Topic: Better App for Recording

[crunchy]

I have Sound Forge 6.0 , Cool Edit Pro 2.0 and N-Track 3.0 that I can use for recording. Does one of these stand out as being the best recording program? I am thinking Sound Forge would be a good choice since the other two seem to be geared more towards multi track mixing. Which one takes up the fewest system resources?  I would be recording at 24 and 16 bits. Thanks for any input.

[Wes]

I personally say none of the above. I recommend wavelab.  The 2gig split feature comes in very handy in the field

Wes

[rabhan]

yeah, use wavlab for recording and dithering, just not resampling.

[zhianosatch]

why not resampling?

[crunchy]

Anyone want to send a copy my way?

[RRobar]

PM me

[Simp-Dawg]

yeah, use wavlab for recording and dithering, just not resampling.

yeah what's the story on this?

personally i find flaws with most of the recording software i've used...sound forge has thus far been my most reliable and robust choice, but the 2gb limit can be a PITA.  thus my switch to wavelab, though i've had problems with it more often than not.  it sometimes reverts back to microsoft sound mapper as the recording device and i get nothing from the usbpre unless i catch it and change it manually.  it will often crash at the end of recording the 2nd file in a split, and i have to manually restore the raw data in sound forge, cut out the extra sample that get stuck in there, and piece it back together with the 1st file.  not the worst thing in the world but it still sucks.

[nic]

Soundforge(ver 5-6+) only has the 2GB limit when being used on a FAT filesystem.
if you use NTFS, you dont have to worry about it

[Simp-Dawg]

Soundforge(ver 5-6+) only has the 2GB limit when being used on a FAT filesystem.
if you use NTFS, you dont have to worry about it

NO SHIT?!?!  do you have proof of this???  if this is indeed the case, i am wiping my hard drive clean and reformatting with NTFS and only using SF from now on, i find it does a great job of all the processing needs i have, except multitracking capability which is really not an issue for me at this time.

[nic]

I can only speak from experience(and Im a Win2k MCP).
a few months ago I was transferring a 90meter DAT(16/48) while I went to run some errands.
ended up being gone for 4.5+ hours and when I got back it was still recording(silence at that point, but it still uses the same amount of "file space"). I stopped the recording and opened the file. no artifacts/noise/missing samples/etc where the 2GB barrier would have occurred. the recording was all in 1 file.

the 2GB barrier isnt a Windows limitation, it is a file-system limitation. many programs/apps hard-coded the same limitation because it(and the Windows OS) used the FAT file-system. NTFS4(used in NT3-4) might have the 2GB limit, but NTFS5(Win2K and XP) doesnt have this limitation.

this is one of the problems I have with the 24bitfaq site....I do not understand why it says to use FAT.
FAT IS ONE OF THE MOST UNSTABLE AND CORRUPTION PRONE FILE-SYSTEMS ANYWHERE.
this is why many people feel Win95a/b/c, 98/SE and ME are so unstable(well, ME is unstable)

[Matt Quinn]

Newbie Question- how do I tell which file system I'm using?

[nic]

tube, what OS are you using?
if Win 95>ME then you are running FAT.
if you are using 2000 or XP, right-click My Computer> Manage> Disk Management. it will tell you what filesystem you are using on each partition

[nic]

SoundForge officially supports file sizes of 4GB+
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/Products/showproduct.asp?PID=668&FeatureID=5797
(yes, Sony recently purchased all of Sonic Foundry's products. SoundForge 7 should ship later this month)

a little clarification on the file-size limitations:
(copy/pasted here, link to page at bottom)

"LIMITATIONS:
First, when creating any type of file, one should be aware that there is
a limitation in Windows95/98 of 2 gigabytes (GB) that limits files
(regardless of file type) to the same maximum file size as the FAT16
file system, which is 2 GB minus 1 byte (FAT16 on NT limit is 4
gigabytes). Therefore, on computers using the FAT32 file system, the
maximum file size is 4 GB minus 2 bytes. To create larger than 4GB
files load NTFS on your NT machine. The file size limitation is hundreds
of GB. (232 clusters so file size depends on cluster size setup on
disk.) Here are the limits for
FAT16: file 2 gigabytes, partition 2 gigabytes
FAT16 (NT): file 4 gigabytes, partition 4 gigabytes
FAT32: file 4 gigabytes, partition 2 terrabytes
NTFS: file 2 terrabytes, partition 16 exabytes (18.4 x 10^18 bytes)"


http://realforum.real.com/realforum/msg07620.html


filesystems Windows use(chronological order of release. default FS listed 1st):
Windows 95a - FAT16
Windows NT4 - NTFS or FAT16
Windows 95b/c - FAT32 or FAT16
Windows 98/SE - FAT32 or FAT16
Windows 2000 - NTFS5 or FAT32
Windows ME - FAT32 or FAT16
Windows XP - NTFS5 or FAT32

Windows 2000 and newer will read/write FAT16 data

if you follow the link above you will see that Windows 98 had a limitation of 2GB in order for it to be back-wards compatible with previous versions of Windows. Many programs adopted the hard-coded limit of 2GB to stay backwards compatible as well.

[dmonterisi]

The file size limitation is hundreds
of GB. (232 clusters so file size depends on cluster size setup on
disk.)

there was a recent discussion on laptop-tapers re: what cluster size to set your partition to.  i gave up on following the thread after a while, but you can search the laptop-tapers archive at yahoogroups for more info.

[Simp-Dawg]

Therefore, on computers using the FAT32 file system, the
maximum file size is 4 GB minus 2 bytes.

that can't be true.  otherwise sf should write files larger than 2 gb to my FAT32 formatted storage partition.  unless maybe i need to change the cluster size?  do you know how this works out?  is larger/smaller cluster size better?