Digital varispeed

[Ruairi]

Hi all,

I am remixing a track today that was originally mixed by somebody else and I have a bit of a challenge to overcome. The song was tracked in PT 5 years ago and the original mixer transferred the multi onto 2inch for mixing. At that point he pitched/sped up the track by nearly half a semitone on the multi for the mix which was captured on half inch.

Now I need to remix the track but all I have (and can use) is the 24bit/44.1k PT session. The pitch/speed change has become part of the personality of the song (it has been released) so it must be maintained. Has anyone any solutions for digital varispeed. My solution at the moment is to clock PT to an old ADAT i have which has a varispeed function and basically provide PT with a faster clock. This i ssounding fine but it means that I will have to come out of my DAC 1 and into another rig to record my master.

Any other ideas (I'm mixing it today btw),

cheers,
Ruairi

[logichead]

Originally Posted by Ruairi

Hi all,

I am remixing a track today that was originally mixed by somebody else and I have a bit of a challenge to overcome. The song was tracked in PT 5 years ago and the original mixer transferred the multi onto 2inch for mixing. At that point he pitched/sped up the track by nearly half a semitone on the multi for the mix which was captured on half inch.

Now I need to remix the track but all I have (and can use) is the 24bit/44.1k PT session. The pitch/speed change has become part of the personality of the song (it has been released) so it must be maintained. Has anyone any solutions for digital varispeed. My solution at the moment is to clock PT to an old ADAT i have which has a varispeed function and basically provide PT with a faster clock. This i ssounding fine but it means that I will have to come out of my DAC 1 and into another rig to record my master.

Any other ideas (I'm mixing it today btw),

cheers,
Ruairi

You might be better off transposing the individual audiofiles by the semitone you need - in Logic, use "classic" mode, which mimics simply speeding up a tape machine.

Locking to the ADAT may result in a loss of sound quality - the clocks in the BRC's were less than stellar. Another option is a Big Ben, which has varispeed, but your rig may not like seeing a non-standard clock speed.

Finally, you could mix to 1/2" and speed up the master. It might require getting a copy of the original mix and detuning it to "normal" so you have a reference.

Hope this helps....H

[Jamz]

Connect a Digidesign Sync io and use the varispeed function.

[travista00]

the varispeed on digi's sync i/o is great! totally what you're looking for.

[Ruairi]

Hi guys,

thanks for the responses, just finished mixing a few minutes ago - everybody loves a 14 hour mix session . To answer your responses I don't have ready access to either logic audio or a Digidesign Sync box. I live in the bottom left hand corner of a small country, HD rigs are a rarity - never seen a sync box here.

My mix rig is HD Accel with a DAC-1 for monitoring into S3-As. I knew the DAC-1 had a reputation for being indifferent to poor clocking so I clocked my HD rig off an old blackface ADAT I had and set the clock to 44.1. I did some listening tests with my reference session and switched back and forth between the internal PT clock and the ADAT clock provided by optical. I couldn't hear a difference - testament to the DAC-1. Seeing as today was a mix session only I felt ok about using the ADAT to clock the rig ( wouldn't have tracked though). I used the ADAT varispeed to pitch up the PT session to match the old mix and set about mixing.

My brief was a tough one, I had to try and match a mix created on a Neve in a world class facility (by a great engineer) with just a few changes including vocal up and a little drum augmentation. I think we succeeded. The old mix has a slight sonic advantage but the musical benefit of the changes we made far outweighs that. Now I will need to output the mix via analog through my DAC-1 and capture it on another borrowed rig through a decent A to D. The best I have access to a a Digi 192 io. I may try and rent a Lavry from the UK (I'm in Ireland) or if I have a few weeks I may just get the cash together and buy one.

Thanks for the input,

cheers,
Ruairi