DOUBLECHECK

CHECK — one clip

Capture one clip and DOUBLECHECK goes through it: level and true peak, clips and overs, and any hidden GLITCH.

Every flag is shown on the spectrogram, in place. Click one and the loop is set around it; the Pro Tools selection follows.

DOUBLECHECK judges the waveform by fixed criteria. It cannot know intent: a deliberate noise or a hard cut may be flagged, and an error that doesn't match the criteria may slip through. Treat FLAGS as an assistant, not as proof.

COMPARE — two clips

Capture two clips, A and B, and DOUBLECHECK shows where they differ.

“Isn't this file the same as the last one?” When that doubt comes up, you no longer have to pan one hard left and the other hard right and listen. If the two null, DOUBLECHECK tells you at once; if they don't, it shows you where they differ.

“So — what changed?” An artist or a mixer you work with sends an updated file. You've been working on the previous one, and you want to carry over only what changed. COMPARE checks the whole length offline, however long, and points at exactly those places.

Which of the two modes, OVERALL or DETAIL, suits the pair is DOUBLECHECK's own call (AUTO). You can also switch by hand.

OVERALL is for mixes and anything else that can't null sample for sample. A mix carries the drift of tape simulators and modulation and the randomness of reverbs, and one small change moves the bus compressor — so even with nothing changed, two prints often don't null. Under those conditions OVERALL still finds the places that changed clearly more than the rest: the differences between v1 and v2, a part that's gone or louder, a new insert, a retuned vocal. Differences that span the whole mix — level, EQ, dynamics — are reported one line each, and with MATCH they're taken out, so the small changes underneath come into view.

OVERALL also makes a good safety habit. Before updating a mix, print today's 2-mix and compare it with the last one. A plug-in that failed to authorise, a Pro Tools bug — if any of it happened, it shows up as a change, before you build new work on top of it.

DETAIL is for one voice or instrument, where the untouched parts should null exactly: a vocal after a tuning pass, a line of dialogue with a take replaced, an edit moved by a millisecond. DETAIL lists every touched spot, strictly, and tells how much it changed.

DOUBLECHECK judges the waveform by fixed criteria. In OVERALL, a small deliberate change can stay buried under the mix's own randomness and go unlisted. DETAIL assumes there are parts that null exactly, so anything that renders differently each time (a reverb, a modulated effect) reads as a change. Either way, it is not a perfect inspector: an assistant, not the final word.