Tom Kelly – PES 149

2 Responses

1. Chris,

   I’m halfway through this episode. A few comments:

   Regarding Pro Tools – it’s important to note this DAW/platform continues to maintain strong prominence in professional (New York/Hollywood) audio post. Conversely from what I hear it has become far *less* prominent in music production environments. Music centric (and highly affordable) DAWs such as Logic, Studio One, and yes – Reaper continue to gain popularity for various reasons.

   Pro Tools | First (as indicated by your guest) is a free, restricted version of the standard version, which is often referred to as Pro Tools “Vanilla.” It’s available for $30-$35 monthly, depending on how the subscriber opts to pay for it. This version includes robust capabilities for professional Podcast recording and post. The bundled plugins are excellent.

   Most professional post facilities use Pro Tools | Ultimate. The subscription model for this version runs $80-$85 per month, and again it’s based on how payments are arranged. There are additional accessibility options, such as (paid up front) yearly subscriptions. I believe perpetual licenses are still available as well, which may require additional fees for yearly update support.

   Avid certainly has some issues. OTOH Pro Tools is a highly capable DAW. And there are no hardware restrictions for common usage. iLok is a requirement.

   Regarding Dither, I’m going to paste a portion of an article that I wrote and posted on my site (I’ll refrain from supplying a link. I don’t want to be accused of click baiting anyone).

   Basically Dither is a Bit Depth reduction optimization option. E.g. when audio is down-converted form 24bit to 16bit, best case scenario is to replace the truncated bits with inaudible noise.

   Here’s what I wrote in my article:

   “Truncation is the removal of bits with no compensating replacement. The repositioning of samples after converting to a lower bit depth creates Quantization Errors resulting in audible artifacts and distortion. Dither is technology that adds minimal perceived noise to audio before word length reduction. This noise will mitigate (mask/remove) the audibility of distortion caused by Quantization Errors. The process preserves fidelity and Dynamic Range of audio throughout bit-depth conversion and/or bit-depth reduction exporting.

   There is a trade off: you are replacing bad noise with alternative “good” noise that is smoother, less audible, and much more consistent.

   Noise Shaping is a supplemental option that pushes noise into frequency ranges that are less audible to humans, thus allowing greater Dither with reduced perceptual noise.”

   I believe you run Ozone Advanced? If so it includes a highly capable Dither module.

   I hope this helps.

   -paul.
   @produceNewMedia

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   1. Thanks Paul 😉

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