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Capturing Multi-Track Raw Audio?

Posted by Cliff on Wed Apr 26, 2006 06:45 PM
from the garage-band-applications dept.
Data Storage Media Music
afex asks: "I've been in and out of bands, and my current one is ready to sit down and put out a nice sounding Promo CD. In the past, I've used a horrible mess of equipment to get this job done. I won't go into detail on what all the microphones were for, but I had 4 going into an analog mixer, mixed down to 2 channels - as well as four other microphones that were unmixed. This left me with 6 separate tracks, which I am now outgrowing. I'd now like to start capturing 8 (or more) channels of raw (delivered via XLR cables from mics) audio. As for quality: 44.1K/16bit is fine. The editing can be done later via software, but my main quest is to get a single piece of hardware (either for my PC or a standalone box) that will ONLY capture the audio - no EQ's, no FX, no mixing, nothing, since that is all done later, on the PC. Got any ideas, Slashdot?"
"I used to record it all using 2 stereo USB capture devices (Edirol UA-1A & M-Audio MobilePre USB), as well as the PC's soundcard (left and right). I recorded and mixed with Cool Edit Pro, which is now Adobe Audition. This method has been very buggy, and its time for a change. I don't want to add more USB/FireWire capture cards to the mix, and I don't want to pay a heap for a digital 8-track recorder such as Yamaha's AW16G. What can I do?"
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  • I suggest M-Audio or MOTU (Score:4, Informative)

    by b00m3rang (682108) * on Wednesday April 26 2006, @06:51PM (#15208795)
    They both make good multichannel audio interfaces at a good value for the price. I've gone with Echo Audio in the past, and not been entirely happy with the drivers, stability, and support. Interfaces are available as either PCI cards with connectors/cables, pci cards with a breakout box, or (my recommendation) an external box with firewire connectivity. It's the most flexible, you can position the unit away from the PC to avoid RF interference, and in my experience works at least as well as those with dedicated PCI cards.
    • I was thinking the M-Audio Firewire 1814 [m-audio.com] would be perfect for this. I have a 410 and am pretty happy with it.
    • M-Audio's drivers are awful. If the device you get works out of the box, e.g. with ALSA, go for it, but if you're running Windows or Mac, it's kind of a crap shoot. MOTU used to have some really good hackers, but I can't speak for their current drivers. Right now I'm using a USB iMic for audio input, and it's rock solid on Linux, but of course there's no real way to ensure that the audio is synced if you use more than one of these.
    • I'm just DROOLING over the new MOTU UltraLite [motu.com]. 8 ins, 10 outs, and not just Firewire, but bus-powered. Drag a laptop and this unit to gigs and you can multi-track everything.

      I'm also an electronic drummer, and I use Ablton Live, so with this unit I could chop live loops of ANYONE on stage.

      Of course, I don't have $550 to drop on one. So I'm looking at the Berhinger uca202, a $29 USB box that's stereo in/out. I'm running Sonar on a MacBook with Boot Camp, and the drivers for this internal card just blow. Real

  • Firewire Mixer (Score:3, Informative)

    by jimson (516491) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @07:07PM (#15208872) Homepage
    This is the piece that I just picked up and I can't tell you how happy with it I am so far.

    http://210.243.85.5/partner/modules/product_explor /products_detail.php?product_id=139 [210.243.85.5]
    http://www.phonic.com/ [phonic.com]

    The Phonic Helix Firewire 18. It sends the signal pre any EQ or mixer, the only control is the gain. Up to 16 Channels into your computer. Works like a charm, and the price is great for what you are getting. I picked mine up for a little over $500 (Canadian) and it also functions as a standalone mixer.

    I'd post a link to some tunes that we've recorded with it, but they are not ready for general consumption yet. You can check out some of our previous stuff at http://www.tractorgrease.com/main/thedirt/ [tractorgrease.com]
    • What sort of software do you need to have on your computer to work with the incoming audio stream or even to recognize the hardware as an audio interface in the first place? Just wondering how open a standard it is, and whether there's "future proofing" in something like that ... I wouldn't want to get one and then find out in a few years that they're no longer releasing the drivers for whatever the new OS version of the day was, or the company's gone out of business and you're stuck with a proprietary digi
      • Yeah Dude! Way too catious! You've got an .mac address, so I assume your using a mac. No drivers involved. OS X just recognized it as an audio device I can use for whatever. For software, I'm currently using Logic Express, though Garage Band works great as well. I'm definetly getting my vaule out of this in 3-5 years. Its a standalone mixer so its worth the money right there.

        I stayed away from ProTools because I didn't want to be locked into one suite of software for recording, as nice as it is.

  • Sorry dude (Score:4, Insightful)

    by illuminatedwax (537131) <stdrange&alumni,uchicago,edu> on Wednesday April 26 2006, @07:09PM (#15208882) Journal
    The problem is that either you have to buy a new USB/Firewire box or you have to get a multitrack recorder unless you want to pay thousands of dollars for a multitrack DAT.

    Listen to everyone else and get an MOTU (or equivalent from Behringer if you're broke ;).
  • RME [rme-audio.com]
    Ardour [ardour.org] (New website! :-))
    • When you say "RME," which of their products did you mean?

      They make quite a bit of stuff. List here [sweetwater.com]. And I'm linking to Sweetwater rather than RME's website because their site doesn't link prices and just sends you on this horribly roundabout trip to a dealer's site for a price quote, of which Sweetwater is one. (They also have good service in my experience, just as a shameless plug, and their web site is easy to navigate.)

      As far as I can tell, all their inexpensive stuff uses ADAT as its digital interface,
      • When you say "RME," which of their products did you mean?

        Just follow the link.

        $1500; I'm sure it's wonderful, but that's a rather big pill for a lot of musicians to swallow.

        Is it? Who knows how much his mixer is.
        • Sorry, having a bit of a "duh" moment there I guess.

          Looks interesting though, and I guess all the additional I/O you'd get (ADAT, word clock, MIDI, SPDIF), plus monitoring from the PC back through the hardware, would make it worth the premium for the PCI card it requires. Their interface is rather strange, I'd love to know more about how it works. It uses FireWire cables and connectors apparently, but it doesn't use FW for any of the actual data transfer, that's all proprietary. I guess that's better than i
    • I'm a big fan of ardour; as a software mixing console, it's hard to beat.

      But, if you just want to grab raw audio and dump it to file, there may be simpler (and more robust) alternatives.

      My own favorite is ecasound. It's pretty light on resources and easily handles any real time recording task. And, it can be run entirely from the command line (and thus from the scripting language of your choice) and has a console client, both of which are convenient if you want to leave it running on a dedicated machine w
  • In your situation I would definitely get better equipment and in this case a better multi-io sound card or breakout box. Routing the audio through a mixer and few input cards sounds like a way too complex setup. Your own words were "This method has been very buggy".

    If you buy one good multi-io card you can skip the mixer, skip any extra mic-preamps and drop the extra sound cards. With one card and a suitable recording software you'll get perfect multitrack recording.

    Unfortunately only a few audio inte

    • Routing the audio through a mixer and few input cards sounds like a way too complex setup. Your own words were "This method has been very buggy".

      This is actually pretty doable once you get past a few hurdles. First, your driver model needs to support this. As I recall, ASIO hosts cannot access more than one independent driver at a time. WDM or MME will work on the Windows side, I'm not so familiar with Mac and Linux setups.

      Second, you need to sync the cards. If both cards are running on their own
      • Another way of syncing two cards, if they are the same make and model: Find the crystal, which will be either a two- or three-leaded metal can {on an expensive card} or a three-leaded ceramic blob {on a cheap and nasty one}. Probe each pin of the crystal with a 10:1 scope probe; you will see that one will have a "squarer" waveform than the other. Note which one {this is the oscillator output}. Unsolder the crystal from the slave card. Get a 74HC04 and a small piece of breadboard {or use a 74LX1GU0

  • Why Slashdot? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2006, @07:17PM (#15208921)
    Why are you asking a question about digital recording on Slashdot when there are so many better places to ask?

    Just a few links:

    http://messageboard.tapeop.com/ [tapeop.com] (my favorite)
    http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/ [prosoundweb.com]
    http://gearslutz.com/ [gearslutz.com]
    http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/index.p hp [harmony-central.com]

  • MOTU 828mkII or 896HD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Matt Perry (793115) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @07:24PM (#15208960)
    I use the MOTU 828mkII [motu.com] with Adobe Audition and love it. You can easily record eight channels with it. The one I have uses firewire to connect to the computer but I see on their site that you can also get it with a USB 2 interface.

    The only down side is that it only has two XLR inputs. If you need more then you should look at the 896HD [motu.com] which has eight XLR ins and outs. You can chain more 896's together to get more channels. I don't own one of these so I don't know how it compares to the 828.

  • ADAT (Score:3, Informative)

    by TekieB (841517) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @07:32PM (#15208995) Homepage
    A lot of the various sound cards come with an adat interface (or multiple) that you can use, what you need to do is get a preamp, the first one that comes to mind is http://mackie.com/products/800r/index.html [mackie.com] this, you can get them cheaper, but with audio gear a lot of times you get what you pay for, and mackie is good stuff, so you get a soundcard (your choice of interface) with many adat inputs, and add preamps as needed
  • I know some M-Audio cards have some Linux support...any others?

    ttyl
              Farrell
    • M-audio and RME work.

      Now the original poster mentioned not wanting to shell out bigtime for a multitrack recorder, but that just might be the ideal solution in the end. A second-hand EMU darwin wouldn't cost that much for 8 tracks, and will record to FAT filesystem (in fact I have one left over in good state which I may be willing to sell). An Alesis HD24 is a rather economical solution for 24 tracks, and has built-in FTP server which guarantees Linux compatibility, should this be a requirement. Plus there
  • Take a look at RME audio and their soundcards. They have stuff up to 56 channels at reasonable prices.
  • Get the Broadcast Supply West (er, Worldwide) catalog. bswusa.com. All sorts of trick stuff.

    Or just find an old JH-110 on ebay.
  • Look at http://www.echoaudio.com./ [www.echoaudio.com] I've been using thier products for 10 years (I've produced some CDs with them), and I've always been pleased with the level of support.

    These guys understand recording.
  • I've used quite a few options, including gear from Echo, MOTU, M-Audio, RME, and Digidesign.

    Easily the most robust hardware for me has been the Presonus Firepod. 24/96 8-in/8-out with on my crappy Dell Inspiron 700m with a 4200 RPM hard drive in Vegas. Their drivers may not have a bunch of shiny bells and whistles, but, when it comes to the business of actually laying down audio to disk, they just work.

    On top of that, the pre-amps are really good, leaving you with a device with good sound quality and robu
    • I'll second that opinion. The FirePod is considered to be by and far the best solution for getting 8 tracks of audio into a computer at this point.

      Your mess of multiple interfaces is going to hurt you in the long run with latency issues and whatnot. Just don't do it. Seriously.

      What's more, the Firepod isn't that expensive considering what you're getting. $600 is perfectly reasonable for a high-quality piece of audio gear (PRO audio gear that is, the stuff designed for musicians and the like. None of
  • ... and the rest at home.

    Face it, the only aspect of recording that usually can't be done at home with basic equipment is recording drums. And unless you're serious about doing this kind of thing more often, ask yourself if it is worth the investment.

    In the past, I went to a studio with the drummer, recorded all the drums for the tracks in 1 day on their equipment. (We did 6 tracks in 1 day), and take these recording home. Jammed in all into cubase, and recorded all bass, guitars and vocals through my sound
  • using 2 stereo USB capture devices (Edirol UA-1A & M-Audio MobilePre USB), as well as the PC's soundcard (left and right)

    3 stereo devices - that adds up to 6 input channels. You want 8 channels. 8 into 6 doesn't go, that's just how counting works.

    my main quest is to get a single piece of hardware (either for my PC or a standalone box) that will ONLY capture the audio - no EQ's, no FX, no mixing, nothing, since that is all done later, on the PC.

    Yes... that's what's known as a soundcard. And you

  • I'd recommend a Zoom standalone box, record directly to a hard drive. The files are easy to transfer to your PC/Mac and best of all Zooms are the easiest multitrack recorders to use.

    Alex.
  • Two M-audio delta-44s or delta-66s.
  • I looked into this exact problem recently.

    First remember that if your mic'ing your going to need a preamp for every microphone you want to use otherwise it will sound like shit. The good news is that its quite easy to take a flexible inexpensive route there.

    Firstly you need an ADAT compatible audio interface, you can either go PCI or usb/firewire. I opted for USB since i want to use the system with my laptop. A Behringer BCA2000 has 2 mic preamps and a hi-z input of its own and critically has an ADAT
    • I would favor a stand-alone solution over a low-cost computer interface solution. The Alesis HD24 [alesis.com] is pretty much standard for this situation.
      • I would also highly reccommend going for a stand-alone solution for simply capturing audio. My dad runs a professional on-site recording business and also works for a small local recording studio. Both his own business and the studio use an Alesis DA-88 for recording on-location work. It's a true 8 track recorder, putting down 8 channels of digital audio at a time which you can then later pull off and mix down yourself. This tends to be a really good option for capturing live stuff as you're not trying
        • AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK wrong company! The company that produces the DA-88 is TASCAM, not Alesis. Don't know what I was smoking, it's too damn early still...
    • That's not bad at all: I didn't realize initially that you had to get the mixer separately, but that's not bad, since I suppose you could move the digital module up if you upgraded mixers in the future.

      Still it ends up costing you a little more than the competition; a Mackie 1220 runs $530, that's the lowest-end mixer you can put the Onyx Firewire card into, and then the card is $400. For $930 I think I'd probably do a separate analog mixer and a basic ADC box. Or in the case of this guy's actual question,
      • For $930 I think I'd probably do a separate analog mixer and a basic ADC box.

        Well, the Onyx does 16 channels of audio, plus a stereo mix - and a 16 channel ADC box will cost you more than $400, usually, plus you won't get the scratch mix.

        Or in the case of this guy's actual question, where he doesn't want to have a mixer at the frontend at all, just go straight into the DAC, I think it's a little bit of overkill. True - but maybe he needs a new mixer anyway. Sounds like it, with all the submixing he ha

        • On the Mac, it's easy - they have Core Audio drivers, and are usable by any well-written Mac application (YMMV with ProTools). But in Garageband, Nuendo, Final Cut, Audacity, etc., they just show up as regular input/output devices. Neat thing with Core Audio is that you can actually route one interface to multiple programs simultaneously (send inputs 1-6 to Garageband, inputs 7-8 are the mix through an outboard piece of gear then brought back to Nuendo, use inputs 9-16 for tape ins in Audacity).

          Now that's s
    • I would not recommend any solution that involves Behringer equipment. Behringer is infamous for stealing designs, using cheap parts, and making all around terrible products. I've bought several things from them; most did not last for more than a year, and all of them were dismal quality. I would recommend the Mackie 800R [mackie.com]. The Onyx preamps are very solid, and it comes with a very nice firewire interface and software. It puts out exactly what you put in (as accurate as a mic preamp at that price point can b
      • I suppose you also beleive the tripe that ran on the internet a few years ago that behringer gear is radiactive. In reality Ive played in around 20 venues that have used behringer gear and bother the studios ive recorded in had at least 1 piece of behringer kit.

        While your not going to get the same sound from some boutique all valve preamp the difference between something like the focusrite octopre channel strip and the behringer is minimal. In the end unless you have spent thousands on your microphones t
      • Bit of further research, the mackie is over 5 times the price of the behringer unit.
    • He's asking about hardware, not software. You need a bunch of gazintas to get sound from out in the world into the computer. ("The mic gazinta there, the guitar gazinta there, the keyboard gazinta there...")

      A typical computer only has two audio inputs (one stereo pair, usually a 1/8" jack right next to the headphone jack). To record multiple instruments at the same time, in a way that lets you control them individually, you need more than two inputs. There are tons of "professional" USB, Firewire, an
    • I'd second that. I've got the predecessor of the C-Port, and it works fine. Only 2 mic preamps built-in, so I need to make my own for the other 6 channels (but no probs there, cos I'm an elec eng and have full PCB-making gear at home :-) The boxes allow daisy-chaining too, so if you want to add another 8 channels of input then you can just buy a new ADC box and connect the cables without needing the PC-side stuff upgrading. IIRC two boxes plugged into the one PC is the max though, so your max is 16 chan
      • isnt that basically oh, 99% of all audio data...

        Yes - the reason for recording at higher sample rates - 96 kHz, and even 192 kHz, is that the anti-aliasing filter (which has to be down 40 dB at the Nyquist frequency - 1/2 the sample rate) can be much gentler. A brick wall filter dropping 40 dB from 20 kHz to 22.05 kHz tends to also be an oscillator near 20 kHz, and it has phase distortion down to around 5 kHz. Instead, running a filter that drops 40 dB from 20 kHz to 48 or even 96 kHz can be a much smooth

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