u/Special-Play1332

Hi Guys

I'm looking to get some PLI but I don't really know what I'm looking for, what company have you guys gone through and any advice to help find a good insurance policy.

Edit: completely forgot to add my country, UK Based

Thanks :)

My MacBook Pro M2 13 inch is starting to get tired. It struggles with stuff it never used to and honestly I’ve had it for 5 years and I am fancying an upgrade. The lack of ports and 8gb of ram is starting to do my head in too.

I’m looking at m4 pro macs but I’m not sure how much ram to go for to make it future proof. What would you guys recommend?

Location: Italy

The contract doesn’t show any personal data so if I am allowed to attach a photo please let me know!

I am currently in a dispute with a rental company owner who is demanding €700 for scratches on the scooter that happened while I was renting it it is still completely functional and I am not disputing the damage happened or that I need to pay for it.

The bike fell over while I was in a shop so I don’t actually know what happened and it wasn’t due to improper use / caused by myself.

Where the disagreement starts is that it’s a new bike (05/2026 with 3k miles) and he wants me to pay for new panels and a new top box for the scooter when the contract says ‘equal condition’. My point is that the compensation shouldn’t need to cover new panels when that is his preference and it doesn’t say in the contract at all that new panels are required. And it just needs to be equal condition and a respray / scratch remover can do that. Especially considering the panels are not broken just scratched and the bike remains fully functional.

I will not be paying for brand new parts on the scooter when the scooter is worth €3,000 and he wants me to pay pretty much a quarter of that in cosmetic superficial damage.

He keeps saying it is expected to pay and the fact I’ve damaged the resale cost of the bike, and that if he did a respray I’d have to cover the days of it in the shop and that it’s my responsibility. none of these points are made in the contract and it just says ‘compensation for all damage caused by the customer’. I am happy to pay for repairs but not for all these points that aren’t stated in the contract.

I’m not sure however how to go about this as it’s through the hotel I’m staying in and really want to avoid a legal thing but I am not paying all that money. I was thinking to quote the contract and reiterate my points. And saying I will not be going off what’s expected and only what’s written in the agreement and I will offer X amount of money to cover it and no more. Is this a good way to go about it?

Hard to word in one title but basically I’ve just spent the whole summer on Dlives/SQ/QL3’s doing monitors on festival stages that are decent sizes where you can separate instruments and control the sources.

I had a gig today with a band in a small basement venue with an absolutely shit show of a promoter not helping anyone or giving an advance, headliner wasted everyone’s time by being late and then deciding not to soundcheck an hour after load in and then I had 20 mins to get everything done and ready for the band I was mixing on an x32 that I haven’t used in about a year before other bands needed to get soundchecking.

How do you guys handle going from ideal situations on large stages. To tiny basements on an unfamiliar desk with a nasty pressure to get on with it because I feel like I fucked it up today and not sure where I went wrong. I think adjusting to the room was where I went wrong but I also don’t feel like I had anytime to get familiar with it

so I wasn't planning on drinking today however Its the last time I can see my mates before he moves away due to work etc. I've been on 60mg for about 3 months now and been on elvanse for about 6.

normally If I were to drink I would skip the dose but today its spontaneous and if I go I will almost definitely end up drinking. does anyone have some tips or tricks they've found to help them stay safe etc while drinking on the meds except the obvious eat and drink enough.

note I am not encouraging people to do this, I am simply asking advice to be safe. and I do not recommend doing this.

took my dose at 8:30am probably gonna go out about 8ish

TLDR below

Dolby Atmos is great. I love the surround format of object based panning and when it's done well it's super effective. the actual audio and hardware is awesome when installed properly and I'm seeing people talk about it being the new mono to stereo revolution. this is where my grievances start...

the hardware is expensive, often complicated and impossible to do on a budget. Most people see a £200 sound bar and think that their TV sounds good enough and they don't need it.

this however isn't my biggest issue, atmos is a niche and if you want it you're going to get it, the really issue is,

Dolby Atmos workflows are clunky difficult and inconsistent. Dolby are really pushing atmos but don't seem to be making any effort to allow independent engineers to share their projects effectively and don't seem to give a shit about the workflows.

the other day I was exporting clips of a project that was in an atmos session to sync to video. so I grabbed the 3 ADM BWFs I needed (from the same Session) and the 3 MP4's from the same video and exported them 1 by 1 from the renderer. not only is the fact you can only sync it to MP4's ridiculous its also completely locked. you cannot change a thing within the renderer and you have to ensure its all lined up before the renderer step.

the first two went as expected and then the third didn't want to sync due to an unknown error. which didn't make any sense (tried different computers, different encoding, exports formats all sorts) so I had to find the most backwards work around with shutter encoder, dolby atmos conversion tool and Logic Pro.

there's little things with that process too, ADM BWF's have to have the same frame rate as the video even if its audio only, the ADM BWF can't be longer than the Video, you can't select where to export the audio to within the video. its just the audio starts at 0:00:00 and ends when it ends. do you want to add something to happen before the audio starts? tough. go find another software that might ruin your meta data.

also if there is a video file within the ADM BWF meta data (even if you've deleted the video from the DAW and re-exported for some reason) you cannot sync to an MP4 due to a different Unknown error.

also I don't know if this is an issue with my set up or a renderer issue (I suspect Renderer), nothing can be peaking within your DAW in the atmos session and hit a healthy level of -18LUFS, and then once exported into the renderer random pops on object channels happen, it sounds like a sample rate conversion issue but they matched and the pops would happen completely randomly.

also with apple spearheading this atmos revolution within the apple ecosystem, why have they rolled out dolby digital plus exports when you can't export video out with it and why isn't Final Cut able to support ADM BWF or Dolby Digital Plus just linear PCM which fucks your metadata?

also why is the dolby atmos conversion tool able to merge ADM BWF files, but not Dolby digital plus mp4's.

its little things like this that's just difficult and unnecessarily complex.

99% of platforms not supporting its format aswell is a nightmare aswell but thats not necessarily Dolbys fault.

TL:DR - in short Dolby need to have a serious look at their workflows and software. Maybe revamp the renderer tool or create more of a Davinci type software where you can actually line up your audio without having to find weird third party work arounds and allow engineers to work much more efficiently. and if they want to be taken seriously they need to be more commonly available / affordable to engineers and the general public.

Disclaimer I'm not an expert, I seriously started atmos mixing in January and am just frustrated by how unfriendly the whole experience is.

Hi guys

The Dolby Atmos renderer is being an absolute fucker at the moment. I have an ADM BWF that won’t export to any mp4 it just says after analyzing and alerting me the video is longer than the audio (that’s intentional) that it can’t be exported due to an unknown error.

Everything is correct and matching within the renderer (frame rate sample rate etc) and the video is a h.264 mp4. The video isn’t the issue as the adm BWF won’t export to any mp4 format. The only thing different about this ADM BWF as opposed to the countless exports I’ve done that have worked is that there was a video file in the DAW when I exported it the first time around. But I deleted the video file re exported it and it’s still not working.

I’ve re rendered. Restarted etc Tried different videos that I know do work, re exported, tried different computers, opened in Rosetta, googled it the whole lot. None have worked or given me any answers. I’ve spent 5 hours trying to work it out lol with about 10 exports from logic

Is there another way to encode the master file to the video or does anyone have any ideas because this does not make any sense to me and I feel like I’m losing it ???