Digidesign Pro Tools LE 6 Tutorials
Audio Recording Basics / Basic I/O Setup
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Subtitles of the Movie (Digidesign Pro Tools LE 6 / Audio Recording Basics / Basic I/O Setup)
In this movie, we will be tuning the IO or input/output setup for my Pro Tools session. In this case, I have a new session recording 101 that I am creating and here I will just choose stereo mix for my IO settings. My edit window is ready to receive new tracks. Let's go ahead and create a new mono track and a new stereo track. Let's switch to the mix window; Command+= on the Mac, Control+= on the pc and draw your attention to these four items right here. These are the input/output or IO settings for these two tracks or channel strips in this case. This item right here called mic/line1 is the input or source for this track or channel strip as is mic/line12 for this stereo track. Analog1 and 2 are the outputs or where the signal from these tracks is going to go next. This is true of all tracks. This position is always the input or the source of that track, this position is always the output or where the signal is going next. From here we can see that the outputs of these two tracks are going to end up in the same place, something called analog1 and 2. The inputs, however, vary slightly. The input to this mono track is coming from something called the mic/line1 and the input to the stereo track is coming from something called mic/line12. I can actually change these. If I go over to my mono track here and hold down my mouse button, I actually get a pop-up menu from where I can see mic/line1 and that's a mono input. I can change this to mic/line2, line3, line4 all the way down to these S/PDIF inputs down here. Or I could choose a bus input if I like. We will look at buses later. Or I could change null input. Now nothing will come into this track. Let's set this back to mic/line1 from interface, that's pretty important, remember that interface. We could do the same thing here. We change to a different interface input, mic/line3 and 4, analog5, 6 or even S/PDIF at the bottom here. We will set that back to mic/line1 and 2 and just as mic/line1 was a pop-up menu so is analog1, 2. From here I could choose analog3, 4, S/PDIF left right or even just a single mono output like analog3 mono. Or I could choose no output at all. Seems kind of useless at first but there are times where it's helpful. Let's set this back to analog1 and 2 from the interface submenu. And now we will see where all the entries for these pop-up menus have been defined and possibly change them to suit your own tastes. If I go to the setups menu and choose IO setup, I am presented with a dialogue box that is just a little bit too big for my screen, so we will zoom out just a little bit so we can see these buttons across the bottom and over here on the left, you will see those pop-up menu items that we have seen before for input, for output, there's also ones for insert and there's ones for bus that we saw, we will look at busing later. For now we will just focus on input and output. On the input panel I have a picture of my Digi002 right here. I also have some analog inputs 1 through 8 and S/PDIF or digital inputs 9 and 10 listed. These are actual physical connections on the back of my Digi002. If I had an Mbox, a Digi001 or any other kind of physical hardware device from Digi, it would appear right here along with its input connectors. This is considered the hardware interface which is why we always chose our items from the interface submenu of the input or the output menus. So this picture and these connector points represent the physical world outside of my computer. Below this graphic is a grid or a matrix of little cells which we will find out accesses a patch bay between this graphic and the associated hardware inputs and these menu choices that we see in Pro Tools over here on the left. So for example, in Pro Tools when I selected mic/line1 and 2 as an input, I was actually selecting inputs 1 and 2 on my Digi002Rack. On the output panel, we see our Digi002 again with its outputs 1 through 10; we have the matrix again which acts as our patch bay between the physical world and the virtual world. And over here on the virtual world inside Pro Tools, I have analog1 and 2 which is what I was choosing to output my tracks to. We see here that when I choose analog1 and 2 for output, it's actually sending a signal to outputs 1 and 2 on the back of my Digi002 and that's what I have connected to my reference monitor so I can listen to what's being played back. The cool thing here is that we can customize this. Let's say that analog1 and 2 is not very descriptive for me instead I want to double click the analog1 and 2 entry here and now I am able to edit this text. I can call it `hra24' because I actually have the output of my Digi002 connected to my macihra24 reference monitors. And if I go to input, my mic and line1 and 2 is actually connected to an Avalon preamp. Now I will press the return key to accept that change and click ok and we see here that the input selection for both tracks has been altered as well as the output selection. Notice however, for my mono track that this input selector it says avalonpre.l. Let's go back to our IO setup and figure out what's going on here. For each of these predefined input names, there's a disclosure triangle here even for the one that says avalonpre. If I click on this also called a twirly, I can twirl it down here, we see this is where we get the avalonpre.l and there's another one avalonpre.r. Notice how each of these is a mono track and they are pre-assigned to either input 1 or input 2 depending on whether they are considered to be the left or the right. Well as I look down at the front of my Avalon preamp, it doesn't call these inputs left and right, it calls them 1 and 2. So let's change those as well. There we go, avalonpre input number 1 or I could choose avalonpre input number 2. Notice I get the choice just from the mono listings because this is going to a mono track. I can't choose mono pre 1 and 2 here because this is input to a stereo track and it requires both inputs simultaneously.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Digidesign Pro Tools LE 6 |
| Author: | Nathan Dickson |
| SKU: | 33599 |
| ISBN: | 1-932808-46-9 |
| Release Date: | 2005-02-25 |
| Duration: | 9 hrs / 101 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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