Session: How It Works - Metric Halo 3d User Manual

MIOConsole3d Session

Session: How it works

The Session Tracks Overview presents a waveform history view of every channel being recorded or
edited, organized horizontally as Tracks, with each Track interfaced directly to their Mixer Strips in the
MIOConsole3d Mixer. Here's the nutshell view of how the Mixer Strip to Session Track work together:
The Session Track layout is synced to your Mixer desk layout, so the left-most strip on your Mix desk will be
the topmost Track in the Overview. If you move a strip (or strips) position in your Mixer, the corresponding
track will relocate to reflect that new position(s) in the Session. Likewise, relocating Tracks in the Session
will apply to the Mixer strips layout. The same goes for Strip/Track colors...
When you record enable a track, the system automatically routes the input, pre-insert, to the recording
engine. The audio passes into the strip, through the inserts, panner and fader to your bus, and the bus
goes to wherever you route it.
The audio that is recorded is the signal that is the input to the strip without the insert processing or
the panner or fader gain.
When you play back from session, the audio from the track is routed to the input point of the associated
strip, and so passes through the inserts, panner and fader and then is summed to the bus, etc.
This has the effect of playing back the audio into the mix such that the mix you set up when recording is
the same mix that is being used for playing back.
Since the recorded audio is un-affected, you can tweak your mix or add or change processing without
having to worry about any double-printing effects.
You can record to disk both pre-insert and post-insert simultaneously but the Session will only include the
pre-insert audio. The post-insert signal will be recorded to the Session Record folder with the same name
as the pre-insert file, but with the suffix [POST] added to the filename. If you wish to utilize the POST file
in the session, you can drag it from the Finder into a free playback track for editing and insertion into the
mix as desired.
While you can record buses into Session, bus tracks do not play back. Because bus master strips are fed
by the mixer and not by a routable input, there is no routing point for playback of audio on bus track. If
you wish to play back the audio you have recorded onto a bus track, you will need to manually move the
recorded segment to an open track associated with an input strip.
Assigning Host or hardware Input routes to the Mixer behaves as it always has. Changing the Input strip
Source will not affect the ability of the strip to play back its Track audio, and an input strip does not need
to have a physical input assigned in order to play back from its track. The "Tape return" route happens
behind the scenes automatically and is independent of the Input strip Source route.
For overdubbing, you can record-arm the track to be recorded to, start playback (with a count-in, if de-
sired), and the track will play back the recorded audio from the track until you drop into Record mode, at
which point the input to the Mixer strip will automatically switch to the assigned Input Source (the live in-
strument being recorded). This is basically the traditional tape-style "Auto-Input" or "Auto-Record" punch-
in behavior from days of yore.
Channels to Strips to Tracks
As with all things in the audio world, everyone comes from a different background and may have different
view of the audio recording and production process. One person's view of audio signal flow might be
heavily influenced by their background in analog multitrack recording, another might have a more non-
linear view. So that everyone is on the same page, we present a quick primer on the operational flow and
terms used in the context of the 3d Session:
• Channel: Any monophonic audio stream. A mono mic feed carries one channel. A stereo keyboard
input is two channels, a 5.1 submix bus is six channels, etc. The Tracks Overview shows the au-
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