Master Class: Mastering With Peak Performance

Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Larry the O

IN BIAS PEAK PRO 6, A LITTLE EXPLORATION YIELDS BIG REWARDS

BONUS MATERIAL
BIAS Peak Additional Tips

BIAS Peak Pro 6 is an extremely feature-rich environment for the Mac that's used to record, edit, process, and deliver audio. This article will focus on its mastering application, for which the program has been widely used during most of its existence.

A Room with Two Views

Although files are often edited and processed as individual documents before being assembled into the final work, mastering in Peak Pro 6 occurs primarily in the program's Playlist environment (see Fig. 1). The Playlist, which was introduced in Peak 2, has received a major upgrade in Peak Pro 6.

The Playlist window has three main areas: the Controls section at the top; the Waveform View section, which provides a graphical editing interface; and the List View, which has a text-based interface. You can perform many functions in both the Waveform View and the List View that enable you to choose between the intuitiveness of graphical editing and the precision of entering values directly.

Each view also has capabilities that are not available in the other view. The Waveform View makes it easier to customize crossfades, perform volume automation, and skip around during auditioning, whereas the List View offers the ability to configure subcode flags, enter metadata such as CD-TEXT and ISRC codes, and add processing to each Playlist Event.

Crossfades: Heart of the Matter

Creating and shaping crossfades is a primary mastering task, and Peak Pro 6 supplies a large array of features for crafting them to fit individual needs. The Playlist has two fundamental crossfade modes, Overlap and Centered, and two primary tools, Move Event/Crossfade and Trim Event (see Fig. 2). The Move Event tool appears only in Overlap mode, and the Crossfade tool takes its place in Centered mode. The actions of these tools are modified by the state of the Preserve Timing and Scroll Regions checkboxes.

Overlap crossfades — the kind most commonly found in DAWs and other editing programs — are used for sequencing takes or assembly editing. By default, you can adjust the crossfade's fade-out component (from the earlier Event) and fade-in component (from the later Event) independently of each other. Start and end times of one component aren't necessarily related to those of the other component, and there can be any amount of overlap between the Events, including a negative overlap (a gap between Events). The Events themselves may get moved in time while constructing an overlap crossfade.

Centered crossfades are mostly used for digital splicing, such as compositing multiple takes together (see Fig. 3). Centered crossfades are often used in editing classical music, where a large number of splices are used in a single movement of a piece. A centered crossfade is focused around an edit point that's always anchored at the crossfade's midpoint. When you adjust a centered crossfade, the edit point and the temporal relationship between the two Playlist Events remain fixed, and the start and end times change symmetrically on either side of the edit center point. Peak Pro 6's Nudge buttons enable you to precisely adjust the crossfade parameters. (For more on crossfade techniques, see the online bonus material at emusician.com.)

Fade Shapes

In the Playlist window's Waveform View, you can customize fade shapes in any desired fashion with simple breakpoint editing. The Zoom To Fit Transition button, which is situated next to the zoom buttons immediately above the Waveform View's right side, gets you up close to the crossfade for more-detailed editing.

In many situations, it is desirable to use the same shape for all fades. The Playlist allows for designating any available envelope shape as the default fade shape. The Playlist Default Fades dialog box appears whenever a new Playlist is created, but you can invoke it at any time by clicking on the Set Default Fades For Playlist button in the control area's upper left portion (see Fig. 4).

Clicking on the checkbox that's labeled Automatically Apply Default Settings When Adding Events To Playlist will cause the fade shapes you've selected in this dialog box to be applied each time you add a region as a new Playlist Event. To apply the default shape to an existing Event, choose Default from the drop-down menu for the desired fade in the List View.

You can further customize the fade shapes with breakpoint editing. In the Playlist Default Fades dialog box, click on the In Shape or Out Shape box beneath the fade-duration field to open Peak Pro 6's envelope editor. The pull-down menu at the top of the dialog box will show all envelope shapes present in the Peak Envelopes folder of the user's Library→Preferences folder. You can create and save custom fade shapes in the Crossfade In or Crossfade Out editor.

With all of these manipulation capabilities, it is essential to have flexible facilities for auditioning crossfades. The control area's Audition section contains buttons that allow you to audition either the fade-in or fade-out component or the entire transition, with programmable pre- and postroll.