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Look What’s In Store for the Future

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By the time you read this, the Fall 2010 AES in San Francisco will have long come and gone, but thankfully, the toys will remain. As we'd all have expected, there were cool product announcements for both studio and stage, among them the RM 510 microphone capsule from beyerdynamic.
The RM 510 is the first wireless ribbon mic capsule and can be used with the company's Opus 900 and Opus 600 wireless systems. Soundcraft announced their Si Compact small-format digital consoles, available in 16, 24 or 32 input frames. All of the Si Compact desks feature four stereo channels, onboard Lexicon effects and an expansion slot than can accommodate a MADI card for interface with Soundcraft or Studer stage boxes as well as a multitude of third-party multitrack recording systems. Stay tuned to FOH for more info…

 

More than an Update

 

One of the more stunning announcements was Avid's rollout of Pro Tools 9. The announcement itself is not earth shattering – after all, we've come to anticipate periodic software revs, but a significant change to the Pro Tools tenet is that version 9 will allow you to use any audio interface with the program. For those who have not delved into the Pro Tools world, (or perhaps as a reason for some not to have done so), Pro Tools has always required the use of Digidesign (Avid) audio hardware to "unlock" the software (Pro Tools Free notwithstanding). You can use programs like Digital Performer or Cubase with just about any audio interface. Pro Tools, however, had not been compatible with third-party audio hardware until last year, when Mackie and Avid reached an arrangement whereby a driver could be purchased that would allow use of Mackie Onyx-i Series mixers with Pro Tools M-Powered 8. [I'm going to take a quick step onto my soap box here and state that it has really bothered me that I have been unable to run Pro Tools on my laptop without Digi/Avid hardware attached, precluding easy session editing while traveling. Yes, Digi offers the Mbox 2 Micro – for $250 – that would allow me to plug a device the size of a memory stick into my MacBook to unlock Pro Tools and provide a headphone jack. As a registered, paying user of PT software, this is an insult. Why should I have to fork over another 250 bucks for an interface/monitor path to a program for which I have already paid, simply to be able to edit sessions on the road?] OK I'm done. Off the soapbox.

 

Why It Matters

 

So what's the big deal? Ohhhh, this is a big deal. Not only can you now run Pro Tools with an Avid audio interface, you can run it with any third-party Core Audio- or ASIO-compatible interface, as well as with built-in computer audio I/O. As you ask yourself "I'm a live guy, why should I care?" I'd like to remind you of the new beast we started to see on the console market last year. The PreSonus StudioLive 16.4.2 and 24.4.2, the Allen & Heath ZED-R16 (as well as their newly introduced GS-R24) are perfect examples of what we at FOH have termed "hybrid" consoles (see "On the Digital Edge, FOH, Dec. 2009, page 28). These desks offer FireWire and/or ADAT connectivity in a package that satisfies small format live mixing as well as mobile recording. So if you've got a laptop with Pro Tools and one of these mixers, you can now record into Pro Tools 9, without the need for any additional hardware. Are you kidding me? Nope. Excellent.

 

More Live Options

 

Couple this with progressive advances in storage technology, and it's clear that the pro audio market has become very friendly to small-budget live recording. At AES, Glyph Production Technologies announced that they are shipping their PortaGig 62 RAID-protected storage device. RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a means of increasing hard drive performance and protecting data by storing it in more than place (i.e. on more than one drive). The PortaGig 62 contains two drives (5400 or 7200 RPM) but appears to the computer as one drive. The system operates in several modes. RAID 0 stores data across the two drives but does not provide redundancy. In RAID 0, data access rates (both write and read) are increased because data is written or read from both drives simultaneously. RAID 1 (AKA disk mirroring) duplicates the data storage for redundancy and increases the read performance (but not the write performance). In this mode, capacity is halved but data is duplicated, avoiding disasters. The PortaGig 62 also offers "spanning," whereby the drives are combined to act like one big volume, and the drives are filled up one at a time. Prices on a Glyph PortaGig range from $269 (320 GB) to $309 (1 TB), so for not a lot of money you can have high performance drives for live recording as well as on-the-fly data backup.

 

Solid State Drives

 

Although not displayed at AES, Solid State Drives (SSDs) are dropping in price and increasing in storage capacity. SSDs offer the distinct advantage of no moving parts, thus providing higher reliability, longer lifespan, and decreased susceptibility to environmental conditions such as dust – all of which are desirable traits for a storage device used in the field. Crucial is now shipping their RealSSD C300 Series of SSDs with a price around $550 for a 256 GB drive. That's still considerably higher than traditional disk drives, but the prices are coming down to reality.