Transporting tracks from recording studio to home studio

DougHamm wrote on 7/9/2002, 1:27 PM
Howdy folks!

I find myself using VV for as much audio as video in the last while. I'm working with a local startup band which my nephew is in, doing their photos and videotaping performances for demos. They're in a local studio now putting together their first demo CD, and will probably use me and my gear w/ Vegas for mastering. To save on studio time, we're considering doing the mixing as well.

Unfortunately my studio isn't built for more than a solo recording - certainly not large enough for recording drums - so I can't suggest that they use my facilities from end to end. They'll have no choice but to lay down the bed and record their tracks at the larger studio.

My question for those who do this is, what method do you prefer for getting individual tracks or mixes from an outside recording studio to your own editing suites? This would be the first time I have to rely on equipment other than my own so I'm not sure of the best practice. The studio near as I can tell uses Protools, and I'll probably ask the engineer to create split mixes of each song and save the separate tracks as aiff or wav files on CD. Any caveats?

Thanks! I value this forum's opinions very highly.

-Doug

Comments

SonyEPM wrote on 7/9/2002, 1:31 PM
A separate PCM .wav file for each track should work fine, in either direction.
Rednroll wrote on 7/9/2002, 3:05 PM
There's 2 ways to accomplish this. Save each track as a .Wav file like previously suggested. I'm not so sure how ProTools handles the beginning start of the file though. Let's say if a track doesn't come in until the Chorus, I'm not sure if it adds the silence from the beginning of the song when you save that track to a .WAV or it just renders the audio portions. If it renders just the audio portions then you will have to spend a lot of time realligning the parts, so the timing is correct.

The other way is to use the "2 pop" method. You make a seperate track in protools that has a click or pop that starts 2 seconds before the song. Then you lay off each individual track to an Audio CD with the 2pop track or a CDrom, so that every track has the 2 pop reference start point. Then you lay off the individual tracks to Vegas or digitally extract them from the CD. Once you have all the tracks now all you have to do to line up ALL the pops at the same point and then all your tracks will line up correctly.

I prefer the audio cd method over a CDrom, because then you don't run into the problems of MAC vs. PC compatibility issues, which really stinks when you think you have everything and get it back on your home PC and get the "Unrecognized file type" error because the MAC didn't put the .WAV extension on it corrrectly, or they burned the CDrom in a MAC format instead of the ISO 9660 IBM format, or the MAC program doesn't support the WAVE format correctly.
DougHamm wrote on 7/9/2002, 4:19 PM
Thanks Rednroll and EPM for the feedback. I trust the engineer is intelligent enough to save each track at the full song length, including any silence. Actually I take that back - I wrote that explicitely down for the band members last night to convey to the engineer...so I guess I don't trust him! I probably should; Winnipeg is somewhat of a musical town and I'm sure he's got more time spent behind a mixer than me. But it's hard to trust people to do things the way you envision is the best way... :)

I do like the 2-pop method as well. My take towards the audio CD vs. data CD thing is that, if he's recording 24/96 (or 48) I would hate to have that resolution flattened to 16/44 when it's burned onto an audio CD. Particularly if he does things like applying a dithering filter without warning me, etc.

Take care,

-Doug
doctorfish wrote on 7/9/2002, 10:58 PM
A friend of mine and I trade files between ProTools and Vegas all the time.
He'll just bounce each track out as a wave file and they line up perfectly
in Vegas and I likewise do the same for him.

We do this using data cd's. It saves conversion and ripping and of course
allows us to keep the files at 24 bit/48k.

Rednroll was right though. Be sure the other engineer bounces the whole track
from the beginning and not just each audio event.

Dave
SHTUNOT wrote on 7/9/2002, 11:44 PM
I have a ADS adapter for cdroms+harddrives. It makes it so that you can connect to computers via "firewire". I was thinking of using this method for transfering tracks to and fro a studio. But...say the studio is using a mac[ofcourse]with protools and I have my HD setup to work with a PC. What problems will arise? How can I make it compatible[if possible]? All this HD would be is a formatted Fat 32 drive to store audio[NO OS] for transfering. It would be the quickest and easiest route to take. I can't see it as being a problem as long as the studio had a PC...but if the audio/video was on a mac...? Later.
Geoff_Wood wrote on 7/15/2002, 6:15 PM
I use either of:
a- data drive in an ATA-100 compatible removable disk tray
b- Iomega Jaz drive.

.... more often the Jaz for smaller (most) projects, though they are fragile.