Most modern recording studios have two things, an engineer and a computer. One of these never does what you want it to, is usually too slow, takes forever to start, and will constantly let you know of every error you make. The other is a box that uses electricity.

Chances are that if you're in a studio there's a computer there hosting a DAW and doing things in seconds what used to take hours in the old school studio. Gone are the days of razor blades, splicing tape and q-tips; now we have cmd-c, cmd-v and cmd-z.

It's pretty easy to see that the studio has changed the way it works. Audio engineers have obviously been at the forefront of this change, but what about the studio technician? The evolution of the studio with a computer at it's core has also changed the way studio techs work as well.

So Pro Tools 7.4.2 is finally released! A few weeks later Apple drops 10.5.4...Great! Now what??

Well, good news is that Digi is right on it with their recent announcement that they're uh..right on it.

Okay so does it work? Yea sure. It'll work as long as your plug-ins work, because most of the problems I'm getting from folks is REWIRE!

So, it's the home stretch of the session. It's 4am, you're on the last take...and instead of "That's a wrap," you see "DAE Error..." or "Blah Blah has unexpectedly quit..." The last one cracks me up; "unexpectedly quit..." Yea, no $#^& it's unexpected! Unless you're using Vista...

Anyway kidding aside, the last thing you want to be doing at 4am is teching your rig and using your brain to figure out why the hell it's not working. Thankfully the internet is open 24 hrs a day and is happy to give you the information you need to get back up, get in that last take, and finally get the damn thing finished.

So, here they are, Dek's top 3 resources for getting the info you need:

So, you finally plunked down the dough to get your favorite plugins from Waves...Welcome to plug-in authorization hell! Now have a seat.

You know, it's probably easier to launch a missile from NORAD than it is to get your plug-ins working from Waves. The reason for this is because Waves does not use iLok.com to transfer licenses. It uses it's own authorizers to do this. This is very important to remember because it's the very first mistake people make. Everybody assumes that the license is transferred thru iLok and rightfully so since it's the most fricking logical thing to do! Okay, so now we know we don't use iLok to authorize Waves, we just use the iLok Key to hold the Waves license(s).

If you haven't already, go to Waves.com and create an account. Now, after creating your account, register the software with the WAVES serial number. Also make sure you enter your iLok serial number correctly or the license will be sent to nowhere; or worse yet someone else's iLok! I'm assuming you have an iLok acct created and you know the name of the acct and stuff too. If not, then go to iLok.com and register your iLok and come back.