Quick audio performace tip using Soundtrack Pro

This helpful tutorial will get you started on sending audio from within Final Cut Pro to the application, removing some noise, and bringing the sound files back into FCP. Of course, this is not the end-all be-all tutorial for correcting for noise in your audio, but it will help to give you a better sense of how you can use Soundtrack Pro in conjunction with FCP to have better control over the quality of your audio. Useful stuff.

Link to Story | Source Home

The soulful sounds of Stax to be reborn

Stax Records, the legendary soul record label of the 1960s and 1970s, will be resurrected 30 years after it folded.

Link to Story | Source Home

RAID: the lowdown

I’ll admit, there’s very little I know about RAID setups, so this little article helped with my understanding of the storage concept. Rick Young does a nice job of explaining what RAID is, how to came to be, and different examples of existing RAID rigs. RAID is essentially a group of hard drives linked together, acting as a single drive. If one fails, the whole system crashes. However, the benefits can be great, especially in environments where massive amounts of storage and speed is vital. Learn all about your RAID, SCSI, ATA, and SATA with this excellent feature.

Link to Story | Source Home

>DV Guru is constantly digging up great little articles. That’s why I link to his blog so often.

Choosing archival CD/DVD media

Ad Terras Per Aspera has a thorough technical explanation of optical media and what makes a good disc. To summarize his findings:

1. DVD+R has superior error correction and burning control.
2. Taiyo Yuden makes the best discs.
3. Gold plated discs don’t offer any added protection.

I suggest you read the full article to understand how he came to his conclusions and become a DVD whiz kid in the process.

Link to Story | Source Home

Atlantic Records Co-Founder Ahmet Ertegun Dies at 83

Ahmet Ertegun, founding chairman of Atlantic Records, passed away on December 14 in New York City at the age of 83. He had been hospitalized with a head injury since October 29, when he fell backstage at a Rolling Stones concert at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan.

Link to Story | Source Home

SonicStudio: soundBlade 1.1 Ships

soundBlade 1.1 is here! US$1495. Notice the separate time lines in the two EDLs? A lot of us were hollering for that. Fantastic.

“For in–depth signal manipulation, soundBlade offers support for NoNOISE II and reNOVAtor options plus AU and VST plug–in support. Also in the 1.1 release of soundBlade is Vive from iZotope, Inc., which bolsters the production power of soundBlade by bundling basic restoration functions crucial to a complete workflow.”

A “basic restoration” plug-in? So there’s the basic tool from iZotope which ships with soundBlade. Then there are the NoNoise II tools built by Sonic. And finally there’s Renovator. Lots of evidence here that restoration is a big part of SonicStudio’s market.

Here’s today’s full press release on soundBlade 1.1 in pdf form.

The SonicStudio site has more on soundBlade 1.1. This page appears to be only partly updated from the 1.0 version.

SonicStudio: Broadband DeNoise native for soundBlade for US$ $1295

The headline tells most of the story. Today Sonic officially released Broadband Denoise “the first member of the NoNOISE II™ native suite of restoration tools for Mac OS X”. Here’s the full press release in pdf form.

I wish the interface would evolve more but it’s pretty amazing to think this can run native and at such a low price. My how times have changed.

More from SonicStudio on the full NoNOISE II™ range.

Streampad blog » Blog Archive » Techcrunch(ed)

In the long-term, I want Streampad to be the service that delivers music to you wherever you are on whatever device you have. The dream of a celestial jukebox is a popular one. I think it’s a no-brainer and many different companies will offer it. We are in that game and prepared for a fight. I don’t think the answer is a DRM-soaked solution with limited rights. It’s a super-distributed one where everyone can tune-in, post it to their blog, comment on it and recommend it to each other. And EVEYONE can do this. Not just monthly subscribers. Artists will be paid more than they ever have been because music will flow more than it ever has. Concerts will sell out. Then people will buy those live recordings. The web has given us this opportunity to transform the way we discover and consume music. I am as excited as I’ve ever been about this and will try and help shape it over the coming years.

Dan Kantor – ex of Delicious and now ex of Yahoo – outlines his big dream. Streampad is kind of like iTunes in a browser but is not as goofy as that description sounds. Have a look for yourself. Right now I’m 9 minutes into a 22 minute live version of “Mexico” by . . . ooops. The artist name doesn’t show up in the Now Playing section. Some bugs to be worked out. Thanks to The Digital Music Weblog for the link.

Apple DVD Studio Pro Tips

Having worked with DVD Studio Pro for several years, I have discovered some useful techniques that may help you with authoring DVDs. [snip]

The Final Cut Studio bundle includes the Compressor video and audio compression application, and its default settings are set for use with professional film encoders. However, users can tweak these parameters to their taste. To make my AC3 file sound like the original uncompressed PCM track, I changed several values. Within Compressor’s Inspector window, where these settings live, I selected the Audio tab and increased the data rate to 256 kbps (rather than the 192kbps default) for improved response with stereo tracks. Under the Preprocessing tab, I set the compression preset to none and de-selected the lowpass filter and DC filter boxes.

These same changes to the settings also work for surround applications, but in that instance, I increased the data rate to 448 kbps. These tweaks typically result in an AC3 file that sounds like the original, but doing some experimentation to find the settings that work best with your program material will really pay off.

Link to Story | Source Home

Great to see this. There are a couple of other good tips as well. What I’m looking for is a template I could use to quickly and easily author an audio only surround disc. I’m sure someone’s built one but I haven’t found it posted anywhere yet. Anyone?

Apple DVD Studio Pro

Having worked with DVD Studio Pro for several years, I have discovered some useful techniques that may help you with authoring DVDs. [snip]

The Final Cut Studio bundle includes the Compressor video and audio compression application, and its default settings are set for use with professional film encoders. However, users can tweak these parameters to their taste. To make my AC3 file sound like the original uncompressed PCM track, I changed several values. Within Compressor’s Inspector window, where these settings live, I selected the Audio tab and increased the data rate to 256 kbps (rather than the 192kbps default) for improved response with stereo tracks. Under the Preprocessing tab, I set the compression preset to none and de-selected the lowpass filter and DC filter boxes.

These same changes to the settings also work for surround applications, but in that instance, I increased the data rate to 448 kbps. These tweaks typically result in an AC3 file that sounds like the original, but doing some experimentation to find the settings that work best with your program material will really pay off.

Link to Story | Source Home

Great to see this. There are a couple of other good tips as well. What I’m looking for is a template I could use to quickly and easily author an audio only surround disc. I’m sure someone’s built one but I haven’t found it posted anywhere yet. Anyone?