Hard drive space for recording

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jennifer Martin
  • Start date Start date
J

Jennifer Martin

New member
Hi all,
I'm brand new here, and to digital recording (I'm a conductor by trade.) My college is considering buying a workstation (like the Yamaha AW16G) for recording live concerts. We would be recording with only 2 or 3 mics. Is a 20GB HD large enough to record, say, a 2 hour concert?
Thanks for any help!
 
Here's a quote from their website FAQ

Q: About how much continuous recording time is possible?

A: One song can use a maximum of 6.4 GB of disk space. When recording onto 8 tracks simultaneously, about 2.5 hours of continuous recording time is possible. The internal hard disk has a capacity of 20 GB. With the Sample Library and Demo Song from the CD-ROM preinstalled on the hard disk (factory condition), over 7 hours of simultaneous 8-track recording is possible. Of course, longer recording times are possible if the number of simultaneously recorded tracks is decreased.
 
Yo Jennifer:

To put it succinctly, you have plenty of hard drive space on the AW 16 Yamaha unit to record a two hour session.

You say you are only using 2/3 mics; OK -- but you can pump those inputs to more than one track. [I do that with the 2816 and am assuming the AW16 is very similar in operation.]

So, with a couple of mics hither and thither, and only using a few tracks, you have time, plenty of time on the HD.

Green Hornet :D :p :p :cool:
 
I think 16 bit usues about 5 MB a minute per track. 24 bit uses 16.5 MB a minute. If you were recording a stereo recording at 24 bit you could go for quite a while. 10 hours? 5 hours for 4 tracks and so on. Not straight through if the limit is 6.5 GB but you'd never record that long anyway...
 
This brings up an interesting question...are the hard drives on thise kind of workstations user-upgradable? You can go to you local store and buy a 80 gig disk darn cheap lately.
 
On a side note, newer hard drives with a 8mb cache are out. My home work station has 140 gigs on it. I use two drives, one (60 g) for systems and two (80 g) for editing. If I need extra storage I will stash some back on the 60 gig. I need to add that I work with video. Buy much more than you think you need. A 40 or 60 gig will be pennies in comparison to running out of hard drive during recording session. I have done this and it does not look cool. You might need to keep the raw audio on your hard drive plus the another copy in 10 minute segments so it is easier for the end user to listen to a copy, not to mention achieving. I guess what I am saying with ramble is that 20 gigs will work as mentioned in the above post but I would go bigger.
 
Thanks EVERYONE for your help! It's greatly appreciated.

Jenn Martin
 
Hai jenn...

what is 'conducter by trade'?

Does it mean you drive a trolly, and we can trade you in?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top