Question on Converters and Clock

  • Thread starter Thread starter thegatekeeper
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I'm really curious to know what you would need 26-32 tracks to record? That would be such a beast in terms of separation/isolation/phase/noise/etc..

If it were me, I'd find the most simple way. Fewer inputs generally means less headaches, faster completion and better quality assuming mics are placed correctly. Do you really need so many?
 
2 Alesis HD24's, 2 RME HDSP 24 channel lightpipe I/O cards, and 1 Apogee Rosetaa 200 would cost about the same or less than just the 2 AD16x's with the firewire cards.

With this setup you could record up to 48 simultaneous tracks to your DAW software, also have a simultaneous physical backup on the HD24's, and then also have the Apogee to reclock the HD24's and the hammerfalls, as well as having the Apogee for 2 channel playback from the DAW. using the Apogee as a clock on the soundcards and HD24's should step them up a notch in sound quality as well, which narrows the gap between the sound of the AD16x's.
 
This is going to be a live event. We're going to have about 5 vocals mics, 10 drum mics, bass direct and mic'd, guitar amp mic'd, acoustic guitar mic'd, 2 keyboards, 4 -6 choir mics, and about 4 mics for the horn section. This would give about 31 tracks, give or take. We have about 7,000 to spend on recording equipment, and the only thing that for me seems necessary are the converters.

We have a onyx 40 channel, mics for everything, and obviously all the outboard gear for live events. The thing is this is a daily routine especially on sunday nights and saturday so actually mixing and monitoring is not a problem and most of the equipment we already have, it's just that for this event, we want to make a recording. We have pretty decent mics and have been preparing for this point for the past 2 years, and I think that we pretty much just need the converters, if anyone can see anything else that I am missing please let me know.

And in regard to the renting, that does seem like a good idea especially on the alesis hd 24's but I still think it would be best for the church to purchase the apogee's since we are in the process of recording a cd. And yes we are going to have enough time to fully thoroughly test the system as the event is still about a month ahead of time. Thanks again for the help.
 
You'll have to let us know how it goes.

just a 1-1/2 weeks ago I did a live PC recording... when murrphy stepped in...


only had a limited time to setup, 15 minutes, it was only stereo XY, Sonar, Stereo pre, the computer system I use all the time at home and I've taken it to my sisters plenty of time and recorded

Problems were a result of my own stupidity and faulty equipment:

I used my spare monitor, I've used my sisters monitor when at her house so I thought no problem, well I got there and got the bios screen and then all went black couldn't get anything more, after about their third song in I finally figured out it was the refresh rate and -safe VGA mode- got it going. got sonar going and started adjusting the pres but kept getting really high levels (bought the pres the night before and didn't have a problem doing a test recording) finally found out about the "gain range selector" flipped it and got my levels, I thought OK now don't touch anything and sit back, well I almost did that, I had the keyboard sitting on my lap so I decided to set it down... boom... the computer reboots, come to find out my powersupply has a short in the powerwire input, well when all said and done, I only got about 17 minutes of recorded material out of about an hour.

luckly for me I was just doing this for a friend and NOT getting paid, and he really wanted to do it in a more controled enviroment anyways (just wanted something to bring to relatives out of town over Xmas), but just goes to show that murrphy law will show up.

Hope all goes well;)
 
It sounds like you have at least given some thought to the whole setup. I would keep in mind that the Alesis HD24 converters are actually much better than ,ost people realize. By clocking them to something like a 2 channel Apogee that has the new Big Ben clock in it they will sound even better. Personally, there will not be as big a difference as you might think between the sound quality of the HD24 clocked properly and the AD16x. Also, with the HD24's you get a nice realtime safety backup. You also get a nice portable solution for in the future.

If you need to lower your budget a little, the new Lynx Aurora converters have gotten some pretty good reviews. Especially when clocked to an Apogee Big Ben.
 
If you are set on the Apogee's then you better order them immediately. If you need to go to plan "B" a month is really not that long of a lead time, especially with the holidays between now and then.

Good luck with the concert, please let us know how it turns out.
 
Hey guys thanks for all the input. I'm going to show what I got to the treasury and I'll update as soon as I get a chance
 
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