I have had several failures with laptop recordings. Some were interfaces, some was PC crap. My Alesis HD24XR has never failed.

I do multi tracking for clients maybe three or four times a year (mostly large church and school choral events, a rock band or two, and/or big band jazz) and have moved from my '08 Apogee Ensemble FW to my Midas M32 (much more often used in my live sound/corporate meetings/live band gigs), often with eight channels of DAV Broadhurst Gardens on the front end. Record via USB out into MacBook Pro (mid-2012) and Logic Pro X. These mainly archive recording jobs are usually nothing that will ruin me if the multitrack isn't what it should be. Backup for archive is a live 2-mix 48/24 .WAV, via the onboard recorder... 2-mix is also usually the podcast/livestream feed, when necessary, and/or a TASCAM DR-60D for redundancy.

I haven't yet felt the need to try to tie the M32 into Logic as a control surface... ITB is still getting me where I need to be. And, it sounds pretty dang good...

FWIW... MMV.

HB

Photo is back hallway at NFBC before Christmas. Some clips can be heard in the "Three Samples" thread from late December.

I have to say, we own two Alesis HD24XR and probably 7 Soundevices units, My old HP/XP/Nuendo/Digiface rig was far more reliable than any of them. It only ever failed once in well over a thousand remotes. It failed due to a failed cable. I changed it out at intermission with a new one and it kept on going. We have had a handful of failures and some strange issues with the Alesis boxes and weird things with both our 788 and 722, but they are of course rare! Thankfully.
Cameron

I do have to say that over thousands of hours use, my 788T has let me down so few number of times as to be considered a non-issue. Always attributable to bad media as much as I can recall. Probably the most bomb-proof recorder I have ever used and in the mix were Studers, Revox, Ampex, Otari, Sony, Mackie and on and on. 2" to cassette, digital and analog.

If it was 32 inputs, I would never consider recording on anything else.

My JoeCo BBR-64 Dante has proved to be just as reliable, so far, and always serves as my primary recorder. As said earlier, if the whole Pro Tools/Artist Mix combo worked worth a s**t, it was compact and complete. But I won't need to explain to a client why the controller wasn't working or the recorder had dropped out of record ever again.

I have heard of Waves Tracks Live failing from a friend but so far, so good for me. It certainly doesn't stress the CPU on the computer.

I really do think that another JoeCo will be my final fix; just let it run with no controller as a Dante multicast receive straight off the preamps. Bob's your uncle.

Computer as Dante and Grace controller; no recording. Done with those problems forever.

D.

I suspect the trend towards lighter and thinner laptops means they aren't as physically durable as the older units, and the manufacturers want to sell us a replacement once the warranty expires. It makes me not want to buy a new laptop or desktop.

All my laptops are from 2012. After that, Apple quit putting I/Os on their computers. :(

D.

My all time favourite I/O connection was the old 54mm Cardbus-pcmcia card.... circa 2001 ! A really solid slide-in laptop card with lots of surface contact support....no wobble... based on its desktop equivalent. The following Express card (20 odd mm wide) was a much sloppier fit, easier to dislodge with an accidental bump. USB is ok, as is FireWire, but both should have had finger-screw tightening like the vga monitor cable. All time worst was the mini 4 pin FireWire connector, which would disconnect if you looked at it sideways !

The cardbus was great because it was a pci direct connection to the CPU ...like a direct neural implant It couldn't get pushed out of the way processing wise by streaming packet interrupts, like USB for example. Today, Thunderbolt seems to be the closest equivalent....but there's been a lot of dodgy, mechanically and electrically bankrupt connections in between...and even TB is a slide in mini connector with no locking ability. Ethernet seems solid enough....until it breaks, eh Doug ?

Today's laptops have become multipurpose non-pro kitchen gadgets....laden with processing power to seemingly no good end, less reliable than their equivalents of 15 years ago....a sad state of affairs.

Probably some management guys are saying they aren't making enough $--cut some more from the manufacturing cost and get rid of those expensive design engineers.

Doug. You might consider the Tascam da6400 instead of the second joeco. Would protect you against a firmware bug unique to the recorder. Might not be worth the price difference though.

If folks here are determined to stay with PC laptops for location use, there are dedicated assemblers of these who put together guaranteed working versions at just 2 or 3 price points and back their sales up with very good personal after-care. A big plus is that you get a new computer minus all the bloat ware that Dell, HP, Lenovo etc install on their store bought laptops as routine issue policy, so you get a lean, mean audio-only machine...no antivirus, malware detecting, scheduled service interrupt crap...

They hand select components for compatibility and negotiate the shifting sands very well indeed. They hang out on the Music Computers sub forum of GS. A few names I recall are 'DAW Plus' and ADK/Scott

They are generous enough to advise recording folk like us who fall afoul of clicks/pops/dropouts etc as well as running their own supply businesses. Hackintosh is another way to go of course, but Mac users are at the mercy of Apple to follow up on bug reports (which are currently rife for the 2018 MacBook Pro and Mac-Mini, maybe iMac too)

Dante? Plus, I know the foibles of the JoeCo pretty well at this point.

D.

Yikes! $1050 for a Dante card. What's up with that?

D.

Is that a street price?
Yikes indeed.

Yeah pretty much. You can get a few dollars off depending on who you order from. But the DA6400 is right about $4,700 with the requisite Dante card. And you need an extra card to do anything with the recorder. You can get a BBR64-Dante for about $3,600. Tascam needs to bring the cost for the DA6400 down by a grand or include either the Madi or Dante card in the purchase.

Agreed. I can't think of any value added to justify a price difference between the two.

Starting to mix a third live album for a very dynamic, jazz/rock group with typical rock band plus violin and sax. They have all been tracked on X32s across USB to a MBP running reaper. The events are always several hours. I have never had a hiccup recording 32 tracks.

For a decade or so prior, I did the same thing capturing 2-track on a variety of PCs and interfaces. Again, rock solid over many hours.

In the studio, I use reaper to play back, identify and mark desired sections and then export to mix in PT or SO. I use the latter most recent.

Another vote for Reaper here; it's never crashed on me, and I'm using a 6 year-old Lenovo with very outdated specs. Very efficient for editing too.

Tascam DA-6400 is my primary recorder unless I'm doing overdubs; got a free MADI card through a rebate which was essentially $1K off the sticker price.