Topic: I love my rig (Studio Projects and PDAudio fluff)

[lds490]

I've been recording shows for about a year now and I've finally got my rig all set.  I ran my new mics last weekend at both Rowan/Rice and Hot Tuna.  I just can't believe that I made such amazing recordings.  The Tuna show is just awesome. 

I bought the Studio Projects C-1 mics because I wanted a LD mic, people seem to love their C-4s, and I've liked the sound of the recordings made with the LSD-2.  The C-1 uses the same diaphram as the LSD and sounds similar.  I was thinking of getting the C-3 (same mic but with multi-pattern), but decided to save some money.  Plus, now I can feed my gear jones in a few months with a SD pair with interchangeable caps. 

I've finally worked out all the bugs with PDA recording at 24/96.  The PDAudio rig works perfectly as long as it is set up correctly (and you have enough power to keep everything running).  Current DAT tapers (who already have pre-amp/ADC and mics) should consider PDAudio for upgrading their rig.  If you already have the front end, switching to a PDA recorder would cost around $500.

My Rowan/Rice recording is currently being seeded on bt.etree.org (check Kickdown board for link).  I will B&P 24 bit FLAC files of the Hot Tuna show to any TS member who wants them.  PM me if you are interested.

[mmedley.]

I grabbed the Rowan/Rice show and it sounds great! Thanks for sharing it. +T

However, I cannot justify a PDAudio rig given the extremely rude and unprofessional customer service I got when I called to inquire about it.

[Brian Skalinder]

I've finally worked out all the bugs with PDA recording at 24/96. The PDAudio rig works perfectly as long as it is set up correctly (and you have enough power to keep everything running). Current DAT tapers (who already have pre-amp/ADC and mics) should consider PDAudio for upgrading their rig. If you already have the front end, switching to a PDA recorder would cost around $500.

Not a lot of info floating around about the PADudio setup.  Would you be willing to write up a brief post on the specific gear / software you use, what problems you experienced, and steps you follow for setting it up to work for you at 24/96?

[lds490]

I cannot justify a PDAudio rig given the extremely rude and unprofessional customer service I got when I called to inquire about it.

Agreed--one of the biggest drawbacks is that Core-Sound is the one and only vendor for the PDA-CF card interface.  I've had ok experience with Len, but others have not.

[lds490]

I've finally worked out all the bugs with PDA recording at 24/96. The PDAudio rig works perfectly as long as it is set up correctly (and you have enough power to keep everything running). Current DAT tapers (who already have pre-amp/ADC and mics) should consider PDAudio for upgrading their rig. If you already have the front end, switching to a PDA recorder would cost around $500.

Not a lot of info floating around about the PADudio setup.  Would you be willing to write up a brief post on the specific gear / software you use, what problems you experienced, and steps you follow for setting it up to work for you at 24/96?

http://www.taperssection.com/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=17536


I've been experimenting a lot with different battery configurations and external HD vs. microdrive.  In my experience, there are two keys to successful 24/96 recording:

1.  Use Live 2496 (Gidluck Mastering) software that allows you to "pre-allocate" wave files, which makes writing data to disk faster.  Basically, you create 1, 2, 3, or 4 GB wav files on the HD in advance, and then fill in the music data later.  There are some drawbacks to this, but it works.

2.  Power.  The hard drive is the most power-hungry part of my configuration.  I've been using an external battery pack with rechargeable AA batteries and I've run out of power after a couple of hours.  Alkaline batteries, on the other hand, will run the HD for up to 8 hours.  I also just started using a Wal-Mart DVD battery.

[lds490]

Pictures:

http://www.taperssection.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=27859.0

[Ed.]

the pda is a reasonable cheap way to do 24/96 at the moment, but do you have to use the mic2496 with it?

[BobW]

I cannot justify a PDAudio rig given the extremely rude and unprofessional customer service I got when I called to inquire about it.

Agreed--one of the biggest drawbacks is that Core-Sound is the one and only vendor for the PDA-CF card interface.  I've had ok experience with Len, but others have not.

One of the goals of Pen_computing_audio Yahoo! Group was to get vendors to make PDA drivers for their PCMCIA cards, but the CF is smaller.  The PCMCIA vendors basically ignored us.   Core-Sound  seems to own this.  My personal experience was positive, FWIW.
Also worth mentioning is that Gordon Gidluck and his Live!2496, has taken this to great heights with alot of innovative PDA OS programming.

I ran my PDAudio-CF with a UA-5 by coax and TOSLINK. I also ran it from an Echo MIA and the S/PDIF output of a CD player.
Mic2496 not required, but is is small. I'd love to hear an A-B comparison to an Apogee or Grace  A/D-Pre.

The Yahoo! Group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PenComputingAudio/

[Ed.]

about how much would a decent pda, live!2496 and whatever else you need cost roughly?

[lds490]

about how much would a decent pda, live!2496 and whatever else you need cost roughly?

if you want to record 24/96, I'd recommend getting an external HD.  This configuration is not as stealthy, but for 24/96 you need lots of storage.  CF and SD card capacity is increasing and prices are dropping, but for now I'd stick with an external HD.  I use a 4Gb microdrive for my stealth configuration.  It will record 24/48 for 4 hours, but crashes the PDA at 24/96.  If you want to stealth 24/96, you must invest in a 4GB CF card, which will allow you to record for 2 hours.  You will need more than one card if you need more time.  The latest version of Live2496 allows you to switch cards while recording.

These prices are from the Core-Sounds web page:   

* Core Sound's PDAudio-CF S/PDIF interface card: $199 (Core Sound)
* HP iPAQ h5150 or h5155 PD: around $220 (eBay), or h5550/h5555: under $400 (eBay)
* HP Dual PCMCIA Expansion Pack: under $80 (eBay)
* An external hard drive: $100 and up
* Optical cable to connect Mic2496 and PDAudio-CF: $15 (Core Sound) [look on Ebay for better/less expensive cable]
* Gidluck Mastering's "Live2496" audio recording software: under $50

Total:  Under $700

[sml42]

I have brought up my issues with Core Sound in general and their Mic2496 in particular several times on these forums. I don't feel the need to go over this again, suffice it to say I'm just not impressed with either, and I would urge caution with anyone considering dealing with coresound.

However, I will talk a little about the technical ins and outs of recording at 24/96. I think I can speak with some authority on this, since I did my research 2 months ago. One side project I'm working on (VERY loosely working on, this is strictly a hobby, paying work must come first) is a stealth recording device. The main design issues are (1) battery life (2) recording capacity and (3) write speed to the media. Your choices are basically either compact flash or some form of hard drive (e.g. microdrive). The first two should be fairly obvious: CF has much better battery life, principally because there is no motor to spin and no heads to move over the platter; however current state-of-the-art CF is I think 5GB, compared to several hundred GB for a conventional hard drive or I think 60GB for the 1.5" Toshiba drive used in an iPod. The math is easy: 24/96 takes just over 0.5MB per second of recording time (WAV), so a 4GB CF card would hold around 2 hours of recording, compared to the 30 hours or so for a 1.5" 60GB drive.

The 3rd item, media write speed speed is where things get interesting. As I noted above, 24/96 requires just over 0.5MB per second. I took a look at the specs for SanDisk CF cards, they are rated at 16MB/s burst transfer, which should comfortably enough, right? Well, not quite. In order to get this rate there are some base requirements. You need to start writing on a page boundary (typically, on multiples of 8 sectors), and you need to write a power-of-2 (2,4,8,16...) number of sectors in one go. The more you write in one burst, the better throughput you will get, throughput tends to peak around the 128-sector mark. And here's the crunch: if you don't meet these requirements, throughput drops significantly. That's why you need to pre-allocate the file, to get as close to this ideal as possible (also, so that you're not seeking all over the media, between writing audio data and writing updates to the FAT). But even so, the underlying operating system (PalmOS, WinCE) will generally not handle things optimally. Microdrives tend to suffer the same problems; external drives much less so, by virtue of having large on-drive buffers.

It CAN be done, with careful design, and possibly writing your own realtime operating system dedicated to this task, there is plenty of slack in a CF/microdrive system to make it work. The solution is not to throw more CPU power at the problem, since the CPU is not the bottleneck. Careful design is the correct solution

Embedded systems is where I'm at, it's what I do for a living. This would be an incredibly cool project... if only I could find the time

best regards,
stephen

[Ed.]

* HP iPAQ h5150 or h5155 PD: around $220 (eBay), or h5550/h5555: under $400 (eBay)

will it work just as well with the cheaper pda's or do you suggest the more expensive ones?

[sickrick43]

I cannot justify a PDAudio rig given the extremely rude and unprofessional customer service I got when I called to inquire about it.

Agreed--one of the biggest drawbacks is that Core-Sound is the one and only vendor for the PDA-CF card interface.  I've had ok experience with Len, but others have not.

Len is an assclown, thinks his shit don't stink and that HE PERSONALLY invented stealth taping.  His support for the PDAudio has been somewhat lackluster - the hardware seems OK, but since he hasn't written ANY of the drivers or AIO interfaces, it's no wonder the windows driver is still the beta 2 that he had OVER A YEAR AGO and still doesn't work worth a shit.

He COULD have spent some effort on making this thing actually be more than single use semi-vapor-ware (by that, I mean that it does work somewhat consistently in some linux implementations, on some hardware).  I've got one of the expensive little paperweights here, that was destined as a laptop interface, but he'll NEVER get a working windows driver out for it.

All I can say for Len is BUYER BEWARE...

Rick

[lds490]

* HP iPAQ h5150 or h5155 PD: around $220 (eBay), or h5550/h5555: under $400 (eBay)

will it work just as well with the cheaper pda's or do you suggest the more expensive ones?

First, it must run Windows CE, not Palm OS.  Second, it must support expansion (you need 2 CF or PC slots).  Third, some models still don't work.  Take a look at the Core-Sounds web page.  They have recommended systems for 24/96, 24/48, and stealth recording.

[Phil]

I'm 1/2 way there to a PDA setup (Ipaq / dual-PC sleave) and even though I personally have not had any problems with core-sound, i would like to stay away form the PDAudio-CF and use a vx pocket,  becuase I already own one.  I emailed Gordon to see if the Live24/96 could possibly support the vx pocket and his reply was:

"Hi Phil,
There are no pocket pc drivers for the VX Pocket.

Creative has a new device for laptops, and I was hoping that they would be developing a pocket pc driver so I could make Live2496 to work with it. However, they don't seem interested.

PDAudio is the only option currently for digital input on the pocket pc.

Gordon"

So my next plan is to go the linux root since the software and vx pocket drivers are already out there.  If anyone's tried this yet I would like to hear some experiences.