Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Upgrading to Pro Tools 8 HD!

Vibe 56 has upgraded from Digidesign's Pro Tools HD 7.4 to 8

Last week we braced ourselves for the long-awaited upgrade to Pro Tools version 8. It's difficult to know when the right time is to make such a significant upgrade. We had heard from a number of Nashville's highly respected engineers who were giving the upgrade their own thumbs-up. We were getting antsy ourselves as we looked forward to using some key new features built into the new version.


We were fortunate to have Marc Meeker from Meeker Audio in the driver's seat for the upgrade process. Marc has been at the helm of hundreds of upgrades for pro audio folks all over the Nashville area. Marc was on hand four years ago at the studio, as we were assembling the equipment before we had even opened the doors for business. Even after all that time, I still spelled his name with a K in my address book. That changed too last week. Special thanks to Marc with a C for all his help in getting this upgrade rocking on our system.


The studio's house engineer, Scott Velazco, decided to take the new upgrade on a test drive by using it on a 6-piece band demo the very next day! Most demo sessions use a band consisting of A-list session players who are tasked with knocking out at least five songs within a three-hour session. This session was no different, and in this environment a well-seasoned engineer is the only way to keep up with the rapid-fire pace. We found the upgrade to be very intuitive, with no major changes in the actual functionality of what we depended on with the previous version. The new changes are there, and wonderfully customizable, but the default interface is calmingly familiar and functional.

For the time being, we are still able to boot into our old system with version 7.4 installed, although we had to commit to some of the plug-in upgrades that are now only available in 8.

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