In this special webcast, produced by Mix, technical editor Kevin Becka will host a discussion with Avid representatives to talk about a range of Pro Tools-centric topics, including facts about the new gear, cost of upgrades, viability of Pro Tools in the pro and prosumer studio and more.

After the presentation, there will be a live Q&A, straight to your desktop, where audience members can ask the moderator and participants questions directly. If you’re looking to clear up the mystery and get to the truth behind what’s in store for users of Pro Tools 10 and beyond, be sure to tune in to this important webcast which takes place live on February 9, 2012 at 2pm EST time and will be available for viewing on demand for a year. Register here.

CRAS students recently participated in the creation of an upcoming webcast for Mix Magazine titled Tracking The Band. The session took place in the Conservatory’s Studio A where a four piece band was tracked entirely on a Mackie Onyx 1640i console, which includes a FireWire interface that records directly to any DAW software.

The entire session was recorded to a MacBook Pro 13″ laptop running Pro Tools M-Powered, the same computer and software each student receives when they enroll in the program. You can see exactly what the students experienced during the session by registering for the free Webcast where you’ll be entered in a raffle for the Mackie Onyx 1640i valued at $2199. See pictures from the session here then after you register,  log-in on September 30th 2pm EST/11am PST and view the session where you’ll learn about:

1. Recording guitar, bass, drums, piano, synth, sax and vocals
2. Proper mic choice and placement
3. EQ and compression tips
4. Studio communication
5. Jumping between tracking, overdub and mixing workflows
6. Setting up headphone mixes while recording, both to and from the DAW
7. Interfacing outboard gear such as compressors and time-based processors
8. The benefits and methods of analog summing

Pro Tools Elastic Time is great for fitting drum loops to a song’s tempo or changing the tempo of your entire session, as well as adjusting vocal phrasing. Check out this free lesson on D-TV

Not all things are bleak! The Internet has recently offered an abundance of free resources for your DAW including this cool plug-in from Brainworx. The bx_solo comes in TDM, RTAS, VST and AU formats and is available for MAC and PC.

Quick and Easy Do-it-Yourself Mod for Popular Low-Cost Dynamic Microphone

We recently wrote about a free plug-in from SSL but now we’ve hit the motherlode of gratis DAW resources. Massey Tools is a group of 7 free TDM and RTAS plug-ins from the mind of Steven Massey, a self confessed audio geek who’s been involved in the pro audio industry for over 7 years. Steven is a former employee of Digidesign and, more recently, was part of Trillium Lane Labs where he developed TL Aggro, TL Space and TL Drum Rehab. The set contains some real winners including an M/S encoder-decoder, high-resolution meter, a talkback plug-in with ducker and an auto-backup plug-in called Slacker.

In response to ghost stories of economic doom and gloom, Solid State Logic, the world’s leading manufacturer of professional digital and analogue consoles, invites you to celebrate the festival of witches and ghouls with a bit of fun. SSL is proud to offer you ‘X-orcism,’ our free Halloween VST/AU format plug-in.

X-orcism can be downloaded absolutely free of charge by visiting www.solidstatelogic.com.

Who doesn’t like free stuff? Especially when its GOOD free stuff! In this case, its Audacity, a DAW with a bevy of great features. For instance, you can record up to 16 channels at once, import audio including WAV, AIFF, AU, and Ogg Vorbis files, edit , then export your recordings in several common file formats. It also includes free effects and processors including Pitch Change, Compression, Noise Removal, Echo, Phase shifter, Wahwah, Reverse and more. If that wasn’t enough, Audacity runs on Mac, PC and Linux systems.