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.  

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