Cube-Tec Newsletter Winter 2006

Virtual Precision Instruments now available for Pro Tools™

DeScratcher SpectralDeHiss Expert DeBuzz DeCrackler

A selection of Cube-Tec's powerful restoration Virtual Precision Instruments (VPIs) are now available for Pro Tools™. The DeBuzz, Spectral DeHiss Expert, DeScratcher and DeCrackler tools were previously available exclusively for Cube-Tec's AudioCube, QUADRIGA and DOBBIN systems.

“We installed Cube-Tec VPI's on our Pro Tools HD system and I can summarize my opinion of them in one sentence: They're the best thing to happen to noise reduction since the CAT 43”
Richard Spence-Thomas – Spence Thomas Audio Post – Toronto, ON

Cube-Tec restoration and mastering tools are used by some of the world's most prestigious facilities, including Ascent Media, Bernie Grundman Mastering, Capitol Records, Chace Productions, Gateway Mastering, Library of Congress, National Public Radio, Sony Music, Smithsonian Folkways, Sterling Sound, and The National Archives. Some of the international facilities for whom Cube-Tec VPI's have become “go-to solutions” include the National Archives of Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, and Luxemburg, Sonopress/Bertelsmann, Universal Studios, and most of the major public broadcasters in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland.

“As engineer for the Grateful Dead, I use several noise reduction plug-ins to deal with the problems of older analog masters. Recently, I had a particularly difficult problem to solve…drumtracks recorded 20 db down in the mud. I was given a demo of SpectralDeHiss Expert for Pro Tools by Jeff Briss at Cutting Edge Audio. After I received a brief overview of operation, I was able to remove more hiss and leave more ambiance than I could with any of my other noise removal systems. I now turn to SpectralDeHiss regularly when I have a severe hiss problem”
Jeffrey Norman – Garage Audio – Petaluma, CA

Just days after the official launch, the first reviews show up from three of the facilities that have already installed the world class restoration VPI's.

View the Cube-Tec User Statements at http://www.cube-tec.com/protoolsvpi/vpi_statements.html

QUADRIGA v2.5 supports the new EBU RF64 format

Quadriga The new EBU standardized RF64 file format is supported by QUADRIGA version 2.5, thus overcoming the 2GB / 4GB file size limitation.

This improvement means that ingesting long-form media at higher sampling rates, such as 96 or 192 kHz, can now be done without the need to split the recorded file into smaller segments or single-channel components. QUADRIGA can now "dynamically" switch between BWF or Microsoft Wave and RF64 base format (depending on the resulting file size of the recording), in order to obtain the best possible compatibility with standard media players. QUADRIGA v2.5 is fully compliant with the EBU standard as defined in the EBU Tech 3306.
For more info on RF64 see: www.Cube-Tec.com/knowhow/bwf.html

Sony's proprietary WAVE64 file format is also supported now. Other new features in QUADRIGA v2.5 include many customer suggestions, like improved handling of BWF data entries and parallel recording modules, as well as an extended Archive Number dialog, among others.

MAGIX and Cube-Tec integrate Sequoia into the AudioCube Workstation

Magix LogoLeipzig, 29 November 2006 – Thanks to the cooperation between MAGIX AG and Cube-Tec International GmbH, Sequoia 9 audio software from MAGIX is now available to users of the AudioCube Mastering & Restoration Workstation.

Joerg Houpert, Technical Director of Cube-Tec International is delighted with the cooperation: “Over the last few years, Sequoia has garnered a reputation of excellence within the professional audio community. We're delighted that Sequoia can now be integrated into the AudioCube Workstation, with native support of Cube-Tec 'Virtual Precision Instruments'. AudioCube users can now combine the power of the outstanding Sequoia editor with the world class audio quality and processing power of their AudioCube Virtual Precision Instruments”.

Steffen Holly, Director Audio Products at MAGIX AG, has watched the AudioCube Workstation become the industry standard within the high end of the audio mastering and restoration communities over the past 10 years. “With the AudioCube, Sequoia is now running on a platform that meets the highest standards of the worlds most demanding mastering and restoration engineers. Sequoia is now a central component of this integrated software and hardware solution.”

Sterling Sound acquire their third AudioCube

New York based Sterling Sound, one the world's premier mastering facilities, recently completed the installation of their third Cube-Tec AudioCube mastering system. Sterling is home to renowned mastering engineers Ted Jensen, Greg Calbi, Tom Coyne, George Marino, Chris Gehringer, Ryan Smith, Chris Athens, Leon Zervos, and Ue Nastasi. Greg Calbi (recent projects include Bob Dylan's “Modern Times” and “Continuum” by John Mayer) is the recipient the third AudioCube.

AudioCube + DOBBIN = Manual and fully automatic Sound Restoration

The installation of a full equipped, combined DOBBIN / AudioCube system for automatic audio restoration has been taken place in Italy / Milano on the S.T.G. Servizi Tecnologici. Giudiziari Carmelo Furnari visited the company based in Bremen, Germany in summer 2006 and checked the system by himself. The system based on the Dell D490 Dual Core 3.0 GHz Workstation system is equipped with the latest restoration tools by Cube-Tec for automatic and manual processing.

Audio restoration is a very time consuming task. Why should there not also be some support or them using an automatic pre-restoration process, that can help save a lot of time and money? Some light processing can be undertaken with the material, such as De-crackling, Azimuth correction, a process where an audio engineer is not needed, or a De-clipping process, which can also be done without the help of human intervention. The de-clipped material can be optimized in terms of loudness and then converted to the desired linear format for manual post production. The great advantage of DOBBIN is that it can do everything in a single workflow. Each step of the restoration process can be graphically edited in the JobDesigner.

DOBBIN – the Rendering Farm provides mobile Sound solution

DOBBIN Goes MobileTranscoding, tagging, preparation for streaming - DOBBIN can do it all at once. An example: A content provider has to create different files and streaming formats for a music download service - thousands of audio files have to be quickly converted into many different formats (eg. 3GP for mobile phones, M4a for the iTunes Mac world, and WMA for the Windows world) and the different tagging information and pictures are also to be included in the files, and all this with the need to guarantee the quality of the program!

DOBBIN is the only automatic audio processing system available, that can provide you with the desired flexibility and power to tackle these types of problems and solve many more along the way. There are no problems with different platforms types, varying logging formats or different kind of documentation for each single configuration.

DOBBIN incorporated detailed process and logging information, that makes it easy to manage any task. Linear scalability, an extremely high degree of security, and full system integration are all part of the power of DOBBIN.

Service Provider Cité de Mémoire installes new DOBBIN system

Cité de Mémoire, a Paris based service provider for INA - Institut National de l'Audiovisuel - has installed a new DOBBIN audio analysis system to handle audio analysis and BWF file generation for INA. A long time user of the Quadriga system, INA relies heavily upon the precise audio quality reports provided by Quadriga, and has stipulated that assets generated by outside contractors contain quality reports with the same QUADRIGA precision.

Cité de Mémoire also works for several archive centers in France, the Musée du Quai Branly, and for BNF (national Library of France).

National Film and Sound Archive, Australia completes DOBBIN installation

National Film and Sound Archive Australia's National Film and Sound Archive has expanded it's committment to Cube-Tec's QUADRIGA platform with addition of a QUADRIGA Lite system. The NFSA now has 6 QUADRIGA systems running QUADRIGA version 2.5 modules, with restoration and mastering support from 2 AudioCube 6 systems. A special filmsound QUADRIGA has been developed, with the ability to choose 1, 2, 3 or 4 channels of BWF recording. The chosen hardware platform is the new Dell D690 workstation configured with Dual Intel XEON dual-core processors and 300 + Gigabytes of RAID storage per machine.

NFSA has also implemented the new Cube-Tec DOBBIN audio render farm as an expanded replacement for it's QUADRIGA audio file inspector and wavelab batch processing functions. DOBBIN will also be used as the primary archival ingest mechanism for all born digital collection items, utilising the file inspection, metadata merging and extraction capabilities of the system.