Mobile PC Recording.......with a tower?

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djhead

djhead

Military Intelligence
Hey I wanted to get your thoughts and ideas on this. In anticipation of getting my Firepod, i realised that I am going to be moving my Tower around a lot. Its bulky, but sturdy, and a LITTLE bit noiser than I would like. So I have 8 mics, 8 inputs, 8 20' cables, a 20' TRS to the heaphone amp, 4 headphones. What would be the best way to move the tower around and or quiet it, unless just picking it up everytime is the only answer?

Then there is the monitor and outboards to conisder. do they make racks for this kind of thing? I would try to build one, but i have no sweet carpentry skills.
 
Check out barebone cases at Newegg, companies like Shuttle, Biostar and several others make shoe box side cases, they seem to work well and can be pretty sweet looking. Server cases are rack mountable so you can also look into those. Also you could look into a laptop.
 
I think I may have explained myself wrong. I wand a rack to tote my tower around in, maybe something I can add rack gear to, like my Firepod. (I already have a tower)
 
I thought about this myself and abandoned the idea. Most of my recording is done live and onsite at concerts and so forth, and for other people.

I concluded I would have to build a mobile case or go with a rack mount new rig. I came up with a plywood box design that holds the tower suspended with four bungee cords (two pulling up and two pulling down to capture the unit in the middle like a mic suspension mount) and stabilized with foam on four sides. With a set of casters and a couple of handles, you're talking close to twenty pounds plus the computer and you still haven't really addressed the issue of rough handling to or from a gig.

I've opted instead to use firewire with my live mixer (Onyx w/ fw option), hotrod a laptop to a gig of memory and capture audio to an external hard disk. So I have the recording app running from the laptop hard drive, I capture up to sixteen dry channels from the live mixer by firewire, and stream the audio to a LaCie 7200 rpm stand alone hard drive using USB2 from the laptop. So far I've done up to eight channels at once and it's OK, but the jury's still out on where I would max out the USB connection. The USB2 transfer rate specs suggest I cannot max it out at all with this setup. But real life can be rude that way.

The separate hard drive has a dual function in that I can take the rig home and manipulate the tracks using my desktop DAW and another copy of the same software; it is transparent.

No cheap and easy way to do it, I'm afraid.
 
well i have an answer....sort of. I have an old nightstand with wheels i dont use. My tower fits inside it, so i was thinking of wedging it in with foam, have an open front and back, and take the top drawer out, which is about an inch too big, but tall enough to fit 2 rack pieces (a Furman multi power conditioner and my firepod)

don't know where to put monitor/keyboard/mouse though :confused:
 
Pick up a rack mount server case and move the guts of your tower into that. Mount it in a rack with your other gear.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811219006

You can get shelf mounts for LCD Monitors so the monitor would lay down in the shelf when you close it, open it up and pull the monitor up, you can also buy keyboard shelves for racks.
 
knowing me, my dogs will eat a critical component while making the transfer
 
Im too inept? (better?)






Im actually not, i'm just paranoid. My dogs are evil. :(
 
lol they can be evil sometimes. Let em outside during the switch? Think outside the box imo. ;)
 
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