Long Distance Recording Situation, Need Help

B

Blakmore

New member
Hi Everyone,

I hope this is the right forum. If not, please let me know and I'll move it...

I have a strange situation where I need to transfer audio files between a Los Angeles based Cubase system and a Seattle based Fostex MR8 / n-track system. I'm sorry this post is rather long, but I want to explain the entire situation.

Here is how we currently do things:

a. I record all instruments on an Akai DPS16.

b. I do quick stereo mix down and burn it to CD.

c. I convert the stereo mix down to an MP3 and post it to our FTP site. Sometimes I post .wav files since we both have cable modems and large downloads are not a problem.

d. My buddy in Seattle downloads the MP3 and records it to his cassatte 4 track.

e. He then lays down the vocal tracks, does a quick stereo mix down, records the mix to his pc, converts it back to MP3 and puts it back on the FTP for my review.

f. Lather, rinse, repeat until we have the complete song structure.

This leaves us with a complete song but the recording and mix are terrible (my buddy is a great singer, but can't mix down to save his life). Once we have enough complete songs I fly to Seattle with the Akai, re-record his vocals and do a final mix.

Recently I changed to Cubase SX and my buddy upgraded to an MR8 and n-track. Since my buddy is now digital, I'd like to avoid the Seattle trip and just use his digitally recorded vocal tracks for final Cubase mixdown. In other words I'd like to get his final vocal tracks sent back to me and then get them into Cubase to do a final overall mix of music and vocals.

I would still record all parts of the song expect for the vocals in Cubase and send them to my buddy. He would then download the music files, record them to the MR8 or n-track and then lay down the vocal tracks in the MR8 or n-track.

At this point all I want back are his dry vocal tracks. I'll take his vocal tracks back into Cubase and do a final mix with my instrument tracks. This way we get keep all info in the digital realm and I do the final mix.

The specific questions I have are:

1. What is what format I should use to send the Cubase music tracks to my buddy? Stereo mix, wav file?

2. What format should send his vocal tracks back to me. wav?

3. I should be able to take his vocal tracks and "time align" them within Cubase so that they are in sync with the music tracks right?

4. Any other way to do this or any helpful hints to do this?

Thanks for reading this far and thanks in advance for the info.
 
Use WAV's and make sure he exports them as audio starting from the project origin otherwise you will have to manually line them up (won't be fun)....
 
Blakmore said:
Hi Everyone,

The specific questions I have are:

1. What is what format I should use to send the Cubase music tracks to my buddy? Stereo mix, wav file?

2. What format should send his vocal tracks back to me. wav?

3. I should be able to take his vocal tracks and "time align" them within Cubase so that they are in sync with the music tracks right?

4. Any other way to do this or any helpful hints to do this?

Thanks for reading this far and thanks in advance for the info.
Click to expand...

I would just send .wav files??? Why do all the extra conversions/mixes? If you have cable modems, doesn't you provider provide you with disk/web space??

I would just send all the files to the providers web space....
Have you buddy download all the files. This is for his refence/ starting point if you will.

As you buddy does his parts have him just post the new files (.wav) on the web space.

Granted there are space allocation issues to deal with but my provider provides me with 5 accounts each with 25M of disk space. This should be sufficant to exchage the updates, check with your calbe provider.

I have done this very thing with n-trak and Smaplitude be tween my studio and another DAW at my house.
 
One more thing!

Make sure you are both recording at the same performance specs(i.e., 16/24 bit, 44.1KHz, 96KHz, etc)
 
Thanks for the replies.

Even though we both have cable modems, I used to convert the files to MP3 just to make the download faster. Also since my buddy used to bring everything into an analog 4 track the sound quallty ended up terrible so the MP3 conversion was not a problem compared to the analog conversion.

Now that we can keep every digital, we will deal in nothing but wav files.

FYI, I have my own server / ftp so storage is no issue.

Anyway, I', glad to hear that we are on the right track (no pun intended).

Thanks again!
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
25Mb is hardly enough to swap uncompressed audio files.... 1 minute of uncompressed audio takes 10Mb at 16-bit!!!
Click to expand...


Blue Bear, that's why I prefaced what I said with the statement regarding space allocation issues. In addition I also stated that my provider provides me (can’t speak for anyone else) 25M for each account (max 5), that's 25 x 5. Notwithstanding, each of their provider could potentially provide the same space (or more) which would bring the total to 250M (split between the 2, obviously) before additional space would need to be allocated. Granted, it’s NOT the best situation to have to store files across multiple web servers but with 3rd party FTP utilities, it is possible to upload/download using a batch function.

Preferably, if this was these guys “normal” recording situation, it would certainly make more sense to set up their own FTP server (which could be located at either place). This is really quite easy to do but it would potentially require an addition computer. The plus side to this solution would be, they could put a huge hard disk in FTP machine to handle all their needs!

Thanks,
 
Here's what I do

I'm in the same situation as yourself. I do a lot of collaborations over the internet with various singers. I myself use cubase, but many of the singers I've worked with use different tracking programs. Here's usualy how I go about getting a song to the completed stage.......

1) I'll do a drum track (usualy sequenced using Fruity Loops 3.4 then each track of the kit exported out and into cubase as a .wav file), that gives me say....8 tracks of drums.

2) I'll put down a bass line and a rough guitar track (we're up to 10 tracks now)

3) I save the session and mix the Drums, bass and guitar (10 tracks) down to a stereo .wav file.

4) I then convert the .wav stereo mix down to 256kb/s MP3 and email that (I'm on dial up) to the singer.

5) The singer gets the MP3 in the email and converts it back to .wav, imports this stereo.wav file into their tracking program and record their vocals onto a new track.

6) This is the important part. Make sure your singer uses snap to grid and starts recording their vocal track from the START of the song. Droping in and starting recording before the first verse will leave you a big empty space and give you a nightmare trying to time align it when you get it back.

7) your singer exports the .wav file of their vocal track (perhaps a 2nd seperate file with backing vox or harmonies too) and sends it to you, either as a .wav of convert it to an mp3 of the highest bit rate they can.

8) download it, make sure you have snap to grid (or bar) turned on and import the vocal track in to cubase.

9) Easy or what?

10) by the time you get the vocal back you'll have had time to work on the mix with the drums & bass, redo the guitars, put a blistering solo in and drink lots of beer.

10a)Sit back and listen to your beautiful mix fall apart when you realise the EQ in the vocal track is all over the place killing that great baseline sound you had and canceling out your snare.

Happy Trackin

Alec.
 
We've been doing long distance collabs for a while and if some one uses a different format then it can be hard to do the internet thing so we simply mail CDs......no big deal....costs a couple of bucks.
 
Alec - thanks for the detailed reply. Looks like we have everything pretty much dialed in, just gotta figure we get the snap to grid set up correctly.

10a) That's what the beer is for eh?

Thanks to everyone else for the replies too.
 
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