Sale!  

• Would You Buy Avid Pro Tools If You Were Starting Again? Have Your Say In Our Poll
• Is This What The Apple Mac Pro Modular Will Look Like?

Competitions

• Can You Tell A Real Rhodes Suitcase Piano From A Sampled Virtual Instrument and which do you prefer? This prize draw competition includes a shootout. Listen to 3 examples, and see which one you prefer. One of them is a real 1973 Suitcase, the other 2 are the e-instruments Session Keys S. Enter and win a copy.  
• Win 10 Plugin Alliance AAX DSP Plugins Of Your Choice Our friends at Plugin Alliance have worked hard to support the AAX DSP platform and have 51 AAX DSP plug-ins now. In this competition, one person will win 10 Plugin Alliance AAX DSP plug-ins of their choice and 5 runners up will win one AAX DSP plug-in of their choice. If you have an HDX system you will want to enter this competition…  

Community Feedback Kindly Sponsored by RSPE Audio Solutions

If you are looking to give your studio the power to Create, Edit, Mix, Master and Deliver Dolby Atmos content, then check our friends at RSPE Audio Solutions as for over 15 years, they have been a proud Dolby Professional dealer and installer and they are one or a handful of dealers you can supply the Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite.  

• Alex Reverberi has been in touch with an idea following on from our discussion about Native and HD versions of Pro Tools. He would like Avid to give us the option to control third party hardware via Pro Tools instead of having to use a separate app for it. As a multiple Apollos 8p user he would like an option to enable users to control the hardware, Unison preamps, do zero latency monitoring while tracking directly through Pro Tools instead of having to set up a separate mix in Console.

This Week’s Featured Pro Tools Expert Interview

This week’s featured interview is James’ interview with John Rivers, owner of Woodbine Street Studios in Royal Leamington Spa. John talks about his journey into recording from being a professional drummer and later playing keyboards and becoming a  Hammond organist, John's collection of vintage compressors, his Audient 8024 24 channel console and how he uses it for tracking but not mixing choosing instead to mix totally in the box.  

Questions From The Community

• Don Hamlett would like our advice on buying a pre-owned MacBook Pro to work with Pro Tools.
  • Check put the list of approved MacBook Pro machines on the Avid Compatibility charts. Scroll down to the OSX Computers section and open that and then down to the laptops section and you will see a list that you can work from. 
• Joe DiFranco is looking to buy a computer to run Pro Tools 12 for recording bands. A Mac Pro is out of his budget and so was looking at Windows machines and asks what we would recommend.
  • Check out Alan’s system
  • Our article on self-builds
  • Avid compatibility charts.  Again scroll down to the Windows Computers section and click on the expand option.

Source Connect Now

As you may know, we are spread out around the UK & Europe when we record the podcast. In the past, we have used a variety of internet based solutions so we could hear each other.  We have settled on Source Connect Now which gives us ISDN equivalent quality audio using a Chrome browser, no software to install. You can get a free account from Source Elements.

Find Of The Week

• Mike - Object-based audio and VR. I was at the Jigsaw24 Mix With The Pros event and there was a great presentation and demo from Dolby’s Ceri Thomas. Then on Friday as part of the Institute of Professional Sound’s Northern Powerhouse event, I was at the BBC R&D department in Manchester and enjoyed some of the demo material and work from their research. 
• Dan - Boz Digital Labs The Big Beautiful Door coming very soon, check out the videos
• Julian - Sound Radix - I’ve been looking at Auto Align and Pi and these have made me do some homework about phase. This prompted me to look at things from the ground up and I had a eureka moment about phase rotation, something I’ve never really understood. It made me look at audio in a completely different way - That doesn’t happen often these days!

Listen on to the Pro Tools Expert Podcast on iTunes