How to construct a 96-track recording/playback computer ?

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Moritz

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I have a question regarding the construction of a recording computer. I need to record all inputs before a live mixer at a musical show. We have 28 Microports (soloist), 4 backstage choir microphones and 40 orchestra microphones.
The purpose of the setup is to record (before the mixer) a rehearsal, and after the actors and orchestra has gone home, play it back (into the mixer) and do fine tuning of all dialog and song.
The secondary use of the configuration is to make a CD production from the live recordings.

What equipment is needed for such a setup?
My guess is I need 8 stackable 12 channels I/O boxes mounted in a 19” rack.
A computer capable of handling the data traffic.
Some software capable of handling 96 channels.

Is a setup like that possible to make for around 10000 €

Does anyone have any suggestions for the I/O boxes, computer, and recording software?

Moritz
 
This is way beyond my pay grade but wouldn't you want to take outs from the mixer after the pres? You are going to need 96 channels of input with pre-amps if you're taking splits, no? I'm counting 72 channels. Where do you get 96?

:confused:
lou
 
BTW - welcome. I see this is your first post.

While I'm sure there are people here who could make good suggestions this is Home Recording. Have you tried any sites frequented by industry pros? ProSoundWeb comes to mind.


lou
 
Moritz said:
I have a question regarding the construction of a recording computer. I need to record all inputs before a live mixer at a musical show. We have 28 Microports (soloist), 4 backstage choir microphones and 40 orchestra microphones.
The purpose of the setup is to record (before the mixer) a rehearsal, and after the actors and orchestra has gone home, play it back (into the mixer) and do fine tuning of all dialog and song.
The secondary use of the configuration is to make a CD production from the live recordings.

What equipment is needed for such a setup?
My guess is I need 8 stackable 12 channels I/O boxes mounted in a 19” rack.
A computer capable of handling the data traffic.
Some software capable of handling 96 channels.

Is a setup like that possible to make for around 10000 €

Does anyone have any suggestions for the I/O boxes, computer, and recording software?

Moritz
Click to expand...

Theoretically it is possible.

You will need a few of these, 32 chanel light pipe box $400
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/ProFireLightbridge.html

Now, you will not be able to use ASIO drivers because Asio will only allow you one audio device at a time and you would need 3 light bridges (it is possible that the maudio driver would allow 2 units, no way to know though).

You would have to use wdm drivers. They have higher latency but you won't care if you are just doing live recording.

Pro Tools M-Powered currently supports a maximum of 18 simultaneous inputs and outputs so you would have to use another brand of DAW software, I would call each manufacturer for their hard or soft limitations on simultaneous recording.

You will not be able to use a single fire wire bus, you would have to add a pcie firewire card.

You would need to build astout I7 computer with 300gb raided velocoraper drives or ssd drive (which will raise the cost)and then a backup solution to a external case to move your data.

Lets see
Computer I7 $3k
3 ProFireLightbridge $1200
4 VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB drives $1200
12 Lightpipe IO modules http://www.samash.com/webapp/wcs/st...Converter and 8 Microphone Preamp-_-BADA8000X $199 ...$2400

1 Raid enclosure http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2&cm_re=sata_enclosure-_-17-993-022-_-Product $200
5 2tb drives http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...579&cm_re=2tb_internal-_-22-136-579-_-Product $1500

I think you can do it for about $8000 or 6200 euros plus whatever the cost of your daw software.

I am getting together with my friend next weekend. We both have Behringer ddx3216s with 32ch of lightpipe each, he has one profire lighbridge and I have a couple of RME lightpipe cards. I will see if I can get him to do a little test to see if we can do this with what we both have by putting it all in my I5 with an SSD to see if it can handle it. I will let you know. As I said, it may be possible but you may run into issues of bandwith or software incompatability. That will only tell you if you can get to 62, I don't have more equipment than that.

I am looking at this from a home studio perspective and I think I could very well to this with your budget but to be realistic, you would be better off talking to a sound reenforcement company that had experience doing this and would know those answers.
 
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On the hardware side, take a look at what MOTU has to offer. They have a few configurations that can go up to 96 channels.

One would be the PCI424 card with a few 2408 units fully expanded. Although that alone would fill up a pretty good sized rack.

Another option might be the PCI424 card with 4 24I/O units.

Check them out. They're not cheap, but they're reliable and of decent audio quality.
 
This is more than possible, but way beyond the scope of what we normally deal with in terms of home recording... might I suggest you take a visit to Gearslutz.com, and probably in particular the "Remote Possibilities in Acoustic Music & Location Recording" forum which is geared towards mobile and live recording.

€10000 sounds a lot, but when you start looking at the cost of some of this gear you'll start to see that it might not stretch as far as you might expect. I have an alternate suggestion that I'll pose at the end once I've run through the barebones of the computer-based solution you asked for...

Obviously you're gonna need a reasonably decent computer, though more for the stability and recording capabilities than any kind of raw number-crunching power. 96 tracks isn't actually a lot (particularly if latency isn't an issue and you're able to run with slightly larger buffers, which I suspect you will be) for a computer to deal with and will mainly test a few bottleneck areas (i/o, storage, etc) than stress the whole system. Still, a well spec'd i5 or i7 rig is probably in order; definitely go for i7 if you're gonna be mixing on the same computer following the recording (playback of 96 tracks requires next to no processing power, but start adding some processing - a plugin or two to each track - and you'll soon start eating up the processor cycles). If you're dealing with critical live recordings then a RAID 1 array is going to be preferable for redundancy, so budget a fair amount for storage as well.

As for the recording hardware itself, the first thing that comes to mind would be two of these... RME: HDSPe MADI ...combined with the appropriate AD-converter units, probably 12 of these (along with the optional MADI i/o cards)... RME: ADI-8 QS. Without even looking up prices and adding it up I can already guess that I've shot wayyy over budget. Even if you saved cost by going cheap on the converters (which you could do if you went for the ADAT version of that RME card, though you would then require 3 of them) I think this approach would still stretch the budget a lot. A Pro Tools HD rig would also probably be out of the question.

So my suggested computer-based solution would be a Motu PCIe-424 with four Motu 24 i/o units. This would set you back around €4500 in total; not skimping but still leaving you plenty left over for the rest of the setup.


Now, the alternative suggestion. Standalone 24-track hard disk recorders such as the Alesis HD24 and Mackie HDR / SDR units are starting to look a bit antiquated yet they're still very capable pieces of kit. They're quick to set up, highly reliable, and at today's prices you're budget would easily stretch to buy 8 of them, allowing you to run a fully redundant backup system (if that is important for you - if not then put the saved money to better use). You could pick them up very cheap on the second hand market, or at least haggle yourself a nice amount of discount for buying 8 at once. The recording quality would match up to anything done with a computer-based system, and the recordings can be transferred to a computer for mixing.
 
you guys are forgetting a key ingredient.

62 to 96 microphones. You take a very generic sm57 and at $100 a pop
and you have 6 to 9 grand right there. Then you add the necessary
cabling and stands. I think that would just about use the entire budget.:spank:
 
It sounded like the OP had the mic's sorted already... I interpreted it as they already have an established sound rig in the theatre and just want to start recording from it.
 
Matt, I think your suggestion about the Motu is the best solution. I did not know they existed. I am old school most live stuff we have done was with light pipe. In fact I have the RME cards of old. I will not buy RME ever again because they don't support their product (they will not update drivers to windows 7 64 and they don't offer any upgrades, they left us in the lurch and I would suggest no one purchase their products because if they follow their past history, they will not update their drivers.) Which is why we are still on 32 bit on new 64 bit machines. http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=6890
 
Thanks allot for all your replays.
Mattr is right all the mics are already there. We rent mics and mixer’s from production to production, alone the constellation of the orchestra makes the number of deferens mics an huge investment.
The production size changes every year, but it tends to only grow bigger. This year’s cast is about 130 persons, so the 2 mixer guys have their hands full. Due to the sharing of microports from scene to scene, the total number of channels needed exceeds the number of mics. The filter is set individual for each person on stage, so the mixers are an impressive sight.

I will look at all the different suggestions, an as we don’t have any previous equipment or software so there are no religious :) preferences for chousing any.
 
A little left field, but 2 of these with 2 x analog card options in each will give you 96 inputs, using the mixer as mic pres and the inserts as direct outs (if the console does not already have direct outs). They are designed to do exactly what you want and I think if you shop around on prices you may get it all for around the price you want.

Just to add, I also thought of 4 of these with a madi card would do it if you wanted to stay with the computer option.

Cheers
Alan
 
Hmmm. Very cool piece,witzendot, but I am not sure it is the most cost-effective solution. At $4,500 each, that's $9,000 for your 96 tracks. Compare that to the Alesis HD24- at $1,600 each, that's $6,400, plus $200 for a Fireport (there are better, less expensive options, btw) and $50 each- $200 for four- for additional drive caddies and drives. That's a total of $6,800, which gives you $2,200 to put towards whatever DAW/software you want, for mix-down. From my read of your application, I don't think you need the additional EC2 upgrade converter.
 
The budget was euro10,000, = about US$13,000 so the X-48 would be close to budget.

Yes, the HDR24 would work but you need 4 of them and twice as many drives.

They don,t need a DAW for mix down as they are not mixing down, only fine tuning a show using the console they have.

There are many solutions, the x-48 suggestion is only 1, but it is designed to do exactly what they want, recording live shows.

Cheers
Alan.
 
Have never dealt with logistics of 90+ tracks but rather than attempting to cobble something purely in a computer (as it would actually be easier to link 6-12 individual computers and hoping NAS raid bu was fast enough for turnaround processing then to try to get 12 individual audio cards to cohabitate in a single box (you can buy a PCI expansion cage and get the job done) I suggest you take a look at this. Dealing solely with US consumer retail and guestimate @ conversion rate 4 of these plus attendant firewire cards (for data transfer not recording) spec @ 5200-5500 Euro. And of course over here buying for at a time would typically suggest a fairly polite discount.

While for the work I do I try to operate under the mantra of 'less is more' and seldom push live tracking beyond 18 simultaneous (though have done up to 36) I do use one of these regularly & have for a couple of years and am OK with quality control/build quality.

The company with most experience with desk top computer solutions for this type of thing is AVID/Pro-Tools and a 96 channel PT set will, new cost in excess of 10K euro (and while I've never been a PT fan it is possible that for the installation you are talking about PT support could be greatly beneficial in helping getting all sorted out)
 
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