Not on your life, Gillett. Stop dodging answering questions by asking questions you should be answering! You could go around like this on any topic in any forum, from home dentistry to Stealth fighter aircraft design.
YOU tell US what you’ve used in the past and what you’re using now. No more of your abstract digital deity off in the clouds or the back of your mind. No more conceptually speaking, but specifically, what do you have? What brands? What models? If it’s a 15-year-old Creative Soundblaster soundcard then give us the exact model number. If you have a DAW, what is the interface type, the computer brand, or is it homebuilt? What operating system do you use? What software do you use. What brand and model hard drives? Any partitioning tips you’d like to share?
What converters does you main interface use? What’s your preferred bit depth and sample rate combination? ISA, PCI, PCI-E, USB, or Firewire? CardBus on laptop? Name a few of your favorite plugins while you’re at it. There’ll be a quiz later.
Not far into this thread you said you’d never used ADAT and had to ask the most basic questions before you then graced us with your expertise on the matter. I’m thinking surely if you spoke on something you’ve actually had experience with how much more insightful and beneficial to the other members here.
Over to you…
Fine by me if I go first.
I'm no millionaire so my gear is a trade off. I get by with making smart choices of what's available in my price range.
My main card is an M Audio Audiophile 192. Bought it about 4 years ago.
I bought it for its ability to record supersonics, up about 80khz. Not that I'm into supersonics , but I was working on a project for a client who wanted to digitize thousands of audio tapes quickly. I teamed the 192 card up with their Otari DP4050 high speed duplicator which runs at x8 normal tape speed. Worked well.
Later I read of a company in the UK (Graff) was using exactly the same approach and with the same 192 card in their commercial products.
Interesingly, a guy on this forum who worked in one of the biggest analog tape to digital conversion businesses in the US, put me onto this card and his tip was much appreciated.
Since I mainly do 2 tracks, the 192 stereo card is fine. I also have an older M Audio 24/96 card. I'm considering buying a Zoom R16 for multitracking live gigs, and mixing that to the soundtrack for my live video footage. Still on XP. Only one PC is online. The others can stay on XP hopefully for some time yet. Software? Steinberg Wavelab 4. For video, Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5.
Preferred bit rate? For most of the analog tape material, which will have minimal processing and go straight to CD, 16 bits. Maybe 24 bits if the original tape is dbx encoded. 44.1 khz but if the audio is to end up on DVD I use 48khz to avoid sample rate conversion.
If someone asks me to do 24/96, I do 24/96 but nearly always, the sample rate/bit rate is not the weak link in the chain.
I also shoot video of live music gigs but as an amateur. My cameras record at 16/48 which in practice is fine although 24 bit (with converters to match) might get me out of trouble once in a while if I got the record levels way too low. That happened last Friday night. Rare event. The soundguy was all over the place that night and I was depending on his feed.
I also have a Zoom H4 which I use for stereo audience applause. It records to SD cards. Up to 4GB with a software update. Sometimes I use it to record an acoustic act in a small intimate venue when there's no PA. It only uploads to PC at USB 1.1 but since it's only for upload the speed doesnt affect the recordings already made. Wish now I'd waited and bought the H4n which is even more popular than the original H4.
I used to record via a mixer to a tiny M Audio Transit and via USB 1.1 to my laptop. Sound was fine but with three separate components, and cables everywhere, it was too messy so I rarely use the Transit these days.
HDD's? Whatever I can lay my hands on. Old IDE's and newer SATA's. Video avi files use up an enormous amout of HDD space. USB external drives for backup. Currently an HP 2TB and a WD 1TB. In practice they have no effect on the sound or video so long as they can keep up. Bigger worry is how long they will keep going. I keep multiple copies for backup of important material. Of course I retain all original analog and digital tapes used.
Only stuff I've lost is due to some cheap DVD's R's I once bought. Never again.
USB flash sticks are mighty handy for transferring material.
My video cameras use Firewire. I upload via either a Pinnacle Firewire card (PCI) or another 3x Firewire card (PCI) whose brand I cant remember. I have a laptop with PCMCIA but havent had a need for that yet.
Favourite plugins? Mostly I use the ones which came with Wavelab. I also use a freeware VST Azimuth corrector called "Stereo Tool" which does a great job on dynamically aligning analog tape tracks where there has been gap scatter between left and right channels. Means I can sum to mono without phase cancellation/drift - but I'm straying back into Analog tape talk.
No, I never used ADAT, and you know that because I said so on this HR forum. But unlike you, I didnt say that ADAT's main problem was "the harshness of digital". According to Farview, if some ADAT models did have harshness it was because of lousy converters. Having never used ADAT, I'm happy to take Farview's word on this, ahead of yours.
I have about 5 PC's running on XP. Started out on 98. They vary from 1.5GHZ to 3.2GHZ. All old but still working with my TLC.
Well that's most of my digital gear.
Again, over to you Mr Beck.