Sonic Valentine

…and then there was the one about two men standing at the urinals and one glances over.  I’ll spare you the sordid details, but the punch line is “Oooohhhh.  I always wring mine out.”

I doubt the semi-sauced country boy who told me this joke intended it to be a morality tale, but if a lesson has to be extracted it might go something like this: It doesn’t matter what system is used, as long as the desired results are achieved.  It is with this in mind that I approach the topic of Pro Tools Preferences.

Like many other recording enthusiasts, I spent several years mostly ignoring the Preferences window (which can be found in the Pro Tools pull down menu in the top left corner of the screen).  I would open it only when something was not working the way I thought it should, and then spend several perplexing minutes trying to figure out how my “problem” might be worded into a preference.  I would occasionally find a box I could check or uncheck to remedy the situation, and then put it out of mind until the next time the issue arose.  The trouble comes when you are searching for a quick fix in the middle of a session and seconds feel like hours.  As my father once told me “You don’t have to wait until the warning light comes on before you check your oil.”  It is my habit before each session to open the Preferences dialog box and make sure everything is exactly as I like it.  

So here you have a partial list of the preferences I am looking for, and why they are important.  Keep in mind, this is not how things SHOULD be set every time, it is just what works best for me.

Display

There are only a few things in the display window that matter to me.  

Peak Hold/Clip Indication: Peak and clip ARE NOT interchangable terms.  Peak is used to express the maximum level a signal has reached, and Clip is the red “Over” light that screams “TOO DAMN HOT!”  UsualIy, I set Peak Hold to 3 seconds, but I don’t really care.  Clip Indication, however, I set to Infinite.  If I happen to be paying attention to something else the ONE TIME in the song that the drummer hits his low tom and it clips, I want to know about it whenever I get around to that side of the mix window.  Otherwise, it is an unpleasant little surprise when I start mixing.  

Draw Grid In Edit Window: I like to have a visual representation of the grid.  It especially helps when I have to fly the banjo part from the first chorus (the only time the banjo was in tune) and paste it into the other choruses.

Track Color/Region Color/ Marker Colors: Every Martin Luther King Day, I set all my color coding to None.  I’m doing my part.  

Operation:

The only box I check-mark in the transport section is Play Start Marker Follows Timeline Selection.  

Timeline Insertion Follows Playback: For a semi-detailed explanation of this preference, see here: Sonic Valentine – Behind The Scenes

Back/Forward Amount: I set it to one bar, or 1|0|000.  Let us assume I have dropped location markers in the song during tracking.  The guitar player wants to fix bar six of the first chorus.  I can locate the first chorus marker (Quick Key hint: in the numeric pad, hit period/location number/period to jump to the marker) and then by tapping number 2 I can advance in increments of one bar (tapping number 1 goes in the other direction).  From the Chorus marker, I advance three bars, and tell the guitar player we will be starting playback from bar four and punching bar six.  

I do this because musicians often don’t want any more preroll than they need to get into the fix.  At a medium or slower tempo, two bars is plenty.  

Auto Backup: Enable Session File back-up, Backup every 1 minute, keep 99 most recent back-ups.  This has saved my job more than once.

Open Ended Record Allocation: Limit To: 30 minutes.  Pro Tools runs smoother and responds quicker when you limit the Record Allocation.  It is rarely a big difference, but if Pro Tools is being sluggish and you’ve tried everything else, try switching this pref.  

The only time I Use All Available Space is when a band is rehearsing. Often, I just leave them in record in case they accidentally do something brilliant.  Also a good idea if you made the mistake of agreeing to record a local jam band.  

Editing:

Without going into specifics, I will say it is a good idea to leave the first five boxes in the Region column checked.

New Tracks Default To Tick Timebase: This preference gives regions the ability to follow the tempo grid.  I make sure it is NEVER checked.  Imagine that you track a song and the drummer is generating the click track.  Each musician makes several fixes to their part.  Later, you decide to align your Pro Tools grid to the song tempo and meter.  As soon as you change the default tempo in Pro Tools, all of your unconsolidated regions jump to a new location!  Nothing lines up, there are gaps in the audio, it is all around bad news.  There are certain instances where tick timebase is a nice feature, but tracking is not one of them.

QuickPunch/TrackPunch Crossfade Length: Ever since Pro Tools 7 introduced the ability to drag a fade, I like to set a default crossfade of 7 or 8 ms.  I do it because sometimes a producer or artist’s opinion of a performance is unconsciously affected by the “click” of a bad punch.  It doesn’t sound right EVERY time, but it works more often than not, and it provides a little extra protection from mix engineers calling to yell at me because I missed a bad punch before consolidating my tracks.

Default Fade Settings: Through a little trial and error, I have decided the default crossfade that is most versatile in combination with the above QuickPunch Crossfade Length is an “S-Curve” shape on both ends with an Equal Power link.  

Levels Of Undo: 32.  Better to be safe.  I am sure I have tracked down a mistake I made 31 mouse-clicks ago at one time or another.

Mixing:

Sends Default To -Infinity: Fedora and I were telling studio horror stories the other night, and this one came up.  I was working with a producer/engineer whom I have long admired.  It’s not important who it was. We’ll just call him Mr. X.  …no, make it Z.  For the sake of anonymity, we’ll call him David Z.  Anyhow, we were recording a vocalist who requested a little reverb.  Z asked me to set up a reverb aux in Pro Tools, and I figured it would be a good idea to put a reverb send on every channel, just so the option was there, should he want to use it.  What I did not know was that this preference wasn’t checked, and consequently all the sends were instantly created set to unity, INCLUDING ONE ON THE ACTUAL REVERB AUX.  Feedback is never pretty, and this was the ugliest feedback Nashville has heard in a long time.  

After I realized what had just happened and quickly fixed it, I crawled into a hole in the earth, and a part of me is still there to this day.  

Conclusion:

So there you have an abridged list of the things I am looking for when I open the Preferences dialog.  With time and experimentation, you may find a way that works better for you.  That is why they are preferences, and as long as the results are good, your method for achieving them is valid.  Of course, your method may have consequences, and like the man in the opening story, you will end up with a corkscrew-shaped penis.  -Scotty Valentine