Pro Tools: Going In The Box :: Shane D. Wilson
Before the 90's records were tracked to tape machines. The transition from tape to "In the box" recording was a hot topic amongst engineers. Hear how record companies pressured Shane into working in the box, then refused to hire him because he was in the box, and how he developed his own hybrid approach to get around early Pro Tools deficiencies.
When I went to Pro Tools it was with a gun to my head. “This is how you get… everybody's doing this this is how you have to do it.” Okay, I'll do it and then I did it and those same record companies… you know I'm talking about... who told me that I needed to go in the box didn't want to hire me anymore because I was in the box. “Wait a minute, I went into debt for you people! What?”
But over time, what I developed after being completely in the box for not a long period of time, but a long enough period of time that I made some records that I'm really not proud of… as much as i have a hard time with any of them. There's a period of time where the trend was to do a certain thing and I just, I didn't hear that way I think, and honestly the mixer, the actual math and science of Pro Tools back then was shit compared to what it is now. Like looking back, the 001s, the prosumer line of Pro Tools really did mathematically, scientifically, sound better in spite of what Avid Digidesign told us.
For so long the math made more sense in the 001 LE version of Pro Tools than it did the TDM version of Pro Tools because what we're on now is a floating 32-bit mixer which is what was on the 001 from the beginning. It was a 32-bit, floating 32-bit mixer and TDM was fixed 48 bits truncation and masturbation and everything else, but um so you know had the expensive TDM rig because that's what you had to have, right, and you know it just didn't sound as good.
But what i did discover via some friends… Richie Biggs who ended up working for Charlie Peacock and Richard Dodd who is god... god rhymes with Dodd did you notice that because i did… they found ways that, oh you know if you divide the workload and everything isn't going out two channels if you can divide that to 8 or 16 or 24 and do sub mixes and then combine analog it sounds better. So a long way around saying that early on i did develop a really really as hybrid as you can get which I am to this day. You know at Pentavarit, I was on a Trident 80-C. At Charlie Peacock's it was a TAC Matchless, and now I have a Shadow Hills Equinox, so I'm mixing in the box but I'm using hardware inserts and I'm using analog stuff on the 2buss and so it's as hybrid as you can get and it has been for the better part of 15 years or so now um so it really is a big mixture and on those records it was as well.