Help and Advice....

[kneal7]

Hi Guys and Girls I need some advice. Im looking to expand my home studio into a small working studio, Im going to be moving it to a small but adequate industrial premesis, and now for my dilemma.. At the moment Im working with a music PC from Inta Audio,

Intel i7 Pro Music PC

Intel i7 Quad 3770 3.4Ghz Ivy Bridge Processor
32Gb DDR3 1333Mhz
3000Gb of Hard Disk Storage
Dual Head Graphics Card
Windows 7 Professional 64Bit

My External Hardware consists of a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP and a Behringer BCF 2000. My DAW is Ableton live 8

At the moment ive only been recording acoustic guitars and vocals through the saffire and everything sounds good and works fine, no latency issues etc. So working "in the Box" works well. The problem is that I'm not sure what to do to expand into recording live drums and mic'd equipment etc.

My initial thought would be to buy a saffire pro 40 and a saffire octopre to give me control over 16 channels, but now im wondering if this is the best option. Should I instead opt for a 16+ channel firewire desk or install a PCI card? but Im unsure how this would integrate with Ableton and if my PC could handle the work load....

I hope this makes sense, any help would be really appreciated....
Thanks Kneal

 

[sixer2007]

Hey there. You have a lot of questions, and most of them I'm not qualified to answer but others will come along and help out I'm sure.

However, in terms of workload for your machine, you should be able to record as many tracks as you'd like at once (as long as you have the proper equipment of course). It's when it comes time to mix that you could potentially run into issues as each plugin you add will increase the load on the computer. I have a machine that only has 2GB of RAM and is 5 years old. It can handle about 30 tracks in a mix, but sometimes I have to back off some processing, or decide to use plugs that aren't my first choice to save some resources. There are other ways around that though, like freezing processing, bouncing down tracks that have been mixed to "print" the processing to them, etc. I usually don't though...

 

[Bobbsy]

Do I read this correctly that you're going into this as a commercial enterprise and hoping to bring in clients?

If so, I might go against my usual advice to stick with good interfaces and suggest a mixer. I learned to my cost a while back that outside clients tend not to take you seriously unless you have a nice mixer with lots of flashing lights.

Depending on your budget, you could look at the Allen and Heath Zed16R mixer with Firewire outs on all channels plus the ability to route the same 16 channels back from your DAW to the mixer. Even though I always mix in the box, I find the ability to grab a handful of faders and set a rough mix (modifiable) to work well when you get to the "let's have a listen to that" stage. The other thing about a mixer with a few Auxes is that it makes setting up headphone mixes for the musicians a piece of cake.

Other comments? Don't forget things like headphone amps to feed to the people recording. You'll need your own monitor speakers in the control room but you'll also need remote controllable speakers in the studio, again for the "let's listen to that" stage.

Acoustic treatment will take on a whole new importance.

Good luck!

 

[Seidy]

Recording 16 tracks at once should be piece of cake for your computer. I mean I have Saffire 56 and Octopre and my 3 year old laptop will record 12 tracks at once with no stress.
So far I am happy with the Focusrite stuff. I chose Saffire 56 over 40 because of the expanding options (2xADAT in-out instead of 1, wordclock + every channel has it's own phantom power switch). Of course it's little bit more exprensive, but better to have as backup... in case I really need to record 24 tracks at once for example.

-edit-
Bobbsy has point about having real mixer with blinky lights
However what you can't do with mixer is that you can't save headphone mixes. I guess it's more flexibility-comfort issue.

 

[Bobbsy]

Bobbsy has point about having real mixer with blinky lights
However what you can't do with mixer is that you can't save headphone mixes. I guess it's more flexibility-comfort issue.

That's where hand written cue sheets come in! Or is it only antique old gits like me that ever used those?

 

[Seidy]

That's where hand written cue sheets come in! Or is it only antique old gits like me that ever used those?

Nah.. I use recall sheets daily actually for recalling preamp settings. It's a bit time wasting and you'll never get the same result as day before, but there's no better solution.

 

[Bobbsy]

Agreed! And frankly, my experience is that headphone mixes are constantly being tweaked and adjusted anyway--so long as I can start off close, that's good enough.

(As an aside, when working with beginners, it's usually me who creates the headphone mix monster--getting the right mix in the cans can make a huge difference to the performance so I really nag them to tell me exactly what works for them!)

 

[kneal7]

Thanks guys really appreciate your advice.. I know what I want to do its just deciding the best route to take. I was thinking about going for decent pci but I think Ill go down the interface route.. im sure that ill be able to get a decent sound with this set up.. Thanks again, any further comments or suggestions are most welcome. .

 

[kneal7]

If I opted for a firewire mixer, who I be better off to invest in a seperate AD coverter or would the desk be capable. I know my saffire does a decent job Im just not sure if a firewire mixer is as equiped as a firewire interface.... sorry if any of these questions sound a little stupid...

 

[Bobbsy]

There's no general answer to the Firewire mixer question. A few--like the A&H I mentioned--do indeed give you direct outs from every channel plus the same number of returns. However, an awful lot of them only give you the main left/right out and a simple stereo return.

BTW, I mentioned the A&H because you said you wanted quality--and the A&H mic pres are some of the best around until you start spending Neve or Studer money. They certainly beat most basic interfaces hands down.