Mobile recording DAW set-up

[JBMobile]

Hey guys,

new here but been a lurker for years. I have been given an oppurtunity to do live tracking for a live HD video company, who specializes in doing shoots of live shows. They are looking for a second AE to handle the multitrack audio for their shoots, i met with them and sat in on a controlled video shoot the other day and it looks like its a go for me to start working with them on some upcoming projects.

THey want me to be able to do up to 16 tracks at 48k 24 bit non-stop for a whole show (so the audio can be easily synced with the video there can be no stops)

my current rig that i use at home for mainly my own demos is:

ANtec take 3 rackmount pc
AMD sempron 64 1.8ghz processor
1 gb ram
WD mybook 300gb external firewire drive
runnning cubase sx3

RME fireface 800 (love this thing!)
sytek mpxii 4 channel pre
digimax ls (shipping right now.)

i have recorded 10-12 channels of drums on this set-up before no problem, and mixed itb 18 channels no problem at 48k.



They said i could borrow the splitter and snakes from them until i can get
a set of my own so that helps alot!

so what im going to be getting now is jsut a Behringer ADA8000 for the additional inputs and another 2gb of ram for the computer.

THe rackmount pc will be in its own ata case and everything else will be in a 6 space SKB case.

my question is for 'tracking only' do you think this rig will be able to record 16 tracks at a time for 1hr+?

and is anyone running a similar rig with success?

hoping to get an HD24 as soon as i can afford it, seems more reliable.

p.s. the current AE is running 2x behringer ada8000 into a fostex 24track hd recorder and monitors thru 2x beringer 8ch line mixers. He has gotten some great results, i listened to his reel and sounds pretty good and very easy set-up and tear down.

thanks for your suggestions and or opinions in adavance

[LX3]

Originally Posted by JBMobile

my question is for 'tracking only' do you think this rig will be able to record 16 tracks at a time for 1hr+?

Short answer is "yes".

I find that it all hinges on the software setup. If I were you, I would experiment over and over before your first gig, to make sure that you can record the number of tracks you want to record, for two hours or so, without a single glitch. (I'd also consider installing a second internal drive to record to, if you can, just for convenience - one less thing to carry and plug in).

Different DAW packages seem to have different levels of reliability. e.g. to my surprise recently I found I could record 32 tracks totally glitch-free for two hours in Digital Performer, whereas Nuendo (costing four times as much) on the same system couldn't manage more than five minutes without blowing up. Since upgrading to Mac OS 10.5, I think Nuendo might be more stable... but DP may not be.

Once you have things working in a stable and reliable fashion, try not to mess with the setup by doing upgrades or adding new software or plugins... unless you have a few days to torture test the upgraded system before your next gig. It's well worth dedicating the machine to tracking, and if you need to do anything else, buy another computer to do it on. That way you know that if your tracking rig worked fine on the last gig, there should be no problems on the next one either.

The main issue with DAWs for me is speed of use. A mouse, keyboard and monitor is much slower to use than a hardware recorder and a desk. That can become a real problem on some gigs. But see how you get on. In more controlled situations like I suspect yours is, it may not be a big deal.

Yes, I find the HD24 more convenient in many ways, although they're not without their issues. But it's a good choice.

Great that you can use their splitter.

Lastly - and I'm sure i won't be alone in saying this - you need a safety recorder, especially when you're doing work for video. You cannot risk hiccups in the audio when there is an entire video crew relying on you. Many shows - at least the ones I do - are true one-off events, and there will be no way to get another take, or record another gig.

For me though, that's half the fun of the job. It's really life-affirming to be put under pressure and not drop the ball.

[Maber]

I agree with LX3, i can be done but make shure you test your set-up carefully. I have recorded for 12hours @ 196khz in nuendo so it can be a very stable. there is a company over here recording live shows with a flypacked DAW systen and remotecontrolled RME preamps!

backups man you need a back-up, given that you are on a budget i would look into getting a used ADAT, DA88 recorder (or some =).
I have done some straight to stereo jobs using a DAT as my main recorder and recording on one or two of the cameras for safety, it's better than nothing =). I like having a mixing desk!!
i write this for you future consideration!

I wish you the best of luck, i sounds like you have a good gig comming.

[XJR]

Recording multiple tracks of audio doesn't actually stress a PC as long as the harddrive is fast enough. My mobile system is powered by a modest 2.4Ghz P4 chip with 512 ram. No problem recording 18 tracks for 3 hours straight using Protools LE.
Before a long recording session I normally back up everything on the audio drive and format it. That gives you a clean drive which can make things more reliable.

[Bob Bickerton]

Can you budget to hire a HD24 until you can buy one? Could be a wise strategic investment. (by that I mean you greatly reduce the chances of losing the contract because your PC has crashed!!)

Bob

[tenor39]

Does the video company use a TV truck or is it just a rig that's setup on site? Regardless, you can run audio into each camera/VTR as a backup, or if there's a truck, you can run multiple tracks into each VTR (we used to call it "Polish multi-track"). It all depends on how much routing capability you have.

[JBMobile]

thanks for the replies everyone, i really appreciate the input.
I feel alright about my rig now for just recording, wiping and reformatting the drive before gigs is a great idea as well.

as far as renting a backup HD24 at this point i dont know if the projects bugets will be able to cover it but i should look into it, not sure of any rental places in the boston area?

any ideas fellow MA engineers?

The video crew does not have a monitoring truck, they shoot with hand held HD cameras on glide stands right up on stage and there is no audio feed back to the cameras, that would be a good backup if the video was set-up that way tho.

any other ideas for cheap yet reliable backup system?

[JBMobile]

well, looking on ebay you can get the cassic ALesis blackface for like nothing now.

could send the adat 8 ch out of my digiface analog outs as back-up, probably could afford two for all 16ch backup.

could i sync those units off the RME fireface, reliably? i haven't used a blackface since school and remeber having some transport/sync problems using two units.

anyone using ADAT as a backup?

[Remoteness]

If you are referring to the ADAT digital tape recorder...

I would stay away from it, perhaps even run from it and don't look back.

The Alesis ADAT HD24XRs are rock solid hard disk recorders that you could use with great confidence!

[gareth.h.rees]

How about a Fostex D series recorder? There were a few 8 and 16 track ones, I think 16 bit but for backup would be fine?

Ones I've seen are
D80, D90, D108 - 8 Track
D160 - 16 Track

I may have some of those numbers wrong but search ebay etc. Probably more reliable than an ADAT Tape machine but less expensive than a HD24.

Good luck
Gareth

[Remoteness]

I don't know about you folks, but I do not understand the mindset that a 16 bit recorder can be a backup to a 24 bit recorder. IMHO, it's just another recording and not a true back up.

Imagine having a drop out (or another problem equally disastrous) in a particular section of a performance and you need to grab the back up recording to drop in that section... How is this done when it will clearly not sound alike? So, you may say, "Well, I'll just drop in the entire tune into the sequence." And, I say, "Will that tune match the sound quality of the rest of the recording?"

The way I see it is as follows:
The back MUST be equal to the main or master recorder or it's not a real back up.
I would consider a 16 bit recorder as the back up to the back up, but I still would want to keep them all within the same sound quality.

Flame on…

[JBMobile]

i totally agree whatever my back-up rig is it must be able to do 24bit 48k
after looking around and researcing more i think my answer lies with a couple DA78s or for now a 2 trk DAT back up either way presents teh problem of adding a third case to the rig or buying a big 14u rack on wheels!

trying to do this on a low/no budget but still be reliable for the clients as im jumping right into working real paying gigs and not jsut some friends band at a club, ya know?

[danijel]

Originally Posted by JBMobile

my question is for 'tracking only' do you think this rig will be able to record 16 tracks at a time for 1hr+?

Originally Posted by Maber

I have recorded for 12hours @ 196khz in nuendo so it can be a very stable.

!!!! watch out - plain WAV files have a filesize limit (2Gb, if i recall correctly), which amounts to about 1hr stereo @ 96kHz !!!!

be sure to record to WAV64 (nuendo project options - don't know about cubase thou)

Originally Posted by LX3

whereas Nuendo (costing four times as much) on the same system couldn't manage more than five minutes without blowing up. Since upgrading to Mac OS 10.5, I think Nuendo might be more stable... but DP may not be.

version 3.2 on XP laptop has never failed on me (been recording entire rock festivals - 6+ hrs 16tracks). but i have this XP install where i only have nuendo and waves.

[Shadow_7]

I think the 2GB limit is more a function of the filesystem in use. Win95/98/ME use a Fat32 filesystem. Which I believe has the 2GB limit per file. Earlier flavors used Fat16 which has a 2GB per partition limit. Windows NT/XP/2000/Vista/+ use the NTFS filesystem which doesn't have that issue. It could also be the file type. But I thought I'd just point out that tidbit. Since your USB flash is probably formatted to Fat32 or even Fat16. For linux types ext2 has a 4GB filesize limit. More like 2.1GB and 4.3GB respectively.

[ghellquist]

Good programs split the files seemlessly when they go above 2G. Larger wav files is not really recommended as many applications cannot handle them. One example (from own experience) of a good program is Samplitude. My friend uses Reaper and is happy with that. But the real key is to actually test it at home.

As for memory - extra memory in the PC is not really needed for recording purposes.

Gunnar

[LX3]

Originally Posted by Remoteness

I don't know about you folks, but I do not understand the mindset that a 16 bit recorder can be a backup to a 24 bit recorder. IMHO, it's just another recording and not a true back up.
Flame on…

No flaming from me. Not even getting warm.

I agree with you Steve, but I also think that ANY multitrack backup is better than no multitrack backup.

I guess it depends on how much someone has to spend... if they have no budget at all, and can pick up a workable 16-bit solution very cheaply, then fine.

But as I see it, things like the HD24XR aren't that expensive... and there's no doubt that it's way more costly (both financially and in terms of time and effort) to buy the wrong thing cheap, then be forced to sell it and buy the right thing anyway.

Lord knows I've done that a few times!

[Drum9uy]

My concern that I haven't seen voiced yet is using the ada8000. I had one a while ago and it died just outside of the 1yr warranty, it's not only the computer that could crash on you.

[Remoteness]

I hear you.

It would be better than nothing, but...

Originally Posted by LX3

...I agree with you Steve, but I also think that ANY multitrack backup is better than no multitrack backup.

I guess it depends on how much someone has to spend... if they have no budget at all, and can pick up a workable 16-bit solution very cheaply, then fine.

But as I see it, things like the HD24XR aren't that expensive... and there's no doubt that it's way more costly (both financially and in terms of time and effort) to buy the wrong thing cheap, then be forced to sell it and buy the right thing anyway.

Lord knows I've done that a few times!

[JBMobile]

thats good to have the filesize issue cleared up. i think i've settled that my back up for know will be a 2 track dat back-up as i want to save up for an HD24. I know someone who said i could make him an offer for his Mackie 24tr (forget the model name) wonder if anyone is using the makckie HD and what are the reviews on that?

also when i get the HD24 will be getting 2 da88's for back-up i've decided.

also the ada8000 will only be temporary until i can get another digimax.

[Maber]

Originally Posted by danijel

!!!! watch out - plain WAV files have a filesize limit (2Gb, if i recall correctly), which amounts to about 1hr stereo @ 96kHz !!!!.

MY bad i got things mixed up, of course we recorded @48Khz for 12 hours with our Nuendo setup (and at only 16bit), so i stand corrected!

[misterlong]

I also had an ada8000 die on me just outside warranty (. Something to do with the lightpipe inputs.outputs. Still powers up but no use!!
I was using it very successfully in my mobile rig however up to that point and for the sake of 150 quid (I only bought it for some extra outputs which were running to speakers attached under tanks of water for an art installation check out Sound )
It became a pretty useful piece of kit after that! When I have the cash I will probably buy an RME octamic D above anything else, for the awesome wordclock and good pres, but in an emergency I would still buy another ada8000. I certainly have had 150 quids worth of use out of it in a year or so.I have actually earned nearly that in a year just renting my flight case (828.ada8000 etc) to a few folks for some remote sessions. There is already 1 album commercially released from these sessions! It sounds great!

[ext_frequency]

I have a nuendo rig broken down as follows

motu 2408*4 ->adi648->hdsp madi

dual amd x2 4200
2gb ram
1 raptor os drive
1 7200 seagate 160gb audio drive(soon to upgrade to western digital re2 and raid it up for more bandwith)
1 7200 seagate 160gb sample drive

I have recorded 24-32 tracks for about 3-4 hours without a hickup. Have to thank nuendo and rme for that. Rock solid drivers and software. I guess the difference is that my audio computer is only for audio. I spend a couple of hours tweaking it preparing it for audio.

I recently mixed a 112 track project (not all audio including group channels about 100 audio tracks but not fx send/returns) with a whole bunch of plugins spread around, and system didn't even hickup once. Latency was high though I believe at 1024ms, but for mixing doesn't bother me at all. At one given moment the most amount of tracks being played was around 60-70.

What alot of guys are saying is true, you don't need as much cpu/memory power but more hard drive speed.