| Hi Mark
I have a setup that's quite similar to your. When I started out offering remote recording services I tried several different solutions, including hauling a whole PC with monitor and interfaces to the gig (laptops weren't so reliable some 6 years ago), and that wasn't practical let alone reliable.
I chose to go with dedicated HD recorders. I went with an SDR 2496 from mackie. I've had nothing but great results from it, in years of use on the road, it gets loaded and unloaded lots of times from my SUV to gigs and back to the studio, so I have to say it's pretty much vibration-proof. I've mounted a removable drive tray in it so I record each show to a different drive and then, just as you do, I pull it out and plug it in my Pro Toools setup back at the studio for eding and mixing or simple file delivery. So far in almost 6 years of use I've never had a single problem with it. The only time I had to scramble was when somebody tried to pull out the drive from the tray with power turned on...(don't ask me why, I don't even know who did it) and that fryed the drive; luckily it was before the gig, so I could always record on the internal drive, but can you imagine my "surprise" when I hit record before downbeat and I got an error message from the machine...not for the fainted...
Anyway the machine is rock solid. I hit record and let it run for the whole show (sometimes 1 hr plus) or just hit stop in between songs (during the audience applause) to save the track, and immediately start again; it's almost instantaneous. So far I've been backing up to tascams DA78hr or DA38s, which I rent and leave running till the end of the show, but since my gigs are going past the 24 tracks I'm searching over ebay for a second SDR2496 (they're discontinued) to have a compact 24 track backup, or 48 track with backups at additional cost.
Sound is pretty good: it's got both analog (on DB25 connecotrs) and digital (ADAT) I/O, so if I think something doesn't sound good on its converters I can just use outboard converters and go digital, it's got TC, MID I/O, Word Clock and its completely sychronizable to video black or time code for video shoots. I guess for the price it's a hell of a mahine.
As for the fact that HD recorders have been discontinued...DAW are a more flexible choice in the studio, but I think on the road where as you said reliability is the key an dedicated machine is still the best solution for what I'm concerned. Too bad we won't see any further developement on those things.
Cheers
L.G. |