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Author Topic: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?  (Read 7603 times)

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Offline slowburn

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #15 on: October 19, 2015, 12:14:34 PM »
You could get a Cymatic LR16 and two 8 channel TRS snakes, and record directly off the inserts. That's assuming the sound guy isn't using any outboard effects, but you could always run a splitter. That'd be something small and simple, while capturing everything. Adds another A/D step though, but no different than how most folks generally record multitracks.

http://www.cymaticaudio.com/products/live-recorder-lr16

Basically need the LR16 + TRS snake + power supply + USB hard drive. Could sit off side of the board or wherever and record without a hitch. I have one (although I've basically retired it since upgrading to the uTrack24), so feel free to fire off questions on it if you decide to go that route.

Beyond that--it'd look like a laptop with a firewire input would be best alternative solution. Use Reaper (free) or any other DAW, create a saved template with proper i/o routing, and re-use that for every show.

I know but I'll be damned if we get a new desk with two dedicated recording output systems and then use a third.  :laugh:

I actually looked at both those Cymatics before we bought this mixer. In case we got one with regular analog outputs we would probably have gone that route. Doing it now with the insertion of a splitter cause there will be outboard effects seems plain wrong.

We actually tried a similar setup a few times with the old 8 track mixer we had. We might have had a defective splitter or something because we always had issues.

Offline 2manyrocks

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #16 on: October 19, 2015, 12:20:45 PM »
Laptops can walk off...towers are a bit harder to rip off.  There are lots of refurbished towers to be had for not much money.  FW cards for towers are also cheap.



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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #17 on: October 19, 2015, 12:38:16 PM »
You're both right I think. And no I don't really want to turn this into that discussion so let's end that right here.

I'll only add that like I said I will only use this with the intention of doing a mix rarely, like once a month or so. I would probably record many more on the multitrack than that but without intention of actually doing a mix myself right away. I'll always run a separate 2+2 matrix at the same time. But not only does the band often appreciate getting them there's also the chance of a show you don't expect anything from blowing you away or booking a band early that later become a big name.

I know you all have those shows where you're thinking a year or ten later that you wish you had a better/different recording of it.

I hear you...I'm jealous.  I definitely have shows that blew me away that I wish I had more to work with.  I'd LOVE to have the situation you're in because I know that if I had the opportunity to spend the time with the tracks, I'd make sure it was done right and it would sound awesome. 

Offline yousef

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #18 on: October 19, 2015, 02:15:23 PM »
Another thing to bear in mind is that you're going to need at least two further tracks for your ambient mics - to neglect these will, at best, leave you with a rather sterile recording and, most likely, lead to you missing some instruments entirely.

Plus there'll almost certainly be occasions when you'll max out the desk's 16 channels and the needs of the room sound will not necessarily correspond to those of a decent recording... Something cheap and dirty like an ADA8000 feeding the HD24's third ADAT input would be an easy solution here.

I'd also think about getting some mics or their mount permanently installed in the venue so you're not stuck putting your mics in a suboptimal position.
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Offline Life In Rewind

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #19 on: October 19, 2015, 02:26:58 PM »
Another thing to bear in mind is that you're going to need at least two further tracks for your ambient mics - to neglect these will, at best, leave you with a rather sterile recording and, most likely, lead to you missing some instruments entirely.

Plus there'll almost certainly be occasions when you'll max out the desk's 16 channels and the needs of the room sound will not necessarily correspond to those of a decent recording... Something cheap and dirty like an ADA8000 feeding the HD24's third ADAT input would be an easy solution here.

I'd also think about getting some mics or their mount permanently installed in the venue so you're not stuck putting your mics in a suboptimal position.

Can he use the extra analog inputs on the HD24 simultaneous to the digital I/O?

Offline slowburn

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #20 on: October 19, 2015, 05:46:25 PM »
Another thing to bear in mind is that you're going to need at least two further tracks for your ambient mics - to neglect these will, at best, leave you with a rather sterile recording and, most likely, lead to you missing some instruments entirely.

Plus there'll almost certainly be occasions when you'll max out the desk's 16 channels and the needs of the room sound will not necessarily correspond to those of a decent recording... Something cheap and dirty like an ADA8000 feeding the HD24's third ADAT input would be an easy solution here.

I'd also think about getting some mics or their mount permanently installed in the venue so you're not stuck putting your mics in a suboptimal position.

The room is small enough that in the past we haven't always miced everything. That would certanly change on the shows we care  about now regardless wheter it's needed for the room sound or not. Working with only 8 tracks we often had 2-4 vocals, keyboard, acoustic guitar 1 or 2 drum mics and maybe something else. A few times we had to cheat and collect a few things to a side mixer sending those tracks together to one track on the 8 track mixer we had. That was rare but often enough that we decided we had to upgrade to 16. Anything with amps normally weren't miced. Adding those and more drum mics would probably put us at 10-14 at most shows. So I should be able to get the audience mics to fit most of the time. For the occasional show were we wouldn't I could still record those directly to my Edirol R-4 pro. With sync issues of course so not ideal but it's solution that probably won't be necessary often.

We actually had something installed to the ceiling that I could clamp a mic boom onto. It was a little unstable though so I'll have to come up with something sturdier. The audience don't like mics falling on them. And the mics don't like falling on the floor instead of a soft audience member.

But yeah, I'll defenitly make sure to get room mics for all recordings.

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #21 on: October 19, 2015, 06:08:13 PM »
Consider installing a room/audience facing pair of supercardioids facing out into the audience, away from the stage and PA speakers.  Position them to maximally exclude the PA sound and on-stage sound as much as possible.  A common setup for this is to arrange them in parallel to each other spaced very widely, with one at each far end of the stage pointing out into the room, not too close to the PA.  For maximum utility and usefulness, you do not want stage or PA sound in those channels- you will be getting that from all the other channels.
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Offline yousef

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #22 on: October 20, 2015, 11:13:48 AM »
Quote

Can he use the extra analog inputs on the HD24 simultaneous to the digital I/O?

Yes - you can use a mix of ADAT and analogue ins - the only limitation being you can only change this for each pair of inputs: eg channels 1 and 2 both have to be either analogue or digital.  Ditto 3 & 4 and all other pairs.

The benefit of using the Ada8000 (or similar ) would be eight channels of phantom and pre-amps as well as avoiding any theoretical sync issues.

Ambient mics in this context is still something I need to perfect. At a minimum I need to reconcile myself to running two pairs (one for audience plus one for onstage sound) but I'm beginning to understand why the pros use four or more pairs... Then again: Live at Leeds, Jimi at Monterey, Too Late To Stop Now etc etc etc...
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Offline slowburn

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #23 on: October 20, 2015, 02:30:57 PM »
People!  An ADAT output does not require an ADAT tape deck

There are plenty of computer interfaces with ADAT inputs.

Great. More alternatives, just what I needed ...

Had totally missed that you could get ADAT as computer interface. But not sure if there are any benefits over firewire for me? Would an ADAT card in the computer have the same risk as a firewire card? Meaning something else in the computer hogging resources etc. Also can't firewire handle more data flow. If ADAT is at 8 x 24/48 or 4 x 24/96 I'm pretty sure Firewire can do more.

In short, in a computer what would the benefit of a RME HDSP 9652 for $700 be in my situation over a regular firewire input.

Offline Life In Rewind

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #24 on: October 20, 2015, 03:05:49 PM »
I just noticed we have 2 of these at work - but pointless with the ZED, since this comes back to Firewire out.

Offline slowburn

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #25 on: October 20, 2015, 03:50:19 PM »
These are different things.  There are Firewire interfaces with ADAT inputs.  ADAT is a digital audio transmission format; Firewire is a data bus.  ADAT is the same for every device that uses it; a Firewire interface will always have custom drivers for the various OSs its manufacturer decides to support.

ADAT is one-way from the output to the input; the connected device has absolutely no effect on the output device.  The mixer won't even know whether or not its ADAT ports are connected.  It just blasts out a data stream in a fixed format by toggling a LED on and off.

Firewire is a two-way data exchange between the device and the computer, and brings with it the usual issues with driver stability or lack thereof.  If the Firewire bus is happy, you are happy.  If it is unhappy . . . then you get into issues about worrying about drivers and chipset compatibility . . .

The RME stuff will be either PCI, PC card, USB, or Firewire connection to the computer, as with any other interface.  I can't tell you if $700 is worth it compared with the mixer to your lappy Firewire, because you won't know until you try the Firewire to see if it works well.  If it does, then you are fine.  If it doesn't . . . but there are other options that don't cost $700.  But I'm not trying to sell ADAT, just explaining how these systems work.

I do appreciate your time. I'm trying to figure this out.

As a side note.

While researching this I noticed that RME cards seems way overpriced in the US. Sweetwater, Amazon etc all have them at $699 which is $100 saving from retail. In Europe they sell for 449 euro which is around $510 and that INCLUDES around 20% vat so the comparable price is more like $410 to $699. I know it's a German company but still. Rare to see such a big difference in that direction. Good thing I'm in Europe. Makes it closer to my budget.

Offline phil_er_up

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Re: Advice on multitrack recording (up to 16 channels)?
« Reply #26 on: October 22, 2015, 12:19:18 PM »
Used a RME 24/96 PCI card for over 10 years. It is expensive though very quiet, thought about buying the ADAT card too. Back then the card did not run on all brands of PC's. Purchased the card in early 2000's and my PC was not that fast or had that very much memory just due to the times and the PC never had a problem keeping up with 2-channel recordings though did not ran it with 16-channels. The card came with software to run a 16 channel mixer with many options for input and output though you had to buy the ADAT card ( if I remember correctly). The card is in my closet and can not run on 64 bit architecture so had to be retired....

Local band has a A&H Mix wizard 16:2 that I run sound and record with. So this thread is interesting to me. The mix wizards had different record options with 16 individual 1/4 outputs and 2 different stereo mixes and you can run it to a computer for either 16 or 24 channels. At their practices have used a 2,4,8-channel recorder. When using the 8 channel recorder, sometimes run 6 channels from mixer to the recorder and use 2 mics in the room then mix from there. Or sometimes just use the 2 channel Stereo mix output and the 2 room mics. Have tried many combinations and always interested trying to mix each different configuration.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2015, 12:36:15 PM by phil_er_up »
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