Ame one Loves You

I’m about the do some work in Pro Tools LE. It’s not a bad program, but it’s just lacking in a few departments. Here’s my list of things I don’t like about Pro Tools LE.

1. I’m stuck with the M-Box. It’s not that I don’t like the M-Box, I just view it as a giant dongle. Sometimes I just wish I didn’t have to use it. An example would be when I am doing some sample editing. I just wish I could use my preferred device which is a Motu Ultralite. For some reason I just like the MOTU better than the M-Box.

2. Lack of MP3 Export. Every single DAW has this. I don’t want to shell out more money just to get this feature. It would make things more convenient. It would be one less step to make a test mp3. As it is now I have to bounce it out then convert in another program to mp3. Now that I think about it, it’s not a big deal, but just more of a convenience.

3. Limited track count. It would be nice to have more tracks available. It’s not a super big deal since I have only maxed out my tracks once. This is where Pro Tools really acts like those old recorders. Got too many tracks? Gotta bounce things done to make room.

4. I just recently experimented with using an OMF file. Damn that made things so much easier. Just wish Pro Tools LE could open it with out having to shell out some cash for it.

5. Plugin delay compensation. This would be another thing to have. It’s one of the biggest complaints from Pro Tools users. I don’t think I need to go into the reasons for this. 

6. More insterts. I need more inserts on the channel strips! Sometimes I go crazy with the effects. Usually this is happening in the sample editing stage. I don’t really use any dedicated program for sample editing. There just aren’t any great wav editors for Apple computer. I used to have Peak LE. However that thing just sucked. It’s the only piece of software that i regret buying. I miss using WaveLab or Sound Forge.

7. This is probably my biggest complaint that seemed to have developed recently. Anytime I unplug the M-box from USB port, my macbook will crash during shutdown. If I want to unplug it I have to shutdown first then unplug it. 

There’s my list of things I dislike about using Pro Tools LE. Truthfully though I do like using it. It’s not bad just lacks in those areas. I really don’t mind it that much. In my view when you purchase an M-Box or any other Digidesign piece of hardware you are buying a piece of hard that just so happens to come with software. Unlike other bundles by other companies which are giving you software that come with hardware. If you view from the hardware that comes with software perspective than it makes more sense. If you buy the more expensive gear you get more features. To support this idea that software comes with the hardware, look at the price of the Pro Tools software. The upgrades are super cheap.   

I been thinking about mp3 conversion lately. I don’t know exactly how it works. I know the general theory but I don’t know anything else. One of the questions I have always wondered, “Is it necessary to use bit reduction and convert a 24 bit song to 16bits before mp3 conversion?”

After thinking about it, I realized that it probably doesn’t matter. It would most likely depend on the encoder’s ability to deal with 24 bit files. Just going through the simple logic of it, any gains by using dither would be negligible due to the fact that the file is being converted into a lossy format. Which mean any distortion caused by truncation at the 16th bit, would probably not be noticible for two reasons. Reason 1 is that it would mostly likely be masked by the degradation caused through the encoding process. Reason 2, either way the effect of the dither will be un-noticible except in extreme circumstances of bit reduction or in certain listening situations.

My answer to the question of whether a 24bit wav should be converted to 16bits with dithered applied prior to conversion to an mp3 would be, no. Recently I had to make an mp3 out of one of my projects in Logic Studio. The project was a combination of audio and virtual instruments. I do everything in 24bit when I write music. I didn’t even bother to bounce it out and convert to 16, instead iIjust did a straight bounce to mp3 conversion that is in the bounce options. I did not notice any terrible “nasty distortion” from the truncation to 16 bit. All I heard was the usual lossy sound of a 128kbps mp3.

Dither really seems to be this mystery thing in audio that most people don’t quite have a grasp on. You can use math and plot graphs to explain and show what it does. Bob Katz does a wonderful example of explaining dither with math and graphs. Can’t really argue with the math behind it because the numbers are there to support what it does. Is this really enough evidence to support its use? Just because the math makes sense is it necessary? Apparently Steve Massey of Massey Plugins doesn’t think so. I recently came across an interesting post on his blog where he makes a great argument that dither “has no impact on the end product.”

In my other post about dither I recommended that you go to http://www.24-96.net/dither/ and take the blind dither test. Steve Massey looked at the fine print of the test and points out with math that what we are hearing in the test is equivalent of 7 bit audio and “that dither is highly effective for 7 or 8 bit audio.” The reason for this according to Massey is that:

They had to [use such bit reduced audio] or the test never would have worked. Quantization noise, which dither is meant to mask, is not humanly audible for typical, normalized, 16-bit audio, especially not in the everyday listening environments where we experience music. 16-bit audio has over 90dB of dynamic range — this is the difference between the maximum signal amplitude and the quantization noise. In other words, the quantization noise is 90dB below what you’re actually listening to….Expecting to hear the effect of dither is like expecting to hear the fluttering of a fly through the din of a jackhammer.

Massey is pointing out the the test is somewhat flawed because it is not using real world listening conditions, but relies on an artificial simulation in order to bring the noise of the dither forward enough so that it can be heard.

To illustrate his point that dither is not as big a deal as we think and whether we really need it, Massy points out something he discovered using his limiter plugin in conjunction with the TDM POW-R plugin in Pro Tools.

A while back I discovered that the TDM POW-r dithering plugin that’s provided with Pro Tools had a bug, making it incompatible with my L2007 limiter plugin. The POW-r plug-in would stop producing dither when activated on the same DSP as the L2007…. I discovered the bug on my own, more or less by accident, while using an FFT analysis plugin. But, guess how many users called to report it themselves? Zero. Just like myself, no one ever heard this on their own. Only with tweaky analysis tools is dither measurable.

In the real world environment no one was able to recognize that the dither plugin had failed to work in conjunction with the L2007 limiter plugin. This illustrates how the dither does not effect the final outcome of the product enough that it is noticeable in a real world listening environment and because it is supported by math, it has become a set it and forget plugin. We just accept that it does what it is supposed to do without questioning it.

In the end we (the people using it) know it is there and what it is theoretically doing. The people listening to dithered music don’t know that it is there or don’t care. After all, “the only people on the planet perceiving and discussing dither are those people who have been informed of its existence.” Only the audio engineers know what flavor of dither they are using. I think Massey really sums it up best when he says, “When have you ever listened to a CD and thought, ‘Wow! This is a really incredible album. But, damn! The dithering algorithm that the mastering engineer used is total crap! I can’t believe they used POW-r type 3 instead of type 2!’…Regardless of its questionable efficacy, no one can reasonably argue that dither has an impact on the experiential enjoyment of music.”

Is dither really necessary? People will argue both sides to that. On one side you have the math and the graphs and the sound tests supporting it. On the other side you have the real environment and experience where most people will not notice it. I believe that we just take it for granted and accept it for several reasons. Those are that it is mathematically proven. It has been shown to us and we have seen examples of how it works compared to other dithers and non-dithered material even though the tests do not reflect on the real world environment. In the end I feel that dither has simply become something that has been ingrained into us and has developed into a set it and forget type of plugin. In the end the only person who really knows what dither on what song is the engineer that worked on it.

You can view Steve Massey’s original post at:
http://www.smassey.com/blog.html#29_apr_2008

Last night before I went to bed I got a couple of emails from BMI. One was my application approval and the other was from Lisa Jacquet. Lisa Jacquet email explained to me that it is BMI’s policy for all artists who reside abroad to fill out a W8 form. At this point I was feeling like things are finally getting done. Since it was late and I was tired, I figured that I would take care of setting up my account and filling out that form and send it in. I went to bed a happy camper

This morning I get up check my mail, and there is also a message from Laura Smith that says pretty much the same thing about BMI policy. No big deal because there are 2 people working on my application. After reading that I go setup my account on the BMI website. Then I decide that I’ll go write on my website about how everything has been resolved and that I am no longer irritated with BMI because things finally got done in a quick manner even though it took a little over a month.

When I logged in to write my post I found a comment waiting to be moderated. How odd I thought, because no one ever leaves comments. Usually these are just spam comments that slipped by the spam catcher. In fact I didn’t think many people actually read anything here outside of the Kontakt and Logic information.

To my surprise the comment was for the previous post BMI Part 2. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Here’s the comment:

Dude really…why are you being such a big baby….they are asking u to fill out one paper…regardless of what your friends tell you…if this woman is telling you what they need you to send them in order to proceed with the application process then just do it. Clearly she knows for what purposes it is needed so who cares what paper your friend tells u you need to fill out your friend doesnt work for the company now do they?

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to reply to it or not. As I mulled it over, I decided to go check my web stats. I’m such a big statistic junkie for my site. I mostly view the logs so I can add content that caters to what people are searching for and to see what is popular amongst my posts. I noticed that the BMI posts were getting most of its views from the same ip address range. In fact the comment came from the same IP range. I then did a reverse DNS lookup of that IP and behold to my astonishment, the IP of the comment and majority of the views of my BMI posts are coming from the BMI.com IP address range. After seeing that my new feeling of happiness with BMI has vanished.

At this juncture in time, I’m really considering canceling my BMI account. This overall experience has left me wondering what kind of things should I expect from BMI in regards to future treatment.

Hi guys and girls at BMI, thanks for reading. Remember Ame one loves you!

If you read the previous post about BMI you would know that I am irritated with them at the way my application process is being handled. This morning, I finally get a response from Laura Smith. Actually two responses.

In the first response she tells me that I need to fill out the attached W8-BEN tax form and mail or fax it to her. Sounds reasonable, just got to fill out form and fax it over and my application will be taken care of promptly. However, it’s not that easy. United Stated citizens do not need to fill out a W8 form. That form is for foreign nationals and other foreign entities. It even says at the top of the form, “Do not use this form for: A U.S. Citizen….” The irony about this is that a few weeks ago I had asked my accountant friend about whether I needed to fill out a W-8 form or a W-9 form for the Sound Exchange application. His reply was fill out a W-9 because you are not a foreign citizen.

The second response was that she forwarded my email to a co-worker who is working on my application.

After reading those two emails this morning I responded saying that I do not need to fill out that tax form because I’m not a foreign citizen. I’m just a citizen living abroad.

Be sure to read the next and maybe final chapter of this story: BMI Part 3: The Conclusion

Today was another one of those days working in Pro Tools. I like the program but it does have some short comings. The fact that there is a track limit in the LE version and it seems to be missing something when I’m mixing. Always some last minute effect that just does not seem to be there.

The thing that bothers me most is that i lacks a good delay. I mean delay effect where I can do those dub type delays with lots of feed back. Today’s failure was lack of an overdrive or distortion or bit crunch plugin. I wanted a little bit of color on the drums.

The thing I hate most about Pro Tools is the manual. I with it came with a printed manual. I hate reading pdf files. It’s just the way almost all software is today except logic. My only gripe there is that I wish my Logic manuals were in english.

The more I use Pro Tools, I realize the reason why people like it. It’s pretty simple. Conceptually it’s awesome I think. Just it kind of fails in the execution for LE version. I just wish it had things the other daws have. Thinks like mp3 export, unlimited track count. Be less dependent on the hardware. Lately I find that I wish I could just open up a project to check something, not to really listen or do anything. Example of this is that yesterday I wanted to see the mixer view for track John B’s Hair so I could get a better understanding of how it was mixed before I go back to re-arrange it. Wanted to make sure there were no routing surprises. It would be really cool if Digidesign made a special program or allowed Pro Tools to open a session in a view mode. You can’t edit or do anything at all. just view the automation, mixer and tracks. Those are the things I wish it had the most.

Anyways, the re-arranging of John B’s Hair went well. It could of been done alot faster if I didn’t have to search the manual several times and look for a solution to my coloring problem. In the end I grabbed the Camel Audio free distortion plugin. Overall it was fun as always to play in Pro Tools.

Recently I have had the pleasure at getting annoyed with BMI. Before I get into it, let me provide some background to it.

At SIQ Records, we are asking all the artists to sign up with a Performance Right’s Organization (PRO). The reason is we are hoping to start licensing music out and for publishing. After reviewing the three main PRO’s, in America (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC), we recommended that the artists sign up with BMI. The main reason is because it is free to sign up with BMI. Some of the artists on SIQ are kind of in bad financial shape. It was felt that the free signup of BMI would be best and not be any financial burden to the most impoverished of artists. ASCAP requires a one time fee of $25 and SESAC is selective in who they choose to represent. Also from what I understand ASCAP and BMI are non-profit and have an agreement with the United States Government. BMI sounded like the best choice for a poor struggling musician.

Now, on with the story. After harassing many of the artists to sign with a PRO, I decided I needed to get off my butt and do it to so that I can say I did it. After all I am an SIQ artist and I also wanted to get it accomplished so that I could answer any questions that the artists might have when applying and registering their music.

On June 3, 2008, I applied online with BMI. When the application process is finished it displays a message saying please wait 3-5 business days to receive an email confirmation about your application. I wait for 5 days and nothing arrives in my email box from BMI.

June 8th, five days after initially applying, I decided that I should email BMI to find out what is going on with my application. Also, I was getting some questions, from SIQ artists who already joined BMI, about song registration. Two days later I get a response from BMI. It wasn’t quite the response I was looking for, but it didn’t bother me. It turns out I emailed the wrong department. I emailed the “Online Services Registration” department. I was not sure who to email because on the “contact us” page of BMI.com, in the list of choices there were email addresses for “Online Services Registration” and “Online Works Registration.” I made my choice on what I thought was relevant. The response I got on June 10th from the “Online Services Registration” was that I emailed the wrong department and that the were forwarding my message to the correct department which is the “Writer Administration” department. There was nothing on their contact page about that department nor was there any way to find it unless you went to the online application page.

Three days later I get a reply from Laura Smith from the “Writer Administration” department about my inquiry. She asks me to provide some information or my BMI account number and she will check on my application. There’s some irony, I don’t have a BMI account number because I never got my confirmation email with the BMI account number. At this point I’m pretty happy things seem to be moving along. I respond to her with the requested information.

After that email I was patient. I was thinking that BMI is a big organization membership wise, so they must be busy, so it might take a couple of days. So fast forward to June 27th, I decided to email Laura Smith again to see why there was no response. Once again no response.

Yesterday I decided to search about online application registration problems for BMI and somehow ended up on the online application page. They completely changed the look of that page. So I decided to try to apply again, maybe my application got messed up during the website change. After I fill out the form and press the submit button, it gives me a message saying that because I live in Japan, I have to download an application and mail it to them. They could have at least put a notice on the application web page somewhere saying that.

At this point in time I’m pretty irritated about BMI. Especially that this whole thing could of been taken care of a couple of weeks ago. Laura Smith could of responded to my email and said something along the lines of that because I’m in Japan I need to send in a paper application or that there was a problem with my application and a way to correct is by sending in a paper application.

Now, I’m questioning whether BMI is a good choice? Should I sign with them? Was it a good idea to recommend the SIQ artists to sign with them? I really don’t know the answer to those questions. However, I’m considering my other options for PRO representation. My choices are ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), SESAC (Society of European Stage Authors & Composers) or JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers).

So in the end, I found BMI to be not very helpful.

Update: See BMI Part 2: Response From Smith for the next exciting chapter in this saga.

Today I started working on this remix of a Nomar Slevik song that I really like. Spent all day working on it. Well more like all day getting my drums and things organized for it. After creating this interesting intro, I realized that it’s just not going to work. The reason is simple. What I was doing and what the song is doing just doesn’t work together. I know exactly where the problem lies. I thought I could avoid it with some fancy drum editing, but it didn’t work. The failure lies in the fact that I’m trying to write a 174 bpm dnb track over a 58 bpm song. I realize now that you can’t just throw 3 measure of 174 in to 1 measure of 58. The triplets transposed over 4/4 just don’t jive in this case.

However this failure has turned out to be a small success though. There are 2 reasons. 1st, I figured out what I should do with the song and how I should remix it. That occurred by chance I just happen to load up a piano because I wanted to see if I was playing the right chords and discovered that the piano fit it so well, that I decided that I should just do a downtempo kind of remix of it. The 2nd reason is I now have an intro to what seems to be a cool dnb tune. I just need to convert it from 58 to 174. That will take some work but should not be too hard. Just a matter of moving things around.

Which is the best dither? Truthfully I have no idea. There are several different types available. Before we tackle which is the best dither, let’s examine what dithering does.

In short dither is used during bit reduction i.e. 24bit to 16bit. What it essentially does is add noise shaping to smooth out the reduction. It is something that you use only once and it is placed at the very end when you are converting the bit rate. Because it causes degradation, do not use it more than once. That is dithering in a nutshell. For a more in depth description of what dither is and isn’t check out this Article by Bob Katz Explaining Dither.

There are several different types of dither algorithms that I always hear being mentioned when people talk about it. The most commons are POW-R, UV22 (Apogee), MBit + (Izotope), and the Waves dither found in the L2 limiters. I have used all but the Mbit +. I personally don’t have a preference. I try to use the one I feel is the best available in the program I’m using. If i’m using Cubase I use the UV22hr, if I am using Logic or ProTools I use the POW-R. You have probably heard a recording that has used eachone of these dither algorithms, except you just don’t know which one.

If you really want to know which is the best, don’t depend on me to tell you. What you should do is two things. First research the different dithers and how they work. Second try a blind dither test. I have done both of those. In the blind test I found that I prefered the Waves L2 dither.

Apparently this is a common problem. After upgrading Logic from 7 to 8, things get broken. During the upgrade things get moved around and because logic depends on a lot of garageband content, some of these files ended up missing. I looked for some way online to fix the problem. Most said to reinstall Logic or to use a program called pacifist to dig out the needed files from the Logic discs. I decided that if it is missing Garageband content, why don’t I just reinstall it. I uninstalled GarageBand recently because I don’t use it do reinstalling it was easy.

If you have missing EXS files in Logic Studio, try reinstalling GarageBand. That might fix it.