Pro Tools

[snicksfan85]

Originally Posted by Travisevian

Why?

Why not?

It's a technology that's about 20 years old that's made recording cheaper, easier, and more accessible. Even if analog recording is the golden child preference for audiophiles, it's the biggest pain in the posterior. Protools is cheaper, easier to edit with and organize, allows for a ton of tracks without daisy chaining 2 or 3 machines together, and doesn't require the fine art of punch ins, splicing tape, and calibrating machines. Plus, we're talking the best Macs money can buy and high end Protools HD rigs. It's not like me hooking up a Mbox to my Macbook. (which would not sound bad but wouldn't be up to major release standard) You literally have hundreds of plug-ins at your fingertips, some that are just as good as the outboard gear. You're not limited to the length of the tape. You can put months worth of sessions on one hard drive. 2" 24 track tape is expensive. (Think 3 hard drives for the price of one reel) Most quality tape machines are 30+ years old and prone to being temperamental. Plus, with Protools, you don't have to worry about tape degradation after a billion playbacks. Tape gets messed up, there potentially goes months worth of work. A hard drive gets corrupted, you might be able to get some of that back. (Assuming you didn't triple backup all your sessions which is also pretty standard)

I will tell you, in the 2 years I worked at a major studio, there were only a handful that used analog tape and those ended up being dumped into Protools for mixing or editing. Protools is the standard.

Also, you would be surprised the amount of Autotune that's used these days. (Which is really the only gripe I have with the whole DAW set-up). It's hard to point it out on a listen through off an album unless it leaves an "artifact" (odd sounding digital noise) or it's used for the "Cher" effect (think "Believe"). But I hear it on this album in certain spots and there's a few places I suspect but can't say 100% on whether or not it was used.

The Mac used tape to record Say You Will and then dumped into Protools for the mix. That's a tape machine controller next to the console in the house. Plus, Lindsey's getting ready to splice tape at one point (1/2" or 1") during Thrown Down and then using 2" on Say You Will.

Mark Needham did an interview with Mix Magazine talking about how it was recorded and then was mixed:
Whereas Buckingham used his Neotek console and Sony 3348 2-inch to cut tracks at the Bellagio House, Needham and Buckingham mixed at Cornerstone, feeding DAW tracks through the studio's Neve VR console, plus racks of his own outboard gear. Additionally, there were some tracks from the solo project that were on analog reels. “For most of the stuff, we're using a 64-channel Pro Tools rig, and then I have probably four or five racks of outboard gear that travel with me. On a couple of tunes, we actually had 128 channels; we brought in a [Pro Tools] HD system. But mostly we were just using my [Pro Tools] 888 24-bit system with the dB Technologies converters on the output. We added some parts in the studio while we were mixing, and then I like to add in additional stuff, as well. I usually add in several more drum sounds. And I like to have the ability to be able to split the vocal off onto maybe three or four returns.”

While he used “quite a few” plug-ins on the project, Needham notes that “all of my compression and EQs are outboard analog. I have several Neve pre's and EQs and API 550s and 560s. I also use Jeff Daking EQs, Focusrite Reds, 1176s, 1178s. I have a bunch of Manleys that I like. I use the Drawmer 1969 [compressor] on background vocals. Recently, I've been using some SPL [Sound Performance Labs] things that I got hooked up with on some projects I did over in Amsterdam. One is a piece called a Transient Designer, which I love on drums. Then there's the cool [Charisma] Tube [processor] and their Qure EQ. I love what that does for acoustic instruments that have been processed through the mill on digital gear; the top end can get a little dull and hard to fit into a mix, but I've been very happy with what [the Qure] did. I have stacks and stacks of gear, and we used a lot of it on this album.”

Needham says that he enjoyed the challenge of making a coherent mix out of the many layers of tracks Buckingham delivered. “The goal, of course, is to be able to actually distinguish all the parts. Sometimes you have 20 or 30 vocals going and seven or eight percussion tracks and numerous guitar parts; really, a lot of information.”

I asked Needham the same question I'd asked Buckingham: How do you know when it's done? He, too, laughed. “When we've tried every possibility that we can imagine?” He notes that on the two songs that used 128 tracks — “Peacekeeper” and “What's the World Coming to” — “I took two older versions of each [from the solo sessions] and the new versions that the band had recorded, which were in slightly different tempos and keys, and combined all that together, pulling out parts from both; I made a hybrid of them.”

One challenge Needham faced was dealing with Buckingham's beloved half-speed guitar parts: “The tempo variations made it a little difficult to transfer it over to Pro Tools because his VSO speeds range from two whole steps up to a whole step down, which caused some problems with the Pro Tools clock,” he says.

Also interesting to note, Stevie has been running a live version of Protools off and on since 2007 for her shows. (Also, per a Mix Magazine interview.)