Review - Bias Inc.'s Deck V2.7

Software Review

March 24, 2001
Bias Inc.'s Deck V2.7
$399.00(msrp includes Bias PEAK le, SFX Lite, Adaptec Toast)
Review by by Dan Brockett

Page Two
Effects
The effects available in Deck fall into two basic categories: Destructive effects that actually rewrite audio files; and non-destructive real-time, in-line effects that act in much the same way as standard external effects boxes or the EQ controls on an external mixer, affecting the signal in real-time during playback or mix-down, leaving the source audio file intact. Deck's destructive effects are available for all supported Macintosh computers. Deck plug-in effects use the Adobe Premiere plug-in architecture, and are designed by third-party developers such as Waves and In-Vision Interactive. These are separate optional software packages that may be purchased from these developers. You may also choose to use other stand-alone sound editing programs such as SoundEdit 16 to destructively edit Deck audio files. Virtually any digital audio editing program that works with Deck-supported audio formats can be assigned as an external editor in Deck, and can be launched from within Deck with a single command.

Destructive effects - There are certain cases where you might want to change the actual audio data in a destructive, or permanent, manner. Suppose you have recorded a perfect scene, but the overall level is slightly low (or the waveform seems short). You would definitely want to increase the level of that track to its maximum. All the destructive effects are on the Process > Destructive menu.
Normalize -looks at an audio region (or group of regions) and automatically adjusts amplitude (volume) to the maximum allowable level. This allows you to bring up low-level signals to a reasonable level, which uses all of the amplitude resolution available on your system. This is another feature that Final Cut lacks that it really needs in order to do professional audio from within the application.
Group Normalize -functions in the same manner as Normalize, except that it finds the peak over a group of regions and adjusts each region the same amount. Very handy for building large mixes with many diverse source materials.
Reverse -takes the selected audio region (or group of regions) and turns them around so they are backwards. This is quite useful for specialty effects and pre-processing effects such as pre-echo for that Jimi Hendrix backwards guitar effect you need for the bride's voice in that wedding video you are editing.
Invert -flips the audio region (or group of regions) upside-down. This does not alter the sound of the region(s), but can be very useful for matching waveforms for looping and general sound design tasks.
Duplicate -physically duplicates the range or region(s) you have selected and copy the new audio file(s) to that session's Audio Files folder. This is useful if you have copied an audio region several times in your Deck session, but want to have only one instance of that audio file affected by an edit, for example. Deck will make a separate physical copy of that region in the Audio Files folder, and changes made to it will not affect other copies of that region.

Real-time effects
Deck offers real-time, in-line non-destructive effects available during playback and mix down. The real-time effects in DECK are: Parametric EQ, Delay, Chorus, Hi Shelf EQ, Lo Shelf EQ, Gain and Graphic EQ.
These effects are simple to use, and have an intuitive graphic interface that is similar to that of any multi-effects box. In fact, these effects are easier to use than many hardware multiprocessors, as all the controls for all of the effects you have chosen are available in a single window.

EQ, Hi EQ, Lo EQ, Graphic EQ-EQ allows you to isolate and boost, or cut, certain frequencies (that is, turn them up or down). You might use this to add mid-range punch to a weak vocal track, or to remove sibilance from a vocal. Deck's EQs allow you to select the frequency affected, the gain (the amount of cut or boost) and Q, or resonance, for each EQ selected. The Hi and Lo EQ, are shelf EQ's that allow you to select the frequency and gain of the shelf, or threshold. The Graphic EQs operate as 7-band graphic equalizers, with a slider to boost or cut each of the 7 frequency bands.

Delay Adds a delayed copy of the audio at specified intervals, creating an echo effect. A short delay, or slap-back, sounds good on rock vocals and rockabilly guitar, and sounds almost like reverb. A long delay yields long, spacey echo effects. The Delay effects in Deck offer you control over the delay time (length of delay), amount of feedback, cutoff frequency and "wet," or percent of effect, compared to "dry," or unaffected, signal.

Gain A one-control-slider effect, which gives you a +18/-18 dB gain stage. This is essentially a preamp, or attenuator, which either increases or decreases the amplitude (volume) of your playback track.

Chorus Is really a short delay with modulation. The delayed sound is mixed with the unaffected audio to create a thicker sound, and with extreme settings, a woozy sound. Chorus adds a lot of body and richness to vocals and guitar, and at extreme settings makes an excellent special effect. Deck's Chorus effects allow you to choose amount of delay, speed, depth of modulation and "wet," or percent of effect, compared to "dry," or unaffected signal.

Multi-tap Designed to use multiple delays to simulate reverb-like effects. Multi-tap is processor-intensive.
Plug-in effects Plug-in audio effects for Deck are currently available from third-party developers including Waves and InVision Interactive. Plug-in audio effects for the Macintosh platform that use the Adobe Premiere plug-in architecture can be used with Deck. You don't need any extra hardware to use plug-in effects, any Macintosh that is supported by Deck should also run the plug-ins. Although features and interfaces will vary quite a bit depending on which plug-ins you add, just as with visual applications like AE and Commotion, you can expect to greatly enhance your capabilities by using plug-ins.
Waves is currently shipping the L1 Ultra Maximizer, C1 Compression, G1 Gate, Q10 Paragraphic Equalizer, Q2 Paragraphic Equalizer, S1 Stereo Imager Audio Track Multifunction Processor Plug-ins. Waves plug-ins require the Wave Shell software which acts as a gateway or intermediary between host applications such as Deck and the plug-ins themselves.
Cyber Sound FX is a package of 15 different EQs, delays, reverbs and other effects, designed by InVision from Palo Alto, CA. Unlike the Waves offerings detailed above, Cyber Sound FX does not require the use a separate shell application.
QuickTime You can import any existing QuickTime movie into Deck and add synchronized audio to that movie, exploiting all of Deck's audio editing, processing, and mixing features. Deck is capable of playing back multiple tracks of 16-bit audio and a QuickTime movie-and that movie's native soundtrack, if desired-simultaneously from a single hard drive. Granted, since we were running a G3 400MHz for this review, we had to convert our finished FCP movie into a 320x240 or smaller QT to not take away too much of the CPUs processing from Deck to run a larger QT. Based upon reports from the Deck Users mailing list, G4 users can expect to run larger QT movies, even full screen, without affecting Deck's performance. You can add music, narration and sound effects to your QuickTime movie, and export it as a new movie with its soundtrack mixed down in a variety of sample and bit rates for distribution, multimedia and CD-ROM production or always just re-import your finished two track soundtrack back into FCP and output to whichever format necessary. Deck's implementation with TC and QuickTime proved to be relatively seamless. Once again, Deck's documentation could stand to be updated since the manual states that "you need to have Apple's QuickTime V2.0 or higher installed in your Macintosh."
A few caveats about using QT movies with deck:
Session End Time
You must be sure to place the movie's audio at the very beginning of the session-session zero. The QuickTime movie will always play back in sync with that Deck session, and the movie will always open whenever that session is opened. Sessions are set to have a default length of 10 seconds if they contain no audio. If you wish to play back a QuickTime movie without its native soundtrack, use Session End Time from the session menu to set the session length to be as long or longer than the movie's duration. You can see how working with a typical length FCP movie and neglecting to set a session end time could lead to some head scratching and calls to tech support when the QT won't playback correctly.
Chase Positioning
This function turns on QuickTime Chase Mode, which automatically scrolls the QuickTime movie along with the audio and automation in the Tracks window. The QuickTime window will scrub to the current frame when audio regions are moved. (The frame at the region's start time is always shown.) Alternatively, selecting an audio region in the Tracks window, then scrubbing in the QuickTime window (hold down the cursor and drag left or right) will cause currently selected audio to reposition to the lead edge of the current frame. This is a fast, indispensable function for spotting music, dialog, and effects to specific QuickTime movie frames. If Chase Positioning is enabled, moving volume or pan automation break points along the track timeline will also scrub QuickTime frames, enabling fast positioning of automation events with sub-frame accuracy.

For Users of Older Non G4 Macs
Non-real-time QuickTime functions such as scrub or Chase positioning do allow you to view and spot all the QuickTime frames in a given movie, up to 30 frames per second, regardless of your computer's speed or disk throughput, and don't require additional video hardware. This is an important feature for those still using B&W G3 or especially slower Beige G3s. So even if your Mac won't play back full-motion, full-frame video, you can still spot and edit accurately to 30 frames per second QuickTime.

Final Output Options
Deck does offer some unique functions for final QT output if you are finished with your picture edit in Final Cut and just want to output your final QT movie. Sample Rate-Sets the sample rate you wish to have for your final QuickTime movie audio. You can select one of the preset, standard rates, or select other and enter any rate into the pop-up box. Generally speaking, higher sample rates are better because they offer higher fidelity. However, they also require more disk space. For the highest-fidelity results, set this pop-up to the highest supported rate, such as 48000 or 44100Hz. This will mix down your audio as a CD-quality soundtrack, but will also create a large movie document. If you don't need CD-quality Audio (for web video for instance), or if you require a smaller movie, a rate of 22050Hz provides a good balance between audio quality and file size. There has been concern by some Final Cut users about artifacts resulting in sample rate conversions in taking 48KHz audio tracks and converting them to 44.1KHz files for use in applications like Deck or Pro Tools Free. For most practical audio applications, this sample rate conversion should not be a big concern as the quality stays quite high.
Bit Depth Conversion -Specifies the downsampling method. If you are converting your 16-bit Deck file to an 8-bit file, Bit Depth Conversion makes it possible to create better sounding 8-bit files.
Truncation -Takes the high byte of your soundfile as the sample value, and throws away the low byte. Truncation can often cause unpleasant artifacts, or noise-especially on low-level signals and human speech.
Rounding -Treats the original 16-bit sample as a fixed-point number with the decimal point between bytes. If the low byte is greater than or equal to 0.5, then 1 is added to the high byte (hence the name rounding) and the high byte is taken as the sample value.
Convergent Rounding -Differs from Rounding in how it treats the value of 0.5 in the low byte of your soundfile-1 is only added to the high byte if the low-byte value is greater than or equal to 0.5 and the high byte is even. Otherwise, the high byte is taken as the sample value.
Dithering -Is similar to the Dithering function in digital imaging programs. Dithering applies a low level noise signal to the soundfile to cover up the unpleasant artifacts caused by truncating. This method is also called Error Diffusion Dithering.

Deck and MIDI For the musicians who also happen to be FCP editors, Deck does include a considerable amount of MIDI support. Using the MIDI functions will enable you to synchronize your session to SMPTE time code, use Deck as a master time code source, import a MIDI file for synchronous playback with your session, and control Deck with any external MIDI device.
Deck and OMS
If you are an advanced MIDI user you are probably familiar with the Open Music System (formerly the Opcode MIDI System). OMS consists of a set of system documents that, along with the OMS Setup application, allow you to describe your MIDI studio's configuration and have that description be recognized by all OMS-compatible programs. Once you have set up your OMS environment, OMS-compatible applications can list all of your MIDI instruments (including sound-generating devices, interfaces and controllers) by name. This eliminates the need to separately set up and define your MIDI system configuration in every software application. For advanced MIDI users, OMS is highly recommended.
Controlling Deck With External MIDI Devices
Just as many FCP editors are discovering the advantages of controlling FCP from an external device like the new Shuttle Pro controller, many user of Deck can work in a more streamlined manner using an external MIDI fader box. The Deck Mixer window contains a large number of faders for controlling level and stereo pan, and real-time adjustment of those faders can become very frustrating if you are only using the mouse. Although the mouse is a very useful as a pointing device, it is limited in a mixing environment because it only allows you to adjust a single fader at one time. This is much more cumbersome than using your hands on a standard mixing board where you can move multiple faders at one time.
To cope with this problem, Deck offers two advanced mixing tools: Mixer State buttons and MIDI fader mapping. Deck's MIDI map mode allows you to map any continuous MIDI controller to any mixer window volume or pan fader (or number of faders). For example, you could map your keyboard modulation wheel to control the smooth motion of track 1 and 2 volume faders. Or, if you have a MIDI fader box (such as the J. L. Cooper FaderMaster), you could map all of the volume, pan and effect faders, so you could control the entire studio from external MIDI fader controls. You can assign which faders will map each function by using the Option Menu's Edit MIDI Map command and dialog boxes. Most FCP users probably will not own a MIDI fader box but if you do begin to use Deck for a lot of your audio post chores, an external mixer is a better tool than the mouse for mixing.
Mixer-Based Automation
The process of mixing down a multi-track recording to a stereo master is always complicated by the level and stereo pan changes that must occur during the mixdown process. Smooth fades in and out, instantaneous pan changes that are modulated to a specific rhythm, usually require quite a bit of physical coordination and they are difficult to repeat. Deck allows you to create and record mixer automation so you can fully automate your mixdown process. Perhaps the simplest way to automate a mixdown is to create and edit visual volume and pan envelopes in the Deck Tracks window. Deck also offers more traditional real-time mixer automation that is based on the idea of performing a mix and recording the motion of the faders during the performance. This mixer-based automation also creates automation envelopes that can be edited visually in the Tracks window. To accomplish mixer-based automation, Deck uses the concepts of real-time fader motion recording, mixer states, and transition time. Real-time fader motion recording records the actual movement of Deck's mixer faders, and is a simple, intuitive way to create automation. Mixer state automation is scene-by-scene oriented. A mixer state is like a picture of the current position of every fader on the mixer. Each state is stored on Deck's Mixer State pop-up (in the Transport window), and each can be recalled at any time. A fixed transition time can be set, and that time is always used to fade smoothly between each mixer state.
Using Mixer States
Although it is possible to automate an entire mix without using Deck's mixer states, these snapshot-style states can be very useful (especially for creating complex automation moves that should occur at specific spots). The mixer states allow you to move any or all of the volume and pan faders in the Mixer window with a single mouse click. In order to use a mixer state for real-time automation, you will need to store it. Once a mixer state has been stored, it can be recorded in the same way that any real-time automation is recorded. In fact, you can mix real-time fader motion automation and mixer state automation. Both styles of automation create automation envelopes that can be edited in the Deck Tracks window.
Final Mastering To a Mono or Stereo Disk File
The last step in an audio project is generally the mastering process. During mastering, a final stereo mixdown of the recording is created. This stereo version is the master from which all distributed copies will be made. For this reason, the master must be the best possible copy of the final mix. Once your final mix is automated to your satisfaction, you are ready for the digital mastering process. In this process you will use Deck to create a mono or stereo Sound Designer II, Audio Interchange (AIFF), Sound Resource, QuickTime, or WAV sound file on your hard disk. This sound file will be an exact digital copy of the mixdown from which it is created, including all processing, level and pan settings, and automation.
External SMPTE Synchronization - This Is Pretty Cool Stuff!
Unlike Final Cut Pro, with the addition of a SMPTE to MIDI converter and a compatible ASIO audio card, Deck CAN sync to SMPTE from external digital video or audio decks. If you are dealing with performing audio post from existing SMPTE based digital audiotape sources and SMPTE based digital video decks, this is a great feature to have. Deck makes it possible for Macintosh hard disk audio to operate seamlessly in sync with film, video, and other sources. The task of synchronizing picture and sound is handled by Deck, which runs as a slave to your SMPTE source. All you need to do is route the SMPTE signal from your video or audio source to a compatible Macintosh MIDI interface (Opcode's Studio 5 or MOTU's MIDI TimePiece, for example). Then, when you select the applicable SMPTE frame rate in Deck and put Deck online, the current session will automatically synchronize to the external time code source. This is a feature that many FCP editors and sound editors working with FCP based projects wish that Apple had implemented into Final Cut Pro although this type of work is becoming more and more rare as the entire world of even high-end production moves toward QuickTime, NLEs and DAWs. This feature is unique in Deck's price range and is a very valuable tool for those working with existing long form projects and don't want to or cannot afford to tie up large amounts of hard drive space to perform audio work or prefer to work with tape instead of Quicktime for picture.
In Conclusion...
While many of the functions of Deck may be somewhat confusing for beginning Final Cut editors, the program is a powerful audio solution and is definitely worth your consideration. For anyone who has used professional audio hardware and or dedicated digital audio workstations, Deck is a fairly straightforward program that does contain a real time 4 band graphic EQ, numerous other useful real time effects and a much higher audio track count with no rendering features that Final Cut Pro does not offer. Deck also does offer some very cool, fun features like real time pitch and speed change for obtaining effects like a record player slowing down or a battery running out of energy. There is also a very active and enthusiastic mailing list of Deck users if you would like to get an idea of the finer points of Deck in greater detail than can be explored in this review. To subscribe, send an email to: majordomo@shoko.calarts.edu with "subscribe deckusers" or "subscribe deckusers-digest" in the body, without the quotes. After sending this initial email message, you will receive a confirmation email that you will need to reply to, to complete your subscription.
We were able to perform audio post on a short length Final Cut Project and the application was easy to use and worked like a charm with QuickTime. Deck's QuickTime tools could be handy for a variety of Internet and streaming applications needs. The bundled LE version of Peak, Bias' two-track editor has many more format I/O and fine editing options than Deck and is worth considering upgrading to the full version as well. The two programs compliment each other nicely and with the addition of a higher end ASIO card and a SMPTE to MIDI converter, a fully featured digital audio workstation can be configured on your Mac for much less than competing DAWs.
As of the writing of this review, Apple has just announced that the new Version 2.0 of Final Cut Pro will include a "light" version of Bias Inc's companion two track audio application to Deck, Peak. The version included with Final Cut Pro will be called Peak DV and will have a limited feature set as compared to the full version of Peak. Readers should realize that Peak DV is a two-track editor and while it contains many useful audio tools and functions, it does not have all of the mixing and multi-track capabilities that Deck features, although for some Final Cut editors, it will suffice. Bias has a nice Flash presentation on Peak and Deck for readers who want to compare features and functions between the two programs. For those who are seeking tools for doing more complex multi-track mixes for their Final Cut based projects, Deck will represent a solid companion application to both Final Cut Pro 2.0 and Peak DV. On March 24, 2001, as we went to post this review on-line, Apple and Bias-Inc announced a special 50% off price on the forthcoming Deck 3.0 for all registered Final Cut Pro 2.0 users for a limited time. At $199.00, Deck 3.0 will represent an exceptional value for Final Cut Pro 2.0 users. Owners of Deck 2.7 will receive a free upgrade to Deck 3.0 when it is released during Q2, 2001. Deck is highly recommended for Final Cut Pro users seeking to make the audio in their projects truly professional quality. Keep in mind though that like all other facets of production including video editing, even with the proper tools, it's your skills and knowledge that will let you create great projects.
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Dan Brockett is a film and video director and co-owns a film and video production company, Big Little Films tm , Inc. and a sound design company, Noise Control tm . Dan is also a guide on the premier Final Cut Pro information source, 2-Pop.com and he serves as Minister of information and Vice President of the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro Users Group.
Big Little Films, Inc.
2955 E. Hillcrest Drive, Suite 121 Thousand Oaks, Ca. 91362 USA
Office (805) 496 8130 Fax (805) 496 4027 E-Mail: BLFilms@earthlink.net

copyright © Dan Brockett 2001
All screen captures and textual references are the property and trademark of their creators/owners/publishers.
This article was originally published at LAFCPUG and is reprinted here with permission.