Perhaps
one of the greatest assests of modern digital sound recording,
apart from its ability to record at fantastically high sample
rates, is the sophisticated digital sound editing facility
that the new breed of recording software allows. With the
arrival of Steinberg
Nuendo and a number of other digital sound recording
platforms it is now possible to construct the perfect take
from a series of different takes and edits.(sometimes even
recorded on different days!).
Digital
sound recording platforms such as Pro-Tools
and Steinberg Nuendo enable the recording
engineer to approach the recording session in a completely
different way. digital sound editing is now so sophisticated
that invisible edits can actually be made across a single
note which brings huge advantages to the recording session.
Having confidence in the editing software allows the engineer
to say exactly what bars need to be retaken and quite often
a piece is now only recorded once in its entirety. Then, after
listening back with the score, smaller sections can be recorded
to cover any mistakes or extraneous noises.
This
certainly cuts down recording time and in the case of brass
bands helps enormously to preserve the lips of the players.
Until recently the only drawback was that everything had to
be mixed down to stereo before any editing took place so major
decisions on balance, EQ, reverb etc all had to be made before
the editing stage. Using
Steinberg Nuendo and its ability to edit complete multitrack
recordings, this has all changed.
Now
for instance when we make a jazz band recording we might have
separate sections or even individual instruments on their
own track and sometimes a large band may end up across 20
individual tracks. The new software allows us to perform sophisticated
digital sound editing across multitracks, assembling the final
edited version before we have to mix down to a master and
because the mixdown is fully automated and saved to disc it
means that at any stage we can go back to any individual track
and make any adjustments we need to get a perfect result.
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