Knowing that 5.1 is no longer around the corner, but AT the corner and waiting to devour us, I would hold off on buying ANYTHING until we see what comes out of it in the next few months.

O.K. Angelo,
But I don't really see any improved mastering features in 5.1 & would be needing one still this year .
Will the Finalizer not be able to give me -after the steep learning curve- better results than the GoldBundle ?
Shure I like the "no wires, everything right on my screen, saving my settings very easily, etc..."
But I guess the Finalizer's a piece of hardware that will keep its value, and can you really do the same with Waves ?

Hi Marc,

I work pretty much exclusively in surround, either Pro-Logic or 5.1. The advantage of the L1 (Waves) is that I can instantiate it across all my stems, group and automate them. If I wanted to do this with a Finalizer I would need three Finalizers and it would be much more difficult and time consuming setting them up for each song/music cue.

If you just plan to work on stereo masters then the Finalizer is probably the better/easier mastering tool unless you already have a lot of experience mastering. Overall IMHO, the Gold Bundle has a lot more going for it because there are plenty of useful tools in there for mixing as well as mastering.

BTW, I'm sure you are already aware but the 96K Finalizer is of no additional benefit as a mastering tool in Pro-Tools. 96K is irrelevant if you are recording and mixing at 44.1K or 48K.

Greg

It's not the features of 5.1 I'd be worried about, it's the potential for other developers to come out with a RTAS 96k Finalizer two weeks after you buy the hardware model for 3x the price.

Or maybe L2.

If you can't get by for a couple months with L1, go ahead and put your money down.

Good luck,

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Angelo Quaglia
AQ Productions

Angelo,
must have missed the "RTASplug-inson TDM Systems" reading the features of 5.1.
Right, i guess i see yr point .
And i guess you're damn right .
Just one thing - i don't know that much of the 001 / RTAS thing - DO the RTAS plugs rely on the computer's processor power ?
And do NOT depend on any farms ?

Again many thanks for the advice !
Marc
RecOrg is GREAAAAAAT !

Hi Marc,

<< DO the RTAS plugs rely on the computer's processor power ? >>

With RTAS all the processing is done by your computer's CPU.

<< It's not the features of 5.1 I'd be worried about, it's the potential for other developers to come out with a RTAS 96k Finalizer two weeks after you buy the hardware model for 3x the price. >>

Other developers can't come out with an RTAS 96K Finalizer. TC already have a TDM plugin called MasterX which is the plugin version of Finalizer. As I understand it the plugin isn't as good as the hardware model and I can't see TC bringing out an RTAS version, baring in mind RTAS plugs are generally of poorer quality than TDM plugs. Bare in mind also that there won't be a 96K Finalizer plugin, either RTAS or TDM, until PTools becomes 96K compatible.

Last point Even if someone else brings out a 5.1 Finalizer Plugin equivalent, I'm not sure if it can be done with RTAS. The processing power required to provide limiting, sample rate convertion, dithering and multi-band compression at master quality across 6 channels simultaneously is probably going to grind your G4 to a halt using RTAS! Even on TDM you would need about 2 full DSP chips.

Greg

Greg,

I suggested the Finalizer only as an example. There was no need to pick at it literally. With all the people screaming for a better mastering plug, I have no doubt that someone out there is trying their damndest to produce the equivalent, which would run either RTAS or on an "A" chip, and steal customers from TC and Waves.

The point is that every time digi upgrades, there is a whole slew of new plugs do deal with after developers have time to de-bug.

The plugs keep getting better. Maybe the last round of BombFactory didn't make you want to kick yourself in the ass after dropping $10,000 on 1176's, but the day will come soon enuf.

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Angelo Quaglia
AQ Productions

Here's my 2 cents!!

I have the finalizer 96K as well as Protools. I really like and use them both. Of course I still process and mix in analog on most projects because I'm the guy who bought $10.000.00's of outboard gear over the last few years (Bomb Factory makes me sick!).

So on some projects I use the converters for my A to D down to 2 trk.HD If it's a demo, etc. the finalizer is quick, easy and the master fader (external) works great because I don't mix bus insert my overpriced tube compressor I put it on the mix insert out bypassing the master fader in the board (one less source of noise). and this works really good. BTW I have the Protools LE which limits me compared to someone with a TDM system but even at that I think that I would still want to have both.

My partner and I went down to Atlanta to a Protools "on the road 5.1 demo" last week and it really impressed me (which is not hard to do) I can't wait! As for the RTAS, that is a good addition to the TDM system you get the best of both worlds and the RTAS plug-in's are not as expensive as TDM's.

The only thing is, for mastering us PC LE users have to wait till Waves comes out with the Native version for PC which the Digi guy said would be the first of the year. He also said that the 5.1 should be out by Dec 15th. The management told the code jocks that if they finish by then, they would get the next 1.5 months off and he said that has always worked in the past.

RTAS less quality than TDM? I'm not sure that this is true. If so, where's the puddin? The other thing we saw was that the TDM systems would let you use the first 2 inserts of each chanel in mix so you could spread out the usage between the CPU and the TDM processor. There's a usage meter that will show just how much you use and where.

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David L. Black
Owner, Engineer , Producer
Old House Recording Studio - Gastonia, NC http://www.oldhousestudio.com
dbeng@bellsouth.net

dbeng@bellsouth.net[/email] (edited October 30, 2000).]

TC just sent me an upgrade to their new MasterX 2.0. It's their finalizer TDM plugin with new capabilities. The biggest being a 5-band mode as opposed to 3-band. (you can choose between them)
The 5-band takes most of 1 chip. Up to 2 per chip with 3-band.

Sounds very nice to me.

Have the Waves Gold bundle also. Got it first, and am glad I did. The new 3.0 has C4 included now. (waiting on my upgrade)

Just tried the TC|MasterX 1.52 Trial ,but owing the TC/TOOLS, i think the GoldBundle is a better deal for the buck than the TC|MasterX .
Also tried the demo of the Bundle , and i can still use the AS version of C4, RenRev etc on my 24 Core system , waiting on the 24bit versions Waves promised .
And we'll see what 5.1 brings with RTAS .
Anyway i don't think it's wasted money on the Bundle .

A Finalizer Plus demonstration model from the store i buy my gear, at 70% of the price of a 96K, is that a bargain ?
(The bundle is almost the double)
Marc

Go Marc!

Try out the external master fader.

Does anyone know about the converters in the Finalizer 96k compared to the apogee's?

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David L. Black
Owner, Engineer , Producer
Old House Recording Studio - Gastonia, NC
http://www.oldhousestudio.com
dbeng@bellsouth.net