What I’m Using Now: Source Connect

Bob Giammarco
Mixer/Sound Designer AudioEngine|West Phoenix, AZ
List: $1,495.

Why I love it: Source Connect is a Pro Tools plug-in that takes
the place of an ISDN box for remote sessions. When we first did this we
used a full bandwidth ISDN box. Those boxes, like the Milano or the
Tokyo, require six ISDN lines to give you stereo and time code. Now,
like everything else, we’ve moved to a bandwidth-oriented world. Source
Connect allows us to do all that over our existing ISP structure.

"I moved from New York to Phoenix a couple of years ago. I do a lot of
local work here but we are set up to work remotely between here and our
studio in New York. We started out with full bandwidth ISDN boxes but
last year we switched to Source Connect, which is much, much cheaper.

A setup via Source Connect lets us be completely realtime remote. I’ve
done many sessions where I’m in here and clients are in NY, or vice
versa and it’s all happening in real time- I’m working and they’re
listening, they just happen to be over 2000 miles away. All you need is
Source Connect and ProTools. They do have to be in our studio if they
want to work in real time.

I could conceivably do the same thing to another studio. Say there was
a client in Montana that wanted to work with me, we could make that
work. The reality is, it’s not like picking up your cell phone. You do
need to know how it works and Source Connect requires significant
configuration requirements on your IP side. It basically has to be
controlled by your routers so that it goes to the top of the list and
gets the priority in other areas.

It lowers my cost tremendously. Two licenses of it are the same cost as
a low-end ISDN box. The high-end ISDN box we used to use to do this is
$10,000, plus the monthly maintenance fees."