THE NIN HOTLINE

Alan Bailey wrote in from the UK with a link to a great article at the Digidesign website. In the article, Trent Reznor sings the praises of working on a Pro Tools setup. It's quite an interesting article, from a gearhead standpoint. Reznor discusses how song production has changed since the days of Pretty Hate Machine, moving from laying everything down on tape into a completely digital studio using Pro Tools and networking. Check out the following excerpt from the article, on how studio modernization has affected mixing the tour DVD in Dolby 5.1 surround: For the live DVD, Reznor got fully into 5.1 mode, which was unfamiliar territory for him. With the surround mix, he chose to feed stems into his SSL, which he fitted with a Martinsound MultiMAX. But when it came time for the PCM stereo mixes, the decision was made to go back to Pro Tools. "I thought, every single thing is in the computer now, because we recorded everything live to 48-track digital and worked with it in Pro Tools," he says. "And I thought, 'this is stupid, why are we even doing this?' So we wheeled out the ProControl and set all the automation in that way — riding the faders. And that made me think, OK, now I've got a 72-input giant analog piece of gear that I really don't need that much anymore because I can do most of it inside the computer. The article is called 'Trent Reznor On Songwriting and Pro Tools 5,' as assembled by Jim Batcho.