Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/187650
Favorite Audio Tools Echolab's Gavin Little likes Logic Pro's built-in Channel EQ. 34 Levesque used two of his favorite audio tools: an M-Audio Oxygen 8 MIDI controller keyboard in combination with Avid's virtual instrument plug-in, Structure. "We needed to create very specific sounds that you just can't get from a library," he explains. "These are the types of sounds that really needed to be created. I really like the Digidesign Structure virtual instrument, and Strike as well." Structure is a sample workstation, and Strike handles all the percussion sounds.They are part of the A.I.R.Virtual Instruments plugins found in the Pro Tools Instrument Expansion Pack. They were developed specifically for Pro Tools systems by Germany's AIR Music Technology. The expansion pack includes five RTAS virtual instrument plugins, and 55GBs (compressed into 33GBs) of high-quality audio content. According to the Avid Website, the "55GBs of audio content [is] compressed into a space-saving 33GBs, using proprietary lossless compression, for the entire software installation. The instruments dynamically decompress any content you load in realtime, as needed." You can buy it from the Avid Website for $499.95. Before purchasing, be sure to check the system requirements. Levesque used the M-Audio Oxygen 8, as well as a Nord Lead 2 synthesizer, on every episode of The Freshman Class. While he likes the feel of the Nord Lead 2 more than the Oxygen 8, he feels like he has more sound options with the Oxygen 8. "It provides an easy way to control all the virtual instruments inside Pro Tools," he explains. "Is the Nord more superior to the Oxygen 8? Definitely. The Nord is an actual keyboard, Post • September 2013 whereas the Oxygen 8 is just a controller. It doesn't have weighted keys or anything like that, but it does its job, and it does it well." The newest version of the Oxygen 8 is the M-Audio Oxygen 25. It doesn't have weighted keys either, but they are velocitysensitive. You can buy one through the M-Audio site for $99.99. Rob Fielack is a senior mixer at Plush. He started out in 1987 on the advertising side of the audio industry, working in-house at agency Bates in New York. While there he worked for three to ears as an engineer, and then transitioned to music producer at the agency. When he left Bates he went back to being an audio engineer, spending 10 years at Nutmeg Audio Post before jumping over to Plush. For the past three years, he's been working on high-end advertising with top agencies like the Los Angeles-based 72andSunny, known for their live-action Call of Duty commercials featuring actors like Jonah Hill and Robert Downey Jr. Recently, 72andSunny created a campaign for Samsung that featured Jay-Z. While Fielack didn't work on those two specific campaigns, he has been busy working on their "Vic and Steve" campaign for the Watch ESPN app. The minimalist-style animation of the "Vic and Steve" spots was created by the artist collective at No Mas, which includes animator James Blagden, who did an animated short called Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No. Blagden animated to an interview in which Ellis talked about pitching a no-hitter on acid in 1970. The animation for the "Vic and Steve" spots is based on the Dock Ellis short. "When 72andSunny wanted to do this ad campaign for ESPN, they reached out to No Mas and said that's the style we want to work with." The spots combine minimal animation for the characters and their environments with footage (including sound) from actual games being displayed on either smartphones or tablets. To clean up the sync sound for the game footage, Fielack used his favorite noise- www.postmagazine.com reducer, the iZotope RX2 Advanced plug-in. "There will be something in the background of the audio, like wind-noise over a very quiet golf putt, and I've been able to use the RX2 to strip that out. It's been very useful." The iZotope RX2 Advanced ($1,199 on the iZotope Website, $349 for RX2) is fast becoming a favorite noise-reduction plug-in with audio pros across the industry. It has loads of features and options for cleaning up audio. The graphic display, or spectrogram display, helps you to more easily identify and remove problem frequencies. You can even resynthesizes audio using Spectral Repair. Recently, iZotope announced they will soon release RX3 and RX3 Advanced. New features on the RX3 Advanced include Dereverb, which will allows you to remove or reduce reverb on the audio signal (Seriously? That's amazing!), and the Dialog Denoiser, which will allow realtime dialog clean-up. If you purchased RX2 or RX2 Advanced after July 1, 2013, iZotope will give you a free upgrade to RX3 or RX3 Advanced respectively. Sure, the iZotope RX2 Advanced has a lot of bells and whistles, but what really matters is how much noise reduction you can get away with before you start to hear digital artifacts or a breakdown in the audio signal. According to Fielack, that is where the RX2 Advanced really shines. "Whatever algorithm they're running over there at iZotope, they've really seemed to have dialed it in. With the RX2 Advanced, you can go quite heavy with the noise reduction. It's rare that I get to the point of digital aliasing with the Plush's Rob Fielack relies on Izotope's RX2 Advanced for noise reduction. RX2 Advanced." Fielack also notes that the RX2 Advanced sounds transparent — it doesn't add any coloration to the sound. "The sound is more accurate.That's the main thing. You're looking for a noise reduction tool that will leave the source material as