Do you really care about 24/96?

[sjoko2]

Sjoko -
I agree about the economy of firewire, I don't know if every one of my clients would agree to pay even $300 for a back-up firewire drive for archiving. I guess it's not THAT much, but compared to a DDS4 tape or two, it seems like a lot. I'm also not sure that a firewire drive qualifies as a stable semi-permanent archiving format.

I'm not arguing your point - it's a decent solution that's obviously much faster than tape back-ups - but it still raises problems. I'm swapping sessions constantly between three firewire drives totalling about 320 GB with my recording drive (36GB ultraSCSII). Even with 10-20GB sessions I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time organizing and backing up data.

Right now I can't even conceive of quadrupling the workload.

The $300 I mentioned is for a 150GB drive, which most people do not need

regarding it being a suiteable format - depends on what you use to copy. If you just drag a session icon onto another drive you are asking for trouble - regardles of what media you copy to.
There is a big difference between doing that and, for instance, in Pro Tools, using the "save session copy" command, which will make an accurate mirror copy.

Perhaps you should loo into something like SNS's single fiber channel drives (we use the AV SAN), which can give you well over a hundred channels of audio from a single drive, without errors, and its lightning fast

 

[drstawl]

>There is a big difference between doing that and, for instance, in Pro Tools, using the "save session copy" command, which will make an accurate mirror copy.

"Big difference"?
So what aspect of the data gets mangled doing a copy of a .wav file from one HD to another?

Using my USB external HD I can move 40GB in about 30 minutes.

How much are those "fibrechannel" drives?
And what additional costs are incurred with their use?

My USB backup device uses plain old IDE drives
(80GB /$100USD).

I'd love to be able to move 80GB in 10 minutes (6x faster), but since this is an unattended operation, economy of media has to be a factor.

 

[pipelineaudio]

we just use Inclose removable cases and bays, and regular IDE drives, and it is only about 80 bucks per customer, not too bad

 

[sjoko2]

if you copy files by the drag-and-drop method without a valid verification process you are asking for trouble. It might not happen everytime, and you might get away with it for a while, but when it fucks up you are in danger of loosing a session.
Even when burning (or printing) CD's from masters (which is only 2 channels of music data) there is always a verification process involved, and the number of rejections is amazingly high, even on gear costing hundreds of thousands of $$"s

The fiberchannel drives are about 700 bucks I think (not sure) but then that includes the card, wires, software etc., which, considering the high, rock-solid performance, does make it cheap.
You can check out some specs here http://studionetworksolutions.com/products/fibredrive/index.htm
I use the A/V SAN system for 2 Pro Tools systems, which is the most fault free, fullproof system I've ever used.

 

[mixsit]

To follow up on Geekgurl's post, the idea that the benetfit of 48k over 44.1 outweighs the quality loss of software conversions seems to run contrary to, well everthing.
Wayne

 

[Stefan Elmblad]

Lets say you record to ADAT's or a computer used solely as recorder and do analog mixdown as an example. You won't be needing 24bits as much as if you had done a digital mixdown right ? Since we're not "editing" the data at all....anyone ?

 

[Kryogh]

24/48

24/48 is what I usualy use. 24/96?....bah.......maybe in a few years, when PC would be able to deal with it.

 

[littledog]

An interesting point has been raised by Sjoko that I would like to hear some other opinions about.

I know when I back up to data-DAT, or burn data CD's that verification of data is an important and smart thing to do. But I had always been under the impression (and had read this in a couple of different magazines) that in directly copying from one drive to another there is a built in verification process.

Could this be something that is only on the Mac and not PC? Or have I been the recipient of wrong info? Anyone else want to weigh in?

(NOTE: I've been swapping data amongst a half dozen hard drives constantly for years, and never noticed a single problem. Have I been just lucky?)

Also, how would you verify that two files on two drives are identical, even if you wanted to? (I don't know how to do this on a Mac...)

 

[drstawl]

>Also, how would you verify that two files on two drives are identical

There is a DOS command to do just that: Verify is the command.
I forget the syntax of its usage.

 

[crosstudio]

1) I have NEVER, EVER, EVER had a file mangled by duplication unless i was duplicating across the network from a UNIX server to a Windows server or the network connection (UDP not TCP/IP) hosed on me during the transfer. I did the software system for the Census and I don't remember having a data integrity issue when copying the data from the individual PCs to the RAIDarray unless the HD of the PC had crashed.

that's not to say it doesn't happen. i'm just saying i've never seen it happen.

2) I would prefer to record in 24bit/88.1khz because the sample rate conversion would be easiest, but i will not record in 16/44.1 and do not prefer to record in 24/44.1.

i need that 10% sample accuracy improvement between 44.1 and 48khz and the 256x improvement in sound pressure accuracy between 16 and 24 bit when i'm applying my plug-ins, mixing, and mastering.

i also record midi at 960 TPQ because it gives me the most realistic portrayal of my playing.

 

[littledog]

There is a DOS command to do just that: Verify is the command.
I forget the syntax of its usage.

any Mac users out there?

 

[moley]

I would prefer to record in 24bit/88.1khz because the sample rate conversion would be easiest, but i will not record in 16/44.1 and do not prefer to record in 24/44.1

I assume you mean 88.2?

 

[karlo]

It's all in the wax baby!

Look,
the problem of rates and actual calculations is as old as digital recording is. There's no difference whatsoever, unless you're thinking of sound as of linear 2-d drawing. The sound quality is not an absolute value, but it states true that every possible sound at it's own frequency and "rate" has the "same" or "the best" possible quality when being produced. Once you start manipulating/recording/calculating via processors, the sound looses or gains volume, colour, texture, and even nature. Converters are as important as cables, mics, air, humidity, etc.
A lot of people here think digital is sterile, but it's actualy very "dirty", because there's a lot of chip-matter influence on an actual sound. The way to go is the way you do it. If you're not happy, well, too bad, because you can't afford $100000.

 

[sweetnubs]

i hate that confounded "chip-matter", ya never know what it will do on a sound or even to a sound for that matter.

 

[Doug H]

24 bits shouldn't be a headroom issue anymore, if yoiur software isn't processing everything in at least 32 bit float internally then it's time to get some new software because computers can handle it now. Even if you are mixing a standard track in at -90 db, the float value it's converted to before bus summing should contain as much precision as the original, and precision is all that matters. For the geek challenged, think of floating point numbers as a number where the incremement (which is normally 1) can change from a tiny fraction to a large number. In fact, looking at this figuretively from an audio point of view, when you adjust a fader you are only adjusting the increment size of the wav, not the wave form itself. This of sourse will be compromised when you finally mix down to 16 bit at some point, but there's nothing you can do about that, and you want all your tracks mixed in before that happens so the rounding error only impacts the final summed mix.

24 bit sounds more alive to me. It will probably be a while before I'm interested in hgher sample rates. Mostly because of the 44100 standard and lack of expensive analogue and/or resampling gear.

 

[Hawking]

This thread is looking alot like the countless others about which media is better, tape, digital, 16 bit, 24 bit, etc...

Personally, I can not hear the difference between a file that has been recorded origionally at 24/96 and converted to 16/44.1, and a file that has been recorded origionally at 16/44.1. This is assuming there weren't any effects applied in the 24/96 domain. That right there, is what I think is the biggest advantage of higher bits/samples. When there's effects involved, the wider dynamic range and better frequency response makes a huge difference.

Keeping in mind that there are actually people that can hear the difference between a $1,000 resampler and a $5,000 resampler, I think that most people, given a blind taste test, would have ears similar to mine. This is also supposing the above scenario. At least I hope this is true, since I don't want to be the only one who can't tell the difference.

On a semi-related topic, I have a computer monitor that makes this horrible high pitched sqeal. It seems that nobody else in the house can hear it, only me. Either they are trying to make me think I'm crazy, or it's another example of how different peoples hearing abilities can be.

BTW...Is there any more Feta cheese and olives for my greek salad?

 

[ds21]

At least the 24 bit for the affects processing.

 

[drstawl]

i hate that confounded "chip-matter", ya never know what it will do on a sound or even to a sound for that matter.

Stop woofing down Fritos at your mixing desk!