Day 7? loosing count already

So I met with the youngest engineer Sammy this Sunday. We had a 3 hour session, where he was explaining me all of the buttons in the center section of the board. I recorded our entire conversation, and now slowly writing it down. Getting everything well organized would be too much work for this blog, so i am going to post the notes the way they are.

Ext a and ext b

If you look on a patch bay, they are patched into the console.

Ext b, they are labeled. You see cd player.

Different inputs into the console for external things.

If I press the button, I would hear the cd player.

When you press ext b, you will be monitoring whatever is set on ext b.

ProTools 1 is just an easy way to listen to outputs 1-2 in protools.

This way you don’t have to put the faders up and pan the channels 1 and 2 around.

Master level should be on.

Afl/Pfl – different types… of like… when  you press solo, it doesn’t just send it to the mix a, it goes to a separate solo bus. As soon as you press solo, it sends it somewhere else to send it out this solo bus.

If I have a master compression going on, and then solo the channel, I won’t be able to hear any compression. If I put the mix a settings on afl, then everything would still work.

Pfl and afl is prefader listen and after fader listen.

Pre-fader means that it is going to a solo buss at whatever level it was coming in the channel strip regardless. Its not following your volume on the meter. Pfl only means that your solo if prefade. SO, whenever you press solo, the faders would be back up at unity.

Afl will follow the fader.

This option right here means something along the lines “solo individual channels” or something like that.

Normally, when I am at afl, when I press solo, everything I press just adds up. Alt makes it so that you can only solo one channel at a time.

In any mode, whether u are at afl or pfl, you can use alt in order to go to a singular solo mode.

Meters. You see protools levels. It is better to look at meters in protools rather than the board cause those are exact.

Analogue meters, are the ones that show an actual audio that you are hearing.

If all the tracks in pro tools go out 1 and 2, and redlining in protools 1 and 2 meters on the board, it is because they are summing up, n you should bring the faders down.

If you are mixing, and you want to go real style, then you highlight all the channels in protools (except for master channel), you can use option shift command, grab the first channel you want, and say out 1, and then it all just cascade it from there.

There too labels on the screen right above the faders. Usually faders are board faders, and knobs belong to prottols. But if you press the knob, then the order switches.

SO if you really wanted to, you could use faders on the board to mix the protools and write your automation.

The protools control surface with faders on our board can only do 32 channels.

For the most part, as far as good technique, the console does have an automation, but it only the console. So if you take it to another studio, it won’t have any automation. I usually write my automation in protools. SO that’s where I use the protools faders. But also lets say, there are 2 guitar tracks, and one of them is too loud and is coming into the board in read. Sometimes its easy to just bring down one of the protools faders, and then you have a nice volume level without having to screw with it. But with that in mind, its good technique to not let it be like that at first place. You should turn it down when you are recording it, or you can go in and put a plug on it. 

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Just in case if wonder what i did today, my answer would be nothing related to music. As you know, or might not know, i am graduating from uc berkeley, economics. So today i was desperately trying to finish my finance hw.