Simple Plug-In Help needed!!!

[Brentunc]

What is the easiest way to make an rtas plug-in into just audiosuite plug-in. I have some great compressor settings and they are starting to take up alot of CPU, so I need to somehow keep the setting and make it audiosuite. What do I do???

Also, I just tracked the music for a couple of songs and want to listen to the mix on different audio systems before I go ahead and track vocals, the only problem is, to get the instrumental mix onto CD I need to bounce it to a master stereo fader, but when I go back and create new tracks for vocals and then track them, will the vocals automatically be part of the master stereo fader with the rest of the previously tracked mix??? Or do I need to rebounce the new mix (with the vocals) to create a whole new master fader??? Or is there something special I must do to get this done without problems???

[Sinkharmony]

I take it that Pro Tools is a relatively new program for you isn't it? Well, as far as the plugin problem goes that has a pretty easy solution. I would copy the settings you have for the plug in then remove the plugin from the track. Then you should select the track you are going to apply the audiosuite plugin to and highlight what you want to be affected. I think you can do more than one track at a time, but I have never done that myself. If it is the whole track you are applying the audiosuite to, just highlight all of it then go up to the top of the screen to where it says "Audiosuite" and click on that. The audiosuite version of the plugin you were using should be in there. Just select it and paste the settings. Then click on the "Process" button and it will apply the effect. If you don't like it then just undo it (yay, apple-z) Then tweak your settings until you get it right. The newly processed track will show up in your audiofiles list on the right, so if you ever need to go back to your original file later on, it will be in there. That's pretty much it. Sorry if that was convoluted, but I hope it helps.

Second problem: I think you are getting your terminology mixed up a little bit. Creating a master stereo fader just shows you your entire mix, so if you add more tracks like vocals, it will just automatically go into the master fader. Now, you don't HAVE to make a stereo master fader in order to bounce your tracks to CD. Just highlight the length of time you want bounced (say the track is 5 minutes, highlight the 5 minutes you want bounced) then go into File then click on Bounce To Disk. Bounce it as a .wav file and make sure it is 16 bit, 44.1 kHz and stereo interleved. When you finish bouncing them you can then put the wav files in whatever cd burning program you wish and create your cd. If you put vocals on your mix later, the bounced wav versions of the songs you did will NOT automatically update with the vocals. You will have to rebounce the tracks with the vocals in order to check your mix on another system. So hopefully this cleared up some problems you are having, good luck!

[djui5]

Just to add to sink's answer (it was great),
A master fader in pro-tools only affects the tracks above (in the track view)/ to the left (in the mix window) of it. You can apply more than one master faders to a track, but the one on the far right/bottom will always affect all the tracks being played.

[Brentunc]

Thanks Sink and Randy. Sink, that was probably one of the most clearly stated answers I have ever recieved regarding Pro Tools. Thanks for your input.

[mark1voman]

Adam,

Great reply. Though, I do have one question. When bouncing the tracks for a CD burn, why wouldn't you bounce it to AIFF instead of WAV? Isn't AIFF the native file type for CD's? Wouldn't it make sense to not put your file through one more conversion (by the CD bruning software) in order to avoid any possible undue compression or artifacts? Or am I totally off base on this?
I guess that's more than one question! ;)

[djui5]

Pro-tools LE won't allow you to burn a AIFF file from what I remember. I could be wrong though.

[mark1voman]

Randy,

I'm bouncing to AIFF everyday using PT LE 6.1. Though, you can't bounce to MP3 unless you purchase the "MP3 Option".

[djui5]

Thanks for correcting me!

[Sinkharmony]

This is an interesting question. For alot of years I was a PC user and for PCs wav files are what you use for CD burning. It is the native sound file type on Windows machines. So naturally when I started to use Apple computers I always just bounced all my files to .wav files. I just did a little bit of research on .aiff files at this website:

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213472,00.html

It seems that both AIFF and SDII are considered native sound file types for Apple computers, and can both be used for burning red book cds. I've obviously never had any sort of problem with WAV files on Mac systems but I'll try a little experiment and bounce a track I know well to AIFF, WAV and perhaps even keep it in SDII. I'll listen to it to see if I can spot any kind of quality difference and report back what I find. My gut feeling is that since both WAV and AIFF are raw, uncompressed audio then there will be no difference in quality and no real conversion that goes on when it hits the cd. If anyone else has any info on this I'd like to hear it, but I'll see what I can find out just doing a quick listening test.

[djui5]

I believe it's a compatability issue with cd-players. I do know that all cd-players will play AIFF files, but not all will play wav files. Just my thoughts.

[Sinkharmony]

Hmmm, it doesn't happen very often but I have had times where some of my burns won't play on a cd player. They were often older players and I just chalked it up to incompatibility with cd burns in general. I wonder if it was a problem with .wavs instead?