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Capturing Multi-Track Raw Audio?
Posted by
Cliff
on Wed Apr 26, 2006 07:45 PM
from the garage-band-applications dept.
from the garage-band-applications dept.
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)
Re:I suggest M-Audio or MOTU (Score:2)
Re:I suggest M-Audio or MOTU (Score:2, Informative)
Firewire Mixer (Score:3, Informative)
http://210.243.85.5/partner/modules/product_explo
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]
Re:Firewire Mixer (Score:2)
Re:Firewire Mixer (Score:3, Informative)
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)
Listen to everyone else and get an MOTU (or equivalent from Behringer if you're broke
RME and Ardour (Score:2)
Ardour [ardour.org] (New website!
Re:RME and Ardour (Score:2)
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,
Re:RME and Ardour (Score:2)
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.
Alternatives to ardour (Score:3, Informative)
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
Buy better equipment (Score:2, Informative)
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
Why Slashdot? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Why Slashdot? (Score:3, Funny)
MOTU 828mkII or 896HD (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
What about Linux Solutions? (Score:2)
ttyl
Farrell
Ever look at RME? (Score:2)
As an broadcast engineer in another life... (Score:2)
Or just find an old JH-110 on ebay.
Yeah, but you need a log-in to download patches (Score:2, Informative)
Mine has been pretty lackluster. All I can remember is being really pissed off that I had to log-in to their website to download updated drivers. (See for yourself: http://www.motu.com/download/ [motu.com])
If that wasn't bad enough, it took HOURS for the aproval email to arrive in my inbox. Meh.
Re:M-audio (Score:2)
Neat, potentially overkill? (Score:2)
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,
Re:Neat, potentially overkill? (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Neat, potentially overkill? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that's s
Re:44.1KHz == so so quality (Score:3, Informative)
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