Avid Carbon interface brief review and 1st recording

[KevWind]

So Jim any update on how the Carbon and Motu are working ?

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by KevWind

So Jim any update on how the Carbon and Motu are working ?

It all went together surprisingly simply. I made the ADAT connections, set the word clock on the MOTU to be the slave, and the channels were available to me in PT. The setup is uncomplicated and anything I have to do gets done in PT. It's exactly what I was hoping for.

[jim1960]

A perpetual PT Ultimate license showed up in my account. I'm very happy that AVID rethought limiting that deal to just those who purchased a Carbon after July 1st. I'm not sure they even announced the change (if they did, I didn't see it). I only found out when a friend of mine told me yesterday that a couple of people he knows who were in the same situation I was, found the license in their accounts. I took a look and mine was there as well. Kudos to AVID for realizing they'd make a marketing error and correcting it.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by jim1960

A perpetual PT Ultimate license showed up in my account. I'm very happy that AVID rethought limiting that deal to just those who purchased a Carbon after July 1st. I'm not sure they even announced the change (if they did, I didn't see it). I only found out when a friend of mine told me yesterday that a couple of people he knows who were in the same situation I was, found the license in their accounts. I took a look and mine was there as well. Kudos to AVID for realizing they'd make a marketing error and correcting it.

Hey great, I already have an Ultimate so I chose the free 1 yr. renewal which I purchased ...
Have not looked at my account but not sure what to do with second license ??


So I just looked and in the "My Products not yet downloaded" section it says "PRO TOOLS ULTIMATE PER"
I assume that is it ?

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by KevWind

Hey great, I already have an Ultimate so I chose the free 1 yr. renewal which I purchased ...
Have not looked at my account but not sure what to do with second license ??

So I just looked and in the "My Products not yet downloaded" section it says "PRO TOOLS ULTIMATE PER"
I assume that is it ?

That's what it said for me. If they threw you a 2nd Ultimate license, that's a heck of a bonus if you can sell it.

[KevWind]

And back to Carbon use example ,,, here is a John Prine cover I posted over in the JP cover song thread in . I have started a series of covers I call " One Shot One Take" which are literally one take all the way through done live performance style

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by KevWind

"One Shot One Take"

One shot, one take? What kind of sorcery is that?
Nice job on the song though!

I've mentioned before I have two good friends who have studios. One of the them sold his UA Apollo Firewire last week and bought a Carbon. He had been thinking about it for a while but wanted to see how I got on with mine first. He was still hesitant to lay out that money but the Ultimate deal put him over the top. It was just too good to pass up.

The other friend is also a Pro Tools user but he'll never go Carbon. He has an Omni system and a lot of his work is composing for television, movies, and games. The track counts for those projects gets really high and Carbon would make that work near impossible.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by jim1960

One shot, one take? What kind of sorcery is that?
Nice job on the song though!

Thanks, let me clarify a bit, it is more just a good catchy title for the series . It does not mean the "first and only take".
It means it is one single continuous take start to finish (one shot) vocal and guitar at the same time (one take) quasi - live performance style, no comping, no punch in, etc etc.
So it may take one , or two, or three, or even four tries to get right. BUT if I flub up (on either playing or singing) then I stop erase and start over from the beginning, until I nail it continuous start to finish. It was basically a challenge to myself to beef up my live playing chops ...

Of the three songs in the series I have done so far, only one was actually the first and only take = Dylans " You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" (which was the opening song for every gig I ever played )

I've mentioned before I have two good friends who have studios. One of the them sold his UA Apollo Firewire last week and bought a Carbon. He had been thinking about it for a while but wanted to see how I got on with mine first. He was still hesitant to lay out that money but the Ultimate deal put him over the top. It was just too good to pass up.

The other friend is also a Pro Tools user but he'll never go Carbon. He has an Omni system and a lot of his work is composing for television, movies, and games. The track counts for those projects gets really high and Carbon would make that work near impossible.

Is the second friend running PT HD Native on his Omni or just regular PT ?

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by KevWind

Is the second friend running PT HD Native on his Omni or just regular PT?

His is an HD system and he's been running Ultimate (or whatever it was called previously) for as long as I can remember because he needed the track count. In addition to the Omni, he also has at least a couple of the 192 boxes. He may have more though. He mentioned that he might be adding more some months back because the price of them had dropped so low on Reverb. I'm not sure if he did or not and I haven't been by his place in a while.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by KevWind

For Jim. not a sale but the new version of Pro Tools now includes Carbon mic pre control either from the PT GUI itself or any Eucon surface

https://www.avid.com/resource-center...qshB7Tabo2N77c

Thanks Kev. I figured this conversation probably belongs in this thread so I copied your post and moved it here.

PT 2021.10 looks like a nice update for a lot of people. I haven't used the Carbon pres as pres yet because I like my pres too much and I have no desire to have any kind of physical control surface, so this probably doesn't change much for me. However, I do like that AVID is expanding Carbon's capabilities ...now if only they'd expand the track count with some modular expansion. I'd love to be able to get to 24 tracks without any second-party hardware. Just tracks, not pres. That's my big want. The day it happens, I'm going to be first in line to get one.

This list covers all the changes.

And while I'm speaking of AVID, I just had another fight with them. Back in 2019 when AVID raised the update/renewal for PT vanilla from $100 to $200, I bought up a bunch of years at the old rate while it was still available. I have my PT vanilla paid up through September 2026. When I registered the Carbon, they added another year so I was then paid up through Sept 2027.

When AVID decided to extend the Ultimate offer to all Carbon users, I lost PT vanilla when I upgraded to Ultimate. I put in a ticket and asked if they could give me a credit for the unused years on vanilla so that I could apply it to an update/renewal purchase for Ultimate. We went back and forth a few times and it sounded like they were going to do it, then I get an email saying they can't and they offered me a 15% coupon that I could apply to Ultimate. I have $500 in updates (not counting the extension to 2027) and they're essentially offering me $60. I told the person I was dealing with that was unacceptable and asked for the contact information for someone above her. I figured I just needed to get to someone who could okay some equitable resolution. Then they came back with an offer for a free year of Ultimate and they said I could keep the coupon. So now I'll get $460 in value for the $500 and that's fair enough for me.

But here's the kicker. I was only asking for the $400 upgrade from the beginning. They made that stupidly difficult for no good reason and in the end they gave me more than I originally asked for. On top of that, I think I can probably sell my vanilla license which is paid through either 2026 or 2027 (depending on whether that last year survives the transfer since I didn't actually pay for it). Had they done what I asked, I'd have had no years left on my vanilla plan and that license wouldn't be worth much.

I don't know how decisions are made at AVID but they continue to baffle me.

[jim1960]

I'm curious to check out this function. Perhaps I can find a setting the works well for me in the midi editor without having to switch to dark mode.

"High Contrast UI and Additional Customization Options
The High Contrast option enhances the visibility of many UI elements by increasing the contrast between background and foreground, and adding various graphic treatments. These enhancements improve usability and accessibility for Pro Tools users with low vision or color blindness.
New UI customization parameters allow specific colors to be selected and adjusted for text/line, background, and marker lines, enabling even deeper customization to the already highly flexible UI."

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by jim1960

Thanks Kev. I figured this conversation probably belongs in this thread so I copied your post and moved it here.

PT 2021.10 looks like a nice update for a lot of people. I haven't used the Carbon pres as pres yet because I like my pres too much and I have no desire to have any kind of physical control surface, so this probably doesn't change much for me. However, I do like that AVID is expanding Carbon's capabilities ...now if only they'd expand the track count with some modular expansion. I'd love to be able to get to 24 tracks without any second-party hardware. Just tracks, not pres. That's my big want. The day it happens, I'm going to be first in line to get one.

This list covers all the changes.

I don't know how decisions are made at AVID but they continue to baffle me.

Good Idea moving it here ......
I agree it is often baffling how corporate decisions are made There is an old Wyoming saying (" A moose is a horse designed by committee )

I get your attachment to your current pre's I made the mistake of directly comparing the self noise of my A Designs MP2A to the Carbon pres.
While I still really like the presence and warmth of the MP2A and there is a certain tonal character to it . What flat out amazed me was how present and musical the Carbons pre's actually were.... I had mistakenly assumed that given there were 8 of them, they could not possibly compete, but the kicker for me was when the gain is jacked way up, they are in fact noticeably quieter than the MP2A .........

Then also I do in fact use my old iPad gen 2 (with the Avid Control app) as a remote transport control when recording myself so being able to change the Carbon's pre gain from my recording position will be nice.

The color adjustment thing looks nice also (albeit I have been using the modded color file version that Musicman 691 posted over on the DUC last winter) which enhanced contrast and had the "inactive" on plugs tracks etc. auto switch to red (which I thought was very clever)

[KevWind]

So I am now on 2021.10 and it works great > Because I use the aCarbon pre's the control on the GUI tracks themselves is great especially the levels and the 48 v phantom power option working in pairs when tracks are grouped.

If I am reading the changes list correctly it looks like now you can run all the ADAT channels in SPDIF as well ???

One thing to note is while the Dynamic Processing is fixed for mono channels it still does not appear to functioning correctly on stereo channels.

Got to admit the new Color Pallet controls work so well I have not yet installed the Musicman691 mod

I am guessing I have to install the Eucon update to get the Carbon mic pre's control to show on my iPad

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by KevWind

So I am now on 2021.10 and it works great > Because I use the aCarbon pre's the control on the GUI tracks themselves is great especially the levels and the 48 v phantom power option working in pairs when tracks are grouped.

If I am reading the changes list correctly it looks like now you can run all the ADAT channels in SPDIF as well ???

One thing to note is while the Dynamic Processing is fixed for mono channels it still does not appear to functioning correctly on stereo channels.

Got to admit the new Color Pallet controls work so well I have not yet installed the Musicman691 mod

I am guessing I have to install the Eucon update to get the Carbon mic pre's control to show on my iPad

I haven't downloaded it yet but I'll get to it tonight or tomorrow. I've seen a few people report some glitches but those appear to be one-offs and not something everyone is experiencing.

[KevWind]

Here is what the new mic pre option looks like
What I like is you can turn phantom power on and off, set levels and stereo link. Also how I have the new color adjustments set