Over the Christmas break, many of the Production Expert team shared our choices of Product Of The Year for 2019. We each chose one product from 2019, which in our opinion was the outstanding product during the last 12 months. Then we asked you to choose which one of our choices you preferred the most and you voted.
We can now announce that the winner of Production Expert Product Of The Year 2019 is the Avid S1 control surface, with the Penteo 16 Pro plugin from PerfectSurround in a close 2nd place and Dialogue Match from iZotope taking 3rd place. Below are the results in full…
Product | Percentage |
---|---|
Avid S1 Control Surface | 27.37 |
PerfectSurround Penteo 16 Pro Plugin | 26.43 |
iZotope Dialogue Match Plugin | 18.46 |
Townsend Labs Sphere L22 microphone | 14.63 |
Neumann KH310 Speakers | 7.75 |
Flock Audio Patch | 3.98 |
Nembrini BST100 Guitar Amp Sim Plugin | 1.38 |
1381 votes cast
Let’s take a look at each of the top 3 products and see why they were so popular…
More About The Avid S1
The Avid S1 is a portable and affordable slimline surface and because it is a EUCON control surface it is designed to work with multiple DAWs, like Pro Tools, Nuendo, Pyramix, Logic Pro, Cubase as well as NLEs like Media Composer and Premiere Pro that support Eucon powered control surfaces. Avid’s control protocol has been designed to deliver deep hardware/software integration not only with Pro Tools but a range of other DAWs and NLEs and is designed to give full touch and tactile access. You can even switch between multiple applications and workstations, all at the touch of a button.
The S1 is an 8 fader control surface like its predecessor but unlike the Artist Mix it will take an iPad but unlike the Pro Tools Dock, there isn’t a width restriction to cause problems as the iPads get bigger.
For Alan, the S1, when set as a layout of two or more, with an Avid Dock is visually very impressive. Clients and peers alike, when seeing this rig, have been impressed across the board. The S1 does not look like a piece of home studio kit that’s been brought in due to monetary reasons. It looks at home in any facility. Neat little touches like the magnetic joining strips give two or more S1’s a properly integrated feel - as if it were an actual one-piece 24 fader controller. It also enables regular users to easily cross over to using an S4 or S6, and vice-versa. Alan says…
“I might be accused of hyperbole here, but I truly feel that the S1 isn’t just Avid’s best product of this year, but also of this decade. As we move into the “twenty-twenties”, Avid have laid an excellent solid foundation, which will massively help mixers concentrate on Mixing, using physical faders and knobs, rather than manipulating one parameter at a time using a mouse. It brings back some of the magic to mixing”.
Even though Avid announced the S1 control surface at their Nashville event back in July 2019, it was only released in the last part of December 2019, but in the meantime, it has received a lot of interest…
Whether you’re an old hand, or new to all things mixing, the control surface is a great way to get hold of your virtual mixer and audio plugins. With an ever expanding range of options, here we round up our favourite compact solutions to get hands-on with.
The Avid S1 opened up the Eucon ecosystem at an accessible price point. If you’ve never tried one, check out these two videos which illustrate some of the most attractive features of the way these surfaces work together with Pro Tools.
In this article Julian shares the reasons he chose the Avid S1 as his product of 2021. As someone who values space more than gear, what is it about the S1 which convinced him to surrender some of his desk space to the S1.
In this article, we have brought together an Expert Panel to share which control surfaces, if any, we use and the reasons behind our choices. We hear from people working in music production as well as others working on post-production. Some of our expert panellists work at home, others in larger facilities. If you are looking at buying a control surface you should read this article.
The biggest new feature of Eucon 2021.6 was Custom Knob Mapping. In this free tutorial Julian Rodgers demonstrates his new custom map for Avid’s EQIII 7 Band EQ.
Over the Christmas break, many of the Production Expert team shared our choices of Product Of The Year for 2019. We each chose one product from 2019, which in our opinion was the outstanding product during the last 12 months. Then we asked you to choose which one of our choices you preferred the most and you voted. In this article, we announce the results…
Post Production Expert Alan Sallabank takes us on a history tour of three decades of post-production mixing, to explain why he’s chosen the Avid S1 as his Product Of The Year 2019
We understand that Avid has just released the new free Avid Control app replacing the Pro Tools Control app. The new Avid Control app is a tri-platform app and is now available to download from the Google Play Store, Amazon Fire Store and Apple App Store.
Avid has announced that you can pre-order their new compact control surface, the Avid S1 priced at $1295 with an expected delivery in early December. We have all you need to know about the new Avid control surface and how you can pre-order it.
As well as showing 3 Avid S1 pro-production models together with an Avid Dock at the AES Show in New York, Avid has announced the price for the Avid S1 will be $1295. This is despite rumours that it could have been priced higher than the original price for the Artist Mix.
In this free video tutorial, brought to you with the support of Avid, Julian Rodgers looks at how much faster and more tactile managing Groups is using the Avid S1.
In this free video tutorial, brought to you with the support of Avid, Julian Rodgers looks at Layouts. These recallable custom assignments of tracks onto the worksurface are much more flexible that it might at first appear.
In this free video tutorial, brought to you with the support of Avid, Julian Rodgers looks at how easy it is to navigate and control your session’s plugins using the Avid S1.
In this free video tutorial, brought to you with the support of Avid, Julian Rodgers demonstrates how simple and effective the use of Spill is in making even a single S1 a fast and powerful tool when mixing large sessions.
In this free video tutorial, brought to you with the support of Avid, Julian Rodgers introduces the S1 for those who have yet to experience how this brilliant little control surface works, specifically how the encoders work in two different modes - normal and channel mode.
In a world exclusive, Post Production Expert Alan Sallabank, who has been beta testing the new Avid S1 control surface, together with the new Avid Control app, now available on iOS, Android and Amazon Fire, from prototype to production pilot, shares his experiences and observations in this very special review.
Recently our friends at HHB held a post-IBC event for people who were unable to make IBC in Amsterdam. Amongst the products on show at the HHB Event was the first showing of the Android Avid Audio Control app on a Huawei tablet working with an Avid S1.
Back in July 2019, at the Avid Connect Live event, part of the Summer NAMM 2019 show in Nashville, Avid announced the Avid S1 control surface as a replacement to the Avid Artist Mix. Last weekend at IBC 2019 as part of their IBC coverage, Product Specialist Dave Tyler gave a much more detailed look at the Avid S1 and Avid’s Gil Gowing gave a sneak peek of the upcoming Avid Control app as well.
More About The PerfectSurround Penteo 16 Pro Plugin
Back in September Perfect Surround released Penteo 16 Pro as their latest upmixing plug-in, which opened up the Penteo upmixing technology to the full range of immersive formats up to 16 channels. This includes 5.1, 7.1, Dolby Atmos up to 9.1.6, Auro 3D up to 13.1, DTSX and up to 3rd order Ambisonics. What is more, it is now both an upmix and a downmix plug-in in one interface and enables you to go from different channel counts and formats in the one plug-in.
For Mike, the core ethos of the Penteo range through the years from Penteo 3 to Pento 4 and then Penteo 7 and now Penteo 16, is that the design of their upmixing engine always gives an upmix that will be transparent and compatible when downmixed. There is no point in having a great sounding upmix, if when it is downmixed, it sounds crap. The reality of what we do, especially in broadcast and OTT is that our immersive mixes must work when downmixed all the way back through stereo to mono, as the majority of our audience won’t have a full surround rig to enjoy all the fruits of our labours. The downmix compatibility is one of the main reasons Mike likes Penteo so much and then, add to that, the simple interface and an excellent natural, unforced immersive sound and you have a winner.
Audio reversioning is something we have been doing in the audio post-production sector for a long time now, but until recently, it didn’t have a proper name. However, with the explosion of multiple audio formats and speaker layouts and the adoption of immersive formats like Dolby Atmos, the need to go from one format to another has exploded. In response, the tools to handle this have improved and the term audio reversioning has been born.
Penteo Audio Plugins has released Penteo version 6, which now offers Penteo upmixing technology to an even wider range of immersive formats including Dolby Atmos up to 9.1.6, Surround up to 7.1, Auro3D up to 13.1, DTSX, Sony 360RA, Ambisonics up to 7th order, Binaural and Dolby Pro Logic. We have all the details…
PerfectSurround, the creators of the Penteo phaseless upmix/downmix DSP, has issued a major new release focused on the rapidly expanding 360 audio market. We have the details…
Recently we have heard a lot about personalised HRTFs and why we need them. But do we always need them every time we are working in binaural? In this article, we explore when it's best to use standard or generic HRTFs and when it's best to use a personalised HRTF for converting audio into binaural.
PerfectSurround now have 3 Upmix options Penteo 16 Pro, Penteo 360 and Penteo 16 Pro+. Not sure which plugin is right for you? No problem, in this article, we have the information to help you decide.
In our roundup podcast episode 400, the last of 2019, Julian, Dan and myself shared our top picks of 2019, along with some suggestions from the community and one of Mike’s choices was the Penteo 16 Pro upmixing and downmixing plugin. and it is his Product of the year.
PerfectSurround has released another update of their Penteo 16 Pro upmixing and downmixing all-in-one plugin, to make it is the only upmixer that supports all Dolby formats natively from Atmos 2.1.2 to Atmos 9.1.6 so that now it supports 930 channel up/downmix combinations.
PerfectSurround has released an update of their Penteo 16 Pro upmixing and downmixing all-in-one plugin, adding Ambisonics decoding and downmixing to any supported format, a Tilt mode allows more forward control for the overhead channels and an LFE full bypass option.
More On The Dialogue Match Plugin From iZotope
Every day, re-recording mixers and editors in film and television are faced with the challenge of matching dialogue from lavalier mics, boom mics, and ADR to create a single seamless and cohesive performance. There are, of course, many ways for us to tackle this problem but they all take time, often requiring several plug-ins, and so take time and slow up the workflow.
For re-recording mixers and ADR editors, Dialogue Match will be an unprecedented time-saver. Tonal characteristics can be matched between a boom and a lavalier microphone. When it comes to redubbing films and TV for different language it will be so much quicker to be able to automatically match the localised language tracks to match the sound, ambience from the original language, with global snapshots and reference profiles that can be saved or loaded.
Audrey explains why Dialogue Match was her pick…
“Last December, I started on a new film and thought I would download Dialogue Match to give it a try, hoping that it’ll save me some grumbling while I edit dialog. While I haven’t got to the ADR phase of this movie yet, I am already in love with the plugin.
The interface is really intuitive and you can A/B your reference audio with your production audio as you make adjustments. Most of what I’ve been doing so far is to match lav mics with the shotgun mic and it’s worked like a charm”.
If you’ve been traumatized by aggressive crickets in your field recording as Audrey has been, you may want to give Dialogue Match from iZotope, a closer look.
Today iZotope has launched Dialogue Match, which is an AAX AudioSuite plugin that automatically learns and matches the sonic character of dialogue recordings. This is the first product to combine iZotope and Exponential Audio technology, bringing together iZotope’s machine learning with the reverb technology developed by Michael Carnes.
Why you can trust us…
The Production Expert team are first and foremost professionals working daily in music and post-production. Our content is informed by a team who are practitioners, meaning our tutorials are devised to help those working in real-world scenarios.
Product evaluation also benefits from this experience ensuring that when products are tested, they meet the needs of those working in studios every day. As a partner, you can be assured that our team understand your audience well.