iPad Air2 internal mic - processed on a PowerMac G3

Telefunky

recently I mentioned a ProTools TDM system as a (very) low budget alternative with good tone.
Here's such a box (almost 20 years old) in action.
I didn't mind a serious processing for top quality and the modulated delays in the double voice part lack precision, but in general the track gives a good idea about what can be achieved.
Basic plugins are an 1176 compressor emulation, the Antares mic modeller (Beyer M500 setting) and RealVerb 12% wet on a small room. Delay in double voice stuff is PitchBender by Wavemechanics.
Of course it's a bit limiting to have guitar and voice on one channel, but imho it's not too bad... except some of the pronounciation, sorry but I'm working on it

richardyot

That's pretty impressive considering it was recorded with iPad's internal mic, the guitar tone in particular sounds great. The voice is a bit raw sounding, but that's the performance rather than the recording technique.

Presumably this is the mic emulation at work?

There's a bit of noise in the recording, but that's to be expected considering the mic. The doubling is a bit heavy for my tastes btw.

Presumably this could have been even better had the voice and guitar been recorded separately. The vocal could have had a little more processing to smooth it out a little.

An iPad Air or Pro should actually be more powerful than a G3. How close is Auria to an ancient version of Pro Tools? I guess the plugins are a factor too.

Telefunky

well observed, Richard.
I forgot about the tracking, which was straight into Audioshare, 24bit and (most important) measurement mode set to 'on' in hardware settings.
The gain setting in % is a trial & error thing at first, in this case 80% resulted in -3dB peaks from a 15" distance.
The noise you hear is probably the 1176 emulation's makeup gain on decay.
Not my preferred way of treating vocals, but the 'regular' tools weren't available.

In fact the mic modeller brought in a lot of color and it's way easier to use than an equalizer. I choose the Beyer ribbon because I have one myself and it fit well acoustically.
But: the process hasn't much in common with a take by the physical mic - it's just some color on the signal.
In this case it brought back a lot of sparkle to those worn strings, starting to get muddy after 2 months of use.

Of course a 450MHZ G3 CPU has a lot less beef than current IOS chips.
My bad that I supposed everyone knew what 'TDM' stands for: it's the old hardware version of ProTools and the sound is calculated on Motorola DSPs, not the G3.

I bought 2 of those DSP cards + an 8 channel converter box for 200 bucks.
This results in enough juice to run 4 Access Virus synths and 4 Eventide H3000 processors simultaneously - the Pitchbender/Timebender algorithms are direct ports from the Eventide code.

To be honest I like some of the tones much more than (most) contemporary VST stuff, and even some IOS apps. The afforementioned Wavemechanics plugin really made my jaws drop when I first auditioned them.
The funny thing is the enormous amount of time passed between the respective release dates.

For me personally it also was an interesting experience because I didn't get along with (that version of) PT at all in the beginning and the majority used to Logic/Cubase/Auria most likely will agree.
You HAVE to read the f... manual and then some workflow will show up and may apply.
It's not to promote digital vintage gear in general, but for those on a low budget it may save the day.
In any case it's still an acoustically valid option for audio processing.