In the Pro Tools Expert 10th Anniversary Competition we offered the chance of winning a Quiet Art Defaulter, WaveRider, Recorditor & Catchin' SYNC Bundle Worth $447, as one of 18 great prizes on offer worth over $28,000 in total. We can announce that Randall Smith is the lucky winner.

Defaulter

In this review, Mike takes the latest version of Quiet Art’s Defaulter v1.5 for a spin to see if the new RMS feature lives up to his hopes. 

What Is Defaulter?

Defaulter is a normalizing plug-in that using the non-destructive Clip Gain feature in Pro Tools 10 and above. 

Clip gain is arguably one of the best things Pro Tools adopted in recent years. Now, Quiet Art Ltd has produced a tool to help you get even more out of it.

Defaulter analyzes the clip and applies Pro Tools’ built-in Clip Gain adjustments to bring it up or down to meet your specified peak level but with v1.5 you can now do the same with a specified RMS level instead. It can be set to ignore clips with levels below a threshold. Because it uses Clip Gain rather than rendering files it is totally non-destructive.

Since Mike made this review Quiet Art has revised and replaced the Macro Set that comes with Defaulter so that it will work with every system.  We recommend existing users download the latest installer from the Quiet Art web site.

Defaulter System Requirements

• MAC OSX Yosemite and above - Windows Not supported.

• ProTools 10.3.6+, 11, 12

WaveRider

Wave Rider is an RTAS & AAX plugin. It is a virtual fader controller utility that applies intelligent volume adjustments to the Pro Tools faders to maintain consistent levels, and perform ducking, gating, and automatic mixing duties. It has a vast use in audio post production as well as music recordings. Now available for both Mac and Windows. Pro Tools 7 to 11

Wave Rider first became publicly available for Pro Tools users back in March 2009. It’s a unique and innovative RTAS/AAX plugin that detects audio signal levels on the inserted channel and applies Pro Tools fader movements as needed. Since its release, it evolved into a much-improved tool thanks to user feedback.

Here’s an overview of its functions:

Ride mode - In this default mode, Wave Rider’s level detecting algorithm automatically raises or lowers the fader to maintain a user selectable output level by writing volume automation on the timeline. User can then alter the volume automation as needed. Be it your vocal, bass, voice over, or dialog, WaveRider makes it a breeze to maintain a smooth and consistent level so you don’t end up over-compressing. Check out the TIPS page for example scenarios.

Duck mode - This function will lower the signal of a target track by a user selectable amount if there’s signal present on the inserted track. Narration and announcements over music as heard on radio channels rely on keyed compressors with poor results, now cooler with Wave Rider.

Park on silence - This is a function you’ll find in Automatic Mixer boxes. The faders are parked at a user defined low level when there’s little signal, and they come up to full output when there’s strong signal present, maintaining a steady output level. Particularly useful in situations where there are a lot of mics open and you want to have the cleanest signal without much background noise. Park mode can also be used in situations to replace a noise gate.

Trace mode - Trace function is practically the opposite of what the Ride function is. It actually makes volume graphs of the envelope of the signal. This helps you to copy the dynamics of a signal to another track. Pretty useful when trying to combine 2 sounds together seamlessly.

WaveRider System Requirements

• Requires Mac OS X or Windows.

• Pro Tools 7 to 12

Recorditor

What Does Recorditor Do?

Recorditor has been designed to allow you to mark good and bad takes during a recording in sync with your timeline, and then it performs your edit decisions automatically.

Recorditor is intended to banish the need to scribble notes on scripts and then having to go through tedious edit sessions sifting through takes.

Recorditor is designed to assist users in scripted narration and dialog recording sessions such as animation dialog, audio books, IVR prompts, text to speech applications, or any other recording session that needs tidying up.

As you can see from the video one of the tricks is before the first words are spoken to hit the back arrow to clean the front and create a marker for what you are about to read. With each successfully read sentence I would then drop a right arrow marker. and for stumbles etc. I would drop the left arrow and so on.

There are a few things to be aware of when setting up Recorditor with Pro Tools because it is a separate application that is communicating with Pro tools using ReWire. Quiet Art has produced this video to help with the setup process.

Recorditor System Requirements

• Mac OS X 10.9+

• Pro Tools 11 & 12+

• Pro Tools First is not supported at this time

Catchin' SYNC

Catchin' SYNC allows you to capture and manually determine audio SYNC issues of your video playback device. In almost all cases, where audio and video playback passes through separate devices (i.e Audio through a receiver, video through LCD TV or Projector etc.) there will be advancement or delay on the audio signal, making the viewing experience unpleasant.

Catchin' SYNC has been designed to help you determine if your system is in SYNC or has a lag and by how much in milliseconds or frames. With that information, you can add appropriate amounts of delay to your signal, and get everything to play along properly in SYNC. You can use the offset information in your editing software (AVID Media Composer, Adobe Premiere, Pro Tools, Nuendo, Final Cut X etc.) and compensate. Most video hardware interfaces like Blackmagic and AJA will also have settings to do this. For home users, most Receivers and TVs, Apple TV and even VLC will let you enter this information. So, if your audio and video are out of sync, Catchin' Sync will help you synchronize them! 

You can use a range of iOS devices and there is a range of compensation settings for the older Apple devices on the Catchin’ Sync web site. But with the high frame rate and that there is no need to add an offset the iPhone 5 and especially the 5S are good devices to use with Catchin’ Sync. Later iPhones are all good but they require an offset to be programmed into Catchin' Syn and you will also find these offsets including the iPhone X on the Catchin' Sync website.

People have asked if there will be an Android version of Catchin’ Sync but unfortunately not, we understand they won’t because there are so many hardware variations between Android devices. With Apple, there are only a handful of devices to measure the delays from the cameras,  but to provide the same service with Android, they’d have to test every device and calculate the offsets.

Randall Smith Wins Quiet Art Defaulter, WaveRider, Recorditor & Catchin' Sync Bundle Worth $447

In the Pro Tools Expert 10th Anniversary Competition we offered the chance to win one of 18 great prizes worth over $28,000 in total. Randall Smith is the winner of the Quiet Art Defaulter, WaveRider, Recorditor & Catchin' Sync Bundle Worth $447.

First and foremost I would like to thank you and the team at Pro-Tools Expert for the years of service. I understand that I came a bit late to the party, but have none the less been a fan.

I am a post-production editor and mixer, working in Denver, Colorado, USA. For the past six years, I have been editing and mixing various interstitial materials (Promos, Trailers, EPKs and the like) for a premium cable network in the area. In addition, I do dialogue cleanup and restoration for local independent producers in the area. Prior to that, I worked in Los Angeles as a remastering specialist (cleaning up and up-mixing older films from mono and stereo into 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 formats). Outside of work, I try to get as much time as I can with my lovely wife and daughter.

Winning the Quiet Arts bundle will have a great positive impact on the work that I do – both for my full-time job and the work I do independently. As we all know, the budgets for audio post audio jobs are dropping as the expectations remain fairly steady. Anything that can help make up that difference is hugely beneficial. The Quiet Arts plug-ins are ones that I have used in the past when the time required to finish a project exceeds the amount of time given to do it. Having a plug-in do some of the less glamour prep work is immensely valuable.

If you would like to win a prize like the Quiet Art Defaulter, WaveRider, Recorditor & Catchin' Sync Bundle Worth $447, then go over to our Win Page and see what prizes we have on offer.