Classical piano recording: newbie Qs

  • Thread starter Thread starter Grotius
  • Start date Start date
Steve, as usual, you've done a great job answering all my questions. Thanks to you and the others in this thread, I now have a much better understanding of my options. I'm almost out of questions! (And Evil, thanks for the link; that's a useful thread.) But after doing more research, one more question bubbled up:

I know most audiophiles generally advocate outboard preamps to support condensers used to record classical piano. That would seem to rule out a small mixer with built-in preamps, like the Mackie 1202-VLZ Pro. If I want to record up to 4 (or 6??) piano tracks simultaneously (thereby endangering my $2K budget :-) ), should I think about something like the Tascam US 428, which can handle four inputs, and has a nifty USB interface? (Unless I'm mistaken, however, the 428 would not accept pre's with digital connectors.) I assume I could use the USB cable to record with a (noisy) laptop, or alternatively plug the mixer into a (quieter) stand-alone CD recorder.

Thinking out loud, maybe it's just simpler and quicker to go with a hard disk recorder, like the Korg D12 or Fostex VF80, that combines multitrack recording with some features of a mixer. Maybe I just answered my own question... :-)

Grotius.
 
I'm sorry, was part of that last post a question? :=) USB is kind of a joke for audio, since the US428 is a USB1.1 device. This limits the total bandwidth to just about enough for 4 channels of 44k audio. You might get two channels of 24/96 thru a USB1.1 connection, but not 4. If you're thinking again about a hard disk recorder, remember my post of 6-02. You like Chopin. Chopin like dynamics. Dynamics means periods of quiet. Quiet = NO HARD DISK, or at least a separate room or well-built isolation device of some kind. Then you need to remove said device from said enclosure and carry it upstairs to transfer.

I am more inclined now to re-think my recommendations and recommend that you use your upstairs computer with a firewire card, get a MOTU 896 interface (I think it even has pre's, not sure now) and connect to your computer with cat5 extenders from Belkin for control, and firewire with a couple of repeaters for the audio interface. That way, you would have no noise in the recording room, no transfers necessary, since the recording would already be in your computer, full control of whatever software you use (Samplitude Producer 2496 would be my recommendation for this setup), plus you could record up to 8 fully independent tracks simultaneously if you want, do whatever you want to do with them (or nothing) in the computer, all at 32 bit floating point math, til you're ready to burn CDR's, which Samplitude will do without extra software. The only downside of this setup would be having to run 2 cables between where the Piano is and where your computer is. The upside is no extra CD burner necessary, no hard disk recorder necessary, initially no preamps needed, just a phantom supply; think about this and if you want more specifics, I can tell you exactly what you need and how to do it... Steve
 
Hi Steve,

I like that idea. Yes, the 896 does come with 8 built-in preamps and phantom power.

My main question is how I would control the recording software while I was downstairs. The FireWire interface would be used to transfer the digital audio data; would the cat 5 cable be used to control the PC? What would the cat 5 cable plug into? I don't see any recording controls (e.g., record button, pause button, stop button) on the 896. Or is Samplitude smart enough to stop recording after, say, 10 seconds of silence?

Thanks, Grotius.
 
No, Samplitude will record til it fills up your hard drive. I've never needed a timer, so there may be one in there somewhere I just haven't found.
For the control part, you would need a Belkin Cat5 Extender. If you go to pricewatch.com and type in cat5 extender, you should get a few listings. The belkin unit isn't the only one, I think there's at least one other one available. The Belkin comes with either 300 or 500 feet of cat5 cable, and includes two boxes. One goes where YOU are, and has connectors for keyboard, monitor, and mouse. For portability and hide-ability, I would get a 15" or 17" LCD that takes analog (db15) video, and put that and the key/mouse in a small, nice looking rollaway TV/VCR stand, or something similar. That way, when you're not recording, you can tuck that and the mics/stands/cables away in a closet and just have a Cat5 wall plate to look at. The other box goes at your computer, and has ports to plug into the key/mouse/video ports of your computer. You may have to buy separate cables for these connections, I don't remember if they're included.

The Belkin extender lets you do everything at up to 500 feet that you can do at the computer, except listen to audio thru the computer's sound card or swap disks in the CPU. Samplitude lets you control everything, including playback, from the screen. If you didn't like the recording, you could scrap it and re-record, without ever getting off the piano bench. You could play back your tracks from the hard drive and listen on speakers hooked to the outputs of the 896 if you wanted to, or on headphones. For this, headphones would be better, as you wouldn't get the ambience of the room twice, once when recording and once when listening. That would cause you to make wrong decisions about the "liveness" of the recording room.
The firewire would be the tricky part, as supposedly you need boosters every 15 feet. I haven't tried this part yet, but plan to when I build my new studio. It will be a separate 40 x 72 building, (helps to live on 10 acres in the country) with high ceilings and separate floated rooms, and will have cat5 to every room, just for this purpose. The firewire will help locate the PC's outside the control room, so I'll just have two burners inside on a firewire hub. With cat5 patch bays in every room I will be able to control the whole studio from any room including the drum room or vocal booth, etc.

Since the 896 DOES have pre's and phantom power, you could use those til you decide to move up, then just go line into the 896 with whatever pre's you add.

Sounds like you're getting closer... Steve
 
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