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Gear / Technical Help => Recording Gear => Topic started by: gratefulphish on January 11, 2007, 02:44:47 PM
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Just moving into the HDD realm this week, with an R-4 Pro. I understand that there is a 2 GB file limit for .wavs, so what do people do at shows, particularly when recording in 24/96? Is it a fast switch to a new file, or is there some significant delay? Stop/Start, or just inserting some kind of mark? Your continued assistance is truly greatly appreciated.
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I believe the R4 does seemless splits, so you don't have to do anything during the show -- but double-check me on that before counting on it, heh...
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I read at this site that the R4 does automatic seamless splits at 2 gigs. but like baytaynt3d said, double-check.
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It does, it seamlessly starts a new file at the 1:02 mark when running 24/96.
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Does "seamlessly" mean no pop, click, or anything, so that I really don't have to do anything during or between sets? I assume that I would want to start a new file at the beginning of the second set anyway.
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Does "seamlessly" mean no pop, click, or anything, so that I really don't have to do anything during or between sets? I assume that I would want to start a new file at the beginning of the second set anyway.
yes, seamless means that you can join the two files on your computer and it will be as if there wasn't a split to begin with. If I know that a split is seamless, I will allow it to occur during the music itself, because there are no dropped samples or data and I can join them later.
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Yes, no pops, just reassemble and cut into segments between songs. You would want to hit stop at the end of a set, also if you do not hit stop it does not save the file so if you run out of power you lose the whole file.
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Thank you all kindly.
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You do have to be a bit careful after you get the files to your computer though... Depending on what editing software you use the PC may also have a 2 GB limit.
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You do have to be a bit careful after you get the files to your computer though... Depending on what editing software you use the PC may also have a 2 GB limit.
CDWave is very handy for splitting 4GB files into chewable pieces for Wavelab, etc.
Jeff
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I know that this will be off-topic from my original post, but what programs do people prefer to mix down four tracks, convert to flacs, burn to CD etc. I have been a DAT dinosaur all these years, and am just entering the computer realm, so opinions and suggestions, pros and cons, would be appreciated. Thanks.
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There is a commonly used freeware program called Audacity but I am unsure as Ive never used it if it does a matrix on 4 tracks
I use Wavelab 5.01b to mixdown my matrix's in wavelab's audio montage.
good luck with your search bud!
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There is a commonly used freeware program called Audacity but I am unsure as Ive never used it if it does a matrix on 4 tracks
Audacity does 4-track mixing.
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There is a commonly used freeware program called Audacity but I am unsure as Ive never used it if it does a matrix on 4 tracks
Audacity does 4-track mixing.
2gb file limit?
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2gb file limit?
Dunno. Try it...it's free, after all. :)
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i believe that a lot of software now will handle files over 2GB however, Windows however will not allow files to be saved that are over 2GB - at least that has been my experience with SF 8.0. looks like thats not the case with Audacity though.
From Audacity Help Pages
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/onlinehelp-1.2/fileformats.htm
WAV (Windows Wave format)
This is the default uncompressed audio format on Windows, and is supported on almost all computer systems. Audacity can read and write this format. People working with multichannel audio at very high quality settings, or with very long recordings, should note that the maximum size of a wav file is 2GB
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Windows however will not allow files to be saved that are over 2GB
People working with multichannel audio at very high quality settings, or with very long recordings, should note that the maximum size of a wav file is 2GB
FWIW, I just opened a < 2 GB file (~1.1 GB, 24-bit/48k), copied and pasted the content 2x to make a > 2GB file (~3.3 GB, 24-bit/48k). I amplified (normalized) the WAV, then saved as 24-bit/48k. I'm able to play the file in Foobar2000 and open/edit the file in Audacity just fine. I'm running Win2K SP4, drives formatted NTFS.
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Windows however will not allow files to be saved that are over 2GB
People working with multichannel audio at very high quality settings, or with very long recordings, should note that the maximum size of a wav file is 2GB
FWIW, I just opened a < 2 GB file (~1.1 GB, 24-bit/48k), copied and pasted the content 2x to make a > 2GB file (~3.3 GB, 24-bit/48k). I amplified (normalized) the WAV, then saved as 24-bit/48k. I'm able to play the file in Foobar2000 and open/edit the file in Audacity just fine. I'm running Win2K SP4, drives formatted NTFS.
Yeah, the 2GB WAV file limit is incorrect. I know that Wavelab 6 has done away with the 2GB limit. I think that the file size limit for WAV is actually 4GB. I believe if you use .W64 format in Soundforge, you should be able to work around limited file sizes.
FWIW, I just created a 3.6GB WAV file from 4 24/96 WAV's using Audacity 1.2.6 in Win XP Pro SP2 formatted to NTFS.
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The 2GB limit is more a FAT limit (iirc) - all recorders have their media formatted as FAT32 or less.
On windows (with NTFS) there is still the risk that some lazy programmer doesn't use the upper 32bit of the file size... (in the windows API, those big values are not passed as 64bit but rather 2x32bit, I know of some who didn't bother to look at the complete number)
EDIT: The above is wrong: the FAT32 filesystem has a limit of 4GB per file
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The 2GB limit is more a FAT limit (iirc) - all recorders have their media formatted as FAT32 or less.
On windows (with NTFS) there is still the risk that some lazy programmer doesn't use the upper 32bit of the file size... (in the windows API, those big values are not passed as 64bit but rather 2x32bit, I know of some who didn't bother to look at the complete number)
Could you break this down into one syllable english words, for the technically challenged such as me, and let me know whether I should be making some specific adjustments to my computer to deal with this.
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Looking at the FAT specification I guess I was wrong, FAT32 has a 4GB limit (most if not all recorders use the FAT32 filesystem). On your windows pc, you can even go above 4GB by using NTFS as filesystem.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463)
So the only issue that remains is sloppy programming. If a certain tool does not support files above 2GB, it's a problem with the tool.
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I really am in the computer stone ages. Do I want to change over to NTFS as a file system? What would I need to do? How would this affect the rest of my computer operations, if at all? Would it require reformatting the whole system? Sorry for the number of questions, but I am trying to learn quickly. Thanks again.
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If you're on windows, you would certainly want to use NTFS as filesystem. However, unless your computer is also from the stone ages, it should already use this. You can check by right-clicking on the disk (in the windows explorer) and selecting 'properties'. among the info it will say 'File System: xxx'
So if your files need to be larger than 4GB, NTFS is certainly what you need... If you need to convert, backup everything is step 1, then look at:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx)
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php (http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881)
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pick any of the above links, they were the first three google gave me on this subject ;)
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It's NTFS, +T for the ongoing help. Thanks.
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My impression is that the actual .wav file size limit is 4GB if we talk about the old-type standard .wav. There is a counter inside the file saying how large it is, and that can hold a maximum of 4Gb.
But the .wav file extension is used in a lot of different ways with a lot of different file formats. Most of these are sort of unusual, maybe only used be one specific program that is long since discontinued, so let us forget those specials. Lately there has been version going past the 4GB limit, but you have to very certain that your program can handle those.
Next thing was that, even if the limit is and always was 4GB, it is only rather recently that hard-disks where that large. (My first hard-disk was 10Mb). Easily then, sloppy programmers stumbled into a common programming pitfall, and then the limit ended up at 2GB for the program. Many programs, including wavelab, simply behaved odd with files larger than 2Gb. Since then the safe limit is 2Gb, and only if your program specifically supports it would I ever make files larger than 2GB. The limit though, still is 4.
In a taperssection usage I would split the files at max 2GB to be safe in the recorder and for future handling. The files could later be imported into an audio editor program and only inside the program be joined - letting the program worry about what to do about the limit. I would then export each song as a separate file, generally these are much smaller than the full show. Other programs could then safely read these smaller files without problems.
A decent program at a decent price for doing this on a PC is called Magix Studio. It does handle large files internally, allows you to cut out uninteresting pauses, normalize, eq, compress, limit and export. It also burns CD-s from inside the program.
http://site.magix.net/english-us/home/music/music-studio-11-deluxe/mustu-11/functions/?no_cache=1&version=standard
Anyway, my 2 cents worth.
Gunnar
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FYI, RockBox also (seamlessly) splits recordings at 2GB
From reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV), it would indeed seem that the official WAV file limit is 4GB. Should have read the WAV specs too before giving advice here. That's what you get when you post stuff while doing other things at the same time ;)