Introduction

Traditionally, recording studios have been built round the mixer, the multi-track recorder and various outboard signal processing units. Digidesign have invested most of their development effort on recording and mixing, rather than signal processing. Nevertheless, realizing the importance of the signal processing equipment, they had the good sense to create a software plug-in system and then encouraged third-party developers to create software modules which can plug-in to Pro Tools systems to provide this outboard signal processing.

A studio full of conventional outboard gear can set you back thousands of pounds for all the separate boxes but now you can get all this on a few floppy disks. The benefits are obvious: you can bring your outboard on-board as an integral part of the system; you don t need any cables to hook it all up; it is all digital; it is much cheaper; it is much more flexible; and it is much more upgradable all to the benefit of the user. And one of the major advantages of a TDM system is that you don t get the build up of hiss and grunge which you would get with all that analogue gear plus the open effects returns, open inputs, and so forth! The downside is that you need lots of DSP power, which means adding extra MIX cards to your system. The maximum you can use in a four-slot Mac is three, as you will need to use a SCSI card as well. For larger systems you will need to use a...