James, Dan, and Julian chat through issues from the week's news as well as the usual tips, tricks and questions answered.

Podcast Sponsor - Exponential Audio

Thanks to Exponential Audio for sponsoring the podcast this month.  Thanks to Exponential Audio for sponsoring the podcast this month. They have announced a price reduction for their powerful Excalibur effects plugin as well as reductions on PhoenixVerbSurround and R2Surround. 

Deals

• SoundBits Offer 45% Off Their Sound Effects Libraries  This month we are giving you the opportunity to get 45% off any individual SoundBits Sound Effects Libraries. All you need to do is go across to the SoundBits Shop, choose the sound effects libraries you would like and put the code into the SoundBits Shop and you will get 45% off whatever is in your basket. It's as simple as that.   
• TrainYourEars EQ Training Software - 20% Off Get For £34 This month we have partnered with our friends at TrainYourEars to offer you the chance to save 20% off the purchase price of TrainYourEars EQ Edition 2 frequency training software - For Mac & Windows. This month you can buy for £34 ex VAT.  
• Also, don’t forget to check out the deals from our Partners in the Partner Deals section on our Deals page.

Talking Points Kindly Sponsored By Universal Audio

Until the end of this month, buy any award-winning Apollo rackmount audio interface and get an analog dream studio filled with up to $3,500 of genuine UAD plug-ins from Studer, Lexicon, AKG, Pultec, Fairchild, Teletronix, and more! Buy an Apollo Duo or Apollo Firewire and get a plugin bundle worth $1200, buy an Apollo 8P, Apollo 8 Quad, or Apollo 16 and get a plugin bundle worth $2000, or buy any 2 Apollo rack mounted interfaces, and get a plugin bundle worth $3500. For more details use the link in the podcast notes.

• 10 Things You Should Do Before Sending Your Mix To A Mastering Engineer - Part 2
• Pro Tools 12.8 Is Released
  • Avid Set Free Pro Tools First Users To Play With The Big Boys With New Version Of Pro Tools First
  • What Is In Pro Tools 12.8 For Non HD Users?
  • Avid Release Pro Tools 12.8HD With Complete Dolby Atmos Integration
  • News On Plug-ins Supporting New Immersive Track Formats In Pro Tools 12.8HD
  • Pro Tools 12.8 - Complete List Of Bug Fixes
  • Avid Release EuControl 3.6.1 And S6 Software 3.6.1 In Readiness For Pro Tools 12.8
• If You Want To Be Popular Then Sell Your Studio And Buy A Cat

Competitions

Win 1 of 8 Copies Of Seventh Heaven Reverb Plug-ins From LiquidSonics The Seventh Heaven reverb is available as two separate plug-ins, one slightly more feature rich than the other and LiquidSonics have kindly offered the Pro Tools Expert Community 8 prizes from these two Seventh Heaven plug-ins for the competition.

Community Feedback Kindly Sponsored by RSPE Audio Solutions

If you are looking to give your studio the power to Create, Edit, Mix, Master and Deliver Dolby Atmos content, then check our friends at RSPE Audio Solutions as for over 15 years, they have been a proud Dolby Professional dealer and installer and they are one or a handful of dealers you can supply the Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite.  

• Nathan Hussey has been in touch and would like us to reach out to Avid and encourage them to include a "bounce to new playlist" option for committing to audio. 

  • Pro Tools Ideascale is where you can suggest new features.

This Week’s Featured Pro Tools Expert Interview

In this week’s featured interview Dan Cooper had the opportunity to interview Grammy Awarding winning Mix Engineer Michael Brauer for the Pro Tools Expert Community. Dan asks Michael about his partnership with Waves and the new Brauer Motion plug-in. Dan dives a bit deeper and asks a selection of questions regarding mixing and music production.  

Questions From The Community

• Steve Collop says he cannot work out what versions of software/ hardware he can use. He has an 8 core 2010 Mac Pro running Mac OS 10.8. He has Pro Tools 10 running with two 96i I/Os and a 192 I/O on an HD3 system. Are there any software upgrades he can make without changing my computer or hardware?
• Nathan Avraham says he is relatively new to Pro Tools and he is recording full bands for the first times these days. Now I have a problem. He had a recording session with a jazz band. But the drummer was all over the place! He was playing to a metronome of 136 bpm but just nothing is on time. On Monday they are going to lay down the vocals so he really wants the whole performance tightened up by then. he struggles using Elastic Audio, he gets double transients and very weird artefacts. He wonders if he should learn beat detective. What are our opinions on using beat detective vs Elastic Audio? 
• Kevin Lamb starts by acknowledging that he is not an engineer, though he has assisted back in the analogue days. He now has a radio show about Muscle Shoals music and history in development and needs a good, easy to use audio interface into ProTools for doing interviews. No drums. No guitars. just talking. He definitely wants 2 channels, maybe as many as 4. Some people have suggested a Clarett 4Pre and an Apollo Twin. 

  • Focusrite Clarett Interface Review

  • Audient iD14 Review

Source Connect Now

As you may know, we are spread out around the UK & Europe when we record the podcast. In the past, we have used a variety of internet based solutions so we could hear each other.  We have settled on Source Connect Now which gives us ISDN equivalent quality audio using a Chrome browser, no software to install. You can get a free account from Source Elements.

Find Of The Week

• James - Hired Gun
• Dan - Mine is my fault of the week, my studio budget has jumped up by £10k.
• Julian - Radiohead at Glastonbury

Listen on to the Pro Tools Expert Podcast on iTunes