While most people move sessions between studios sometimes it’s easier just to bring your whole computer with you. In this article John Cornfield, a busy engineer who regularly works between several studios offers his advice on how to avoid some common pitfalls
I move around a lot of studios, I am a Pro Tools user and my rig is a PC but I’m perfectly happy to use a Mac. I have a 2010 5.1 Mac Pro at home, running Mojave, Pro Tools and an AVID HD native card installed. But, I mainly use this machine for translating to and from Logic sessions.
Why Not Just Take The Drive With You?
“Portable computers” might suggest a laptop but even desktop computers are portable, it’s not like trying to move a 200KG tape machine. Even so, considering when you’re moving a computer you’re actually trying to move the software, couldn’t you just take the hard drive with you? I did experiment with making a clone of the system drive to take to other studios with all my plugins installed and although a similar 5.1 or even 6.1 will boot, there were too many other issues that were not best streamlined and any plugins that are system-authorised invariably didn't work, plus running the OS from a USB 2 drive was pretty sluggish and stripping the machine to swap the boot drive is not really the done thing, I wouldn't like it if someone wanted to do it with my studio machine.
What Do I Do When Visiting A New Studio?
When I have a session at a studio I have not used before the first thing I do is speak to the studio and find out what system they use, If they have a reasonably recent Pro Tools rig with HDX, Mac or PC then it is pretty easy. I will take my Eucon artist and all the various versions of Eucon installers and my Editors Keys keyboard and my mouse, hopefully the studio is happy for me to install Eucon, if not then I will just get grumpy and sulk until they give in! I will also take my own iLok as a precaution. If you travel with your iLok then Zero Down Time is strongly advised. Some people go further and upload their licences to the cloud, travel with an empty iLok and then download their licences when they arrive at the new studio. That way if the iLok is lost in transit then no licences are lost. If I am only tracking then I am happy to use whatever plugins are on the system as the standard Avid plugins are fine for tracking and anything more is a bonus. However, if they are plugins I don't own, I will normally avoid them so I don't get tempted to buy even more plugins, I have too many already, I do suffer from severe attacks of G.A.S.
Don’t Make Assumptions About Data Connections
I also bring various SSD drives for the session audio with a variety of connection options, I have an OWC Thunderbolt Dock that gives me all the connections I need. Older pre-Thunderbolt Mac Pros are still out there in great numbers so don’t assume anything. On a pre Thunderbolt machine these issues are easy resolve with the OWC dock, as it has 14 ports of connectivity to allow me quick access to USB 2, USB C, Thunderbolt, SD (Mini Included), plus multiple display ports.
Different Studio, Different Backup Regime
I do also check to make sure they have some sort of incremental backup software as I back up many times during the day, my portable drives are all formatted EXFAT so there are no screw ups there, as PC won’t read and write to HFS or AFPS drives and mac won’t read and write to NTFS drives. Both will read and write EXFAT format.
Some people have said that EXFAT doesn’t work for them but I haven’t had any issues formatting multiple drives. After all there are only 2 types of hard drive, the dead ones and the ones about to die. I did get caught out with a sudden drive failure once which was not the best feeling, luckily I managed to retrieve the data after much messing about by swapping the PCB board from an identical spare drive to the dead one as the drive was not spinning up and I noticed a hole in the motor drive chip on the dead one. After this, I always run 2 backup drives and a session drive, and I highly recommend the OWC Envoy Pro Elektron, as they are robust and highly portable devices.
Cloud backups are not totally realistic yet with internet speeds what they are in many studios and I work at 96KHz most of the time as I think it sounds better especially when mixing. I feel there is more “depth of field”. I know this is a contentious issue and many think it is total waste of time, I am not saying I would always be able to spot the difference in a blind test, but I do because I can. But this does mean the sessions do grow in size rapidly.
Bring Your Own Keyboard
I use a mac keyboard on my PC machine with the Ctrl and CMD keys remapped so it works as a mac as far as the shortcuts are concerned as I am crap at remembering shortcuts, this way the muscle memory stays the same for both, I use a program called Sharpkeys to do this, many thanks to Mike Exeter for finding this little gem.
Bringing Your Whole Computer
Sometimes you can get away with just bringing what you need and using the house computer but often it’s simpler just to bring your own rig. If you’re mixing or editing then this might be as simple as putting a laptop in a bag but I’m talking about a band tracking session. If the studio is not running Pro Tools HDX then I will take my system which is a PC with 3 HDX cards and 3 MADI HD IO, all flight cased in a 10U SKB suspension rack with wheels. I have various MADI converters and I also have a RedNet HD32R so I can use Dante if available, if not I will see if I can interface to their converters somehow or bring my own SSL Alphalinks and a bunch of D sub to D sub or jack or XLR looms, and a couple of D sub to canon 96 DL looms, though this is not as common as it once was, I have not come across a studio yet that I have not been able to get up and running with.
In this scenario I will take my own monitor with a clamp on monitor arm, I use the Silverstone SST-ARM11SC Arm Desk Clamp Single LCD Interactive Arm, my Editors Keys keyboard and mouse with all the cables and extenders to make sure I can cope with any scenario, it does take a bit of forward planning but worth it. I will often take my own headphone system depending on what is available at the studio.
My Pro Tools rack is reasonably quiet, the loudest fans are the AVID MADI HD units but they are pretty well isolated in the rack and if I can't run the rack in their machine room I will stash it behind the console where I am not aware of any fan noise.
My cable trunk is probably the biggest part of the setup, I have many USB, midi and HDMI over ethernet adapters and a load of cat 5 and cat 6 cables along with MADI fibres and now HDMI fibres as anything over 1080P is not that happy on cat5 and I use a 2K monitor for the mobile jobs, I will attempt to run these in machine room control room trunking if I can as fibre is fragile and expensive, so it is good not to get it damaged in door jams and I can close the door to keep the noise to a minimum.
What About Outboard, Mics and Stands?
Apart from the Pro Tools system there is the outboard situation which again depends what is available at the studio, all my outboard is in mobile racks so I can easily take anything I need, I have a bantam 96TT patchbay which has various looms so I can connect my outboard to that and normally have my patchbay near theirs so I can cross patch between my gear and house equipment.
I also take all my microphones to most sessions and for the guerilla sessions I will also take stands and mic leads etc, basically my studio is transportable so I can setup a pretty comprehensive studio absolutely anywhere, for the extreme locations I also have an inverter generator with all the mains distro but obviously this is not ideal.
So there you have it. I have developed ways to be able to be as self-sufficient as I have to be. From bringing an SSD drive and a keyboard all the way to a whole recording rig. The point is that if you know what you are dealing with in advance and can anticipate those issues which can make the difference between being able to work or wasting an hour figuring out what to do because you forgot that converter you should have realised you’d need. If you have all reasonable bases covered then working at a new studio doesn’t have to be a leap into the unknown.