HD24...some last questions before I buy

  • Thread starter Thread starter funkdrmr
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Gilliland said:
That's no big deal. When you transfer via lightpipe, if a data error occurs, it goes undetected. I doubt that they are common, but if one does occur, there's no way to correct it. Probably not worth worrying about.

Transferring via lightpipe in real time is a perfectly reasonable way to do it, and it wasn't my intention to imply otherwise. And if you're doing a rough mix for a client, that's a pretty good reason to take that route. In my situation, if I need a rough mix, I need it at the time the recording is made. So I have to make it live. By the time I get my raw tracks home, the musicians are already on to another city.

If you have headphones that really block the outside sound (by 24 to 30 db), then you can do some monitoring even in noisy environments. There are a number of companies that make headphones with that degree of isolation. But I'm sure your approach works fine for you. I like to hear what I'm recording. Again, no big deal - just different ways of working.
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Excellent points! :) Thanks for the tip about the lightpipe errors. Have not seen any yet( unless as you said they are undetected). I'd buy those headphones and plug them into nothing just to get away from the noise :p
 
Gilliand,
Ya know, your way of doing a ruff mix as you record is maybe the way to go after thinking about. When I transfer to computer as I spoke of before, I try to get a pretty nice mix. I wonder if I'm shooting myself in the foot doing that. I mean, if I gave them a very ruff off the board mix, they would always HAVE to come in for a proper mix. I have had some people be satified with the ruff from my transfers. I don't mean to imply that your off the boards are bad at all,don't take this that way. I mean for me in the past, when ever I did record off the board at a gig,it was rather bad. I tend to try to make the ruff mixes real good so people will want to do a REAL mix. Hum?
 
jmorris said:
Gilliand,
Ya know, your way of doing a ruff mix as you record is maybe the way to go after thinking about. When I transfer to computer as I spoke of before, I try to get a pretty nice mix. I wonder if I'm shooting myself in the foot doing that. I mean, if I gave them a very ruff off the board mix, they would always HAVE to come in for a proper mix. I have had some people be satified with the ruff from my transfers. I don't mean to imply that your off the boards are bad at all,don't take this that way. I mean for me in the past, when ever I did record off the board at a gig,it was rather bad. I tend to try to make the ruff mixes real good so people will want to do a REAL mix. Hum?
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No offense taken, you are absolutely right. After all, that's why we do the multitrack recordings, right? There's no way to do a high quality mix "on the fly". There's too much unpredictability in the live performance, and whatever choices you make become permanant in the resulting stereo recording, even when you make a mistake. So mixing live to stereo can give pretty good results for a "simple" performance, but the more complex it becomes (in terms of instruments used, vocal combinations, changes in levels, etc.), the tougher it is to get a quality result.

Sometimes I'm required to do the live mix - as in a live broadcast or webcast - but whenever possible I'd far prefer to do a good mix in post so that I can turn out my best work. But whenever I give a rough mix to someone, I always explain that the final polished mix will be far superior, just to avoid any misunderstandings.

BTW, here are a couple of examples of the kinds of isolating headphones that I was talking about:

http://www.extremeheadphones.com/index.html

http://www.remoteaudio.com/hn7506.htm
 
Wow, a hundered and one posts... I read a few, but I think one of my rigs fits perfectly into your situatoin.
It's a 12 RU rolling rack, and inside it has:
Alesis HD24XR
3 x Mackie Onyx 800rs
1 x 24 XLR patchbay
2 x 48 TRS patchbays
Power conditioner.

Anyway, to sum it up, this rack can go anywhere in the live signal chain. You can use the Dig out of the onyxes to feed the HD24, and the line-outs to feed the house rig. The onyx, whilst not being the best pres in the world, are pretty clean, and will give you ADAT into the HD24.

Back in the studio, you can either go through the Onyxes, our use your house pres and go into the line-in on the HD24.

I'd advise against using the HD24 as a converter, espically if it hasn't had the I/O upgrade (or is the XR model). Record onto the HD24, then transfer to the computer via FTP/firewire. Once it's digital, then you're not going to get any signal loss. Plus, you'll need to spend quite a bit on RME cards to go in via ADAT (and those things hog your resources, old school).

As for taking the house mix, I wouldn't do that. Find a way to get a signal clean off the mics, then feed it to the house. That way you have the cleanest signal. Chances are the little impact you make on the signal chain will be much less than the PA will be able to reproduce. And, if the system IS good enough to notice such a small disturbance, chances are they have a method of splitting the signal anyway...

Anyway, for what you're describing, it sounds like a good idea. I'm sure everyone else has said that, but, hey, why not one more?

Hope that helped.
 
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treymonfauntre said:
gilliland, that live recording sounds amazing!
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Thank you! That's a group called "The Dust Poets" from Manitoba (http://dustpoets.com).

It's the only track I've mixed so far from a much longer set that they performed in November at the Kent State Folk Festival. Eventually, I'll get the rest of the show mixed.

I mentioned it here just as an example of what can be done in a live setting with the SP828s and the HD24XR. But it's a great song regardless of all that.
 
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