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#1
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"Don Richardson" wrote ...
I'm looking for multitrack recording software that records directly to a hard drive (no temp files as an intermediary). The reason for my question is that I record live concerts, ie, multiple sets in music festivals---and the time taken for saving 16 one-hour tracks is about 20 minutes, too long if there's only a short time between sets. Hence the need to record directly to hard disk---I want to be ready to record again, quickly. Huh? Using what? When I record using Cool Edit Pro (aka Audition) it records directly to WAV files (or whatever you specified). Closing a recording and opening a new one takes only as long as it takes the user interface to paint the new windows on the screen. Still, I wouldn't record a live concert using a computer because there are too many other things to go wrong. At least run a backup DAT or something. |
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#2
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recording without saving
Hi,
I'm looking for multitrack recording software that records directly to a hard drive (no temp files as an intermediary). The reason for my question is that I record live concerts, ie, multiple sets in music festivals---and the time taken for saving 16 one-hour tracks is about 20 minutes, too long if there's only a short time between sets. Hence the need to record directly to hard disk---I want to be ready to record again, quickly. Aside from Kristal Engine, is there any other software that has this feature? It won't do the trick for me, as I use the Onyx mixer, whose 18 firewire outputs appear as stereo pairs 1 to 9; Krystal can't seem to decode that..... thanks for any suggestions on this. |
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#3
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Don Richardson wrote:
Well, in Audition, when I stop the recording and "save as" (in other words, the first time I save the multitrack session) I get a save dialog box which then prompts me to save each and every wave file.....all 16 in total. I understand from the Audition forum that it does indeed write a temp file for each track, which then must be named and saved. Subsequent saves (Crtl-s) are fast; just a quick update. *snip* I'm no longer an Audition/Cool Edit user so my memory's a little foggy, but i know with Cubase SX when you open a new session, the first thing it does is prompt the user for a directory where the project should run from. This way, as soon as the song/set is complete you just whack one more Ctrl-S and you're done. Close the session, open a new session for the next song/set and specify a new directory and away you go. So basically, in Cubase, the whole Save As... function is done at the beginning of the session before there are any big files to write. This is true for Cubase SX, Pro Tools, Nuendo, and Logic as well. Roach |
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#4
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Hi.
SCSI drives... (Removable) are a must... I can do hour hour and a half live concerts to protools 24 tracks upwards, are you looking for somthing that records straight onto a removable media? Radar is my fave for live and on location gigs. You can switch the power off mid recording and all the audio up till the power down will remain... The Mackie aint great, apparently it splits the files cause it's only an IDE drive. Pretty scary. |
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#5
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Well, in Audition, when I stop the recording and "save as" (in other
words, the first time I save the multitrack session) I get a save dialog box which then prompts me to save each and every wave file.....all 16 in total. I understand from the Audition forum that it does indeed write a temp file for each track, which then must be named and saved. Subsequent saves (Crtl-s) are fast; just a quick update. Try recording a session and then attempt to close it and see what dialog box comes up.... Yes, I run a Mackie MDR2496 multitrack recorder as a backup. ------------------ Richard Crowley wrote: "Don Richardson" wrote ... I'm looking for multitrack recording software that records directly to a hard drive (no temp files as an intermediary). The reason for my question is that I record live concerts, ie, multiple sets in music festivals---and the time taken for saving 16 one-hour tracks is about 20 minutes, too long if there's only a short time between sets. Hence the need to record directly to hard disk---I want to be ready to record again, quickly. Huh? Using what? When I record using Cool Edit Pro (aka Audition) it records directly to WAV files (or whatever you specified). Closing a recording and opening a new one takes only as long as it takes the user interface to paint the new windows on the screen. Still, I wouldn't record a live concert using a computer because there are too many other things to go wrong. At least run a backup DAT or something. |
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#6
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"Don Richardson" wrote ...
Well, in Audition, when I stop the recording and "save as" (in other words, the first time I save the multitrack session) I get a save dialog box which then prompts me to save each and every wave file.....all 16 in total. I understand from the Audition forum that it does indeed write a temp file for each track, which then must be named and saved. Subsequent saves (Crtl-s) are fast; just a quick update. Try recording a session and then attempt to close it and see what dialog box comes up.... Yes, I see what you mean. I was basing my statement on just using it for stereo. OTOH, you could always "start" several empty sessions and just use the prefabricated sessions while recording live. I believe you can preset several other things (like channel sources, etc.) that way. Yes, I run a Mackie MDR2496 multitrack recorder as a backup. And I run my Alesis HD24 as the primary machine and just dump the WAV files into CE/Audition. Much more reliable, especially when I am one of the performers and can't oversee the recording process directly. |
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#7
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#8
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thanks for any suggestions on this. Nuendo should do the trick. Not cheap though  |
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#9
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Richard Crowley wrote: "Don Richardson" wrote ... I'm looking for multitrack recording software that records directly to a hard drive (no temp files as an intermediary). The reason for my question is that I record live concerts, ie, multiple sets in music festivals---and the time taken for saving 16 one-hour tracks is about 20 minutes, too long if there's only a short time between sets. Hence the need to record directly to hard disk---I want to be ready to record again, quickly. Huh? Using what? When I record using Cool Edit Pro (aka Audition) it records directly to WAV files (or whatever you specified). Closing a recording and opening a new one takes only as long as it takes the user interface to paint the new windows on the screen. This is only true if you are saving as the CoolEdit native file format: 32bit. If you want to save as 24bit integer the file needs to be converted in the save process, and this is one of the aspects of Cool/Audition that I have struggled with. I would be much happier if I could specify 24bit (typeI) as the native file format. rd |
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#10
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Don Richardson wrote:
I'm looking for multitrack recording software that records directly to a hard drive (no temp files as an intermediary). The reason for my question is that I record live concerts, ie, multiple sets in music festivals---and the time taken for saving 16 one-hour tracks is about 20 minutes, too long if there's only a short time between sets. Hence the need to record directly to hard disk---I want to be ready to record again, quickly. Aside from Kristal Engine, is there any other software that has this feature? It won't do the trick for me, as I use the Onyx mixer, whose 18 firewire outputs appear as stereo pairs 1 to 9; Krystal can't seem to decode that..... thanks for any suggestions on this. On a Mac running OSX 10.3.something or other, the Metric Halo Mobile IO's Console app can stream SDII files straight to hard disk without intermediation by a DAW application. There is no save function or command. You specifiy a folder into which the files are to be written. It writes the files directly, and thereafter one may import them into one's DAW app of choice. -- ha |
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#11
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"Don Richardson" wrote in message ... Hi, I'm looking for multitrack recording software that records directly to a hard drive (no temp files as an intermediary). The reason for my question is that I record live concerts, ie, multiple sets in music festivals---and the time taken for saving 16 one-hour tracks is about 20 minutes, too long if there's only a short time between sets. Hence the need to record directly to hard disk---I want to be ready to record again, quickly. You might want to work on your hardware configuration. I believe that you've mentioned that you've been using Audition/CE to do your recording work, as do I. Yesterday I checked the time it takes to save a half-hour 20 track session, and came up with an average of 18 seconds per track or six minutes for all 20. IME audio file save times expand roughly linearly with recording time. Therefore I would project about 10 minutes (about half what you mention) for your task, were you do it on a system that was more comparable to mine. My system is hardly SOTA - being composed of an 512k Athlon 2000+ with 2 120 GB 7200 rpm hard drives. I think that if I pulled a few more tricks out of my bag (RAID, anybody) I might cut my save times in half. Plan B might be to have two computer systems (not a bad idea for a job the size of yours for the sake of reliability) and swap them between sessions throughout the day. If the recording interfaces were on Firewire or USB ports, you could use the same interfaces and just switch the ports. |
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#12
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"studiorat" wrote in news:1116779236.730651.17670
@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com: Hi. SCSI drives... (Removable) are a must... I can do hour hour and a half live concerts to protools 24 tracks upwards, are you looking for somthing that records straight onto a removable media? Radar is my fave for live and on location gigs. You can switch the power off mid recording and all the audio up till the power down will remain... The Mackie aint great, apparently it splits the files cause it's only an IDE drive. Pretty scary. You appear to be basing this on some antiquated facts about SCSI vs IDE. If the Mackie splits the files up, it's due to the way it formats the drive, not the fact that it's an IDE drive. |
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#13
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"studiorat" wrote in message ups.com... SCSI drives... (Removable) are a must... 10 years ago, maybe. Radar is my fave for live and on location gigs. You can switch the power off mid recording and all the audio up till the power down will remain... Ditto for Audition/CEP. It's pretty uncanny. I tell my unskilled operators to, if in doubt, just turn the plug strip off. I come back later, power up and let Audition recover the work file(s), and do the file save then. The Mackie aint great, apparently it splits the files cause it's only an IDE drive. Pretty scary. It's the Mackie part of the equation, not the IDE part. Audition works fine on IDE drives. No sweat. |
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#14
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"studiorat" wrote :
SCSI drives... (Removable) are a must... Good luck. They're nearly extinct. Perhaps because they no longer have any advantage over todays less expensive, fast IDE (and now SATA), drives. |
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#16
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Don Richardson wrote: Hi, I'm looking for multitrack recording software that records directly to a hard drive (no temp files as an intermediary). Samplitude/Sequoia. Even if the program crashes (happened to me because of some other software that had gone berserk, not Samplitude's fault), the files will be on you disk as recorded... Daniel |
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#17
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Your comment is very intriguing----yesterday, a 50 minute set required
100 seconds to save each of 16 tracks. I'm running Athlon XP M2500+ (o/c to 3200+ with 200 MHz FSB) and 1 GB of PC3200 ram. One issue at the moment; the same internal drive (not the OS hard drive) is writing the temp file and the final save in its own project folder. Maybe the hard drive is taking too much time to read then write..... I will get an external firewire drive up for the same save function, and see what time it takes then.... Thanks for giving me your experience with Audition. It's my preferred recording option. ------------- Arny Krueger wrote: "Don Richardson" wrote in message ... Hi, I'm looking for multitrack recording software that records directly to a hard drive (no temp files as an intermediary). The reason for my question is that I record live concerts, ie, multiple sets in music festivals---and the time taken for saving 16 one-hour tracks is about 20 minutes, too long if there's only a short time between sets. Hence the need to record directly to hard disk---I want to be ready to record again, quickly. You might want to work on your hardware configuration. I believe that you've mentioned that you've been using Audition/CE to do your recording work, as do I. Yesterday I checked the time it takes to save a half-hour 20 track session, and came up with an average of 18 seconds per track or six minutes for all 20. IME audio file save times expand roughly linearly with recording time. Therefore I would project about 10 minutes (about half what you mention) for your task, were you do it on a system that was more comparable to mine. My system is hardly SOTA - being composed of an 512k Athlon 2000+ with 2 120 GB 7200 rpm hard drives. I think that if I pulled a few more tricks out of my bag (RAID, anybody) I might cut my save times in half. Plan B might be to have two computer systems (not a bad idea for a job the size of yours for the sake of reliability) and swap them between sessions throughout the day. If the recording interfaces were on Firewire or USB ports, you could use the same interfaces and just switch the ports. |
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#18
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Don Richardson wrote: Hi, I'm looking for multitrack recording software that records directly to a hard drive (no temp files as an intermediary). We use Vegas (Version 4 at this moment) - it records .wav files directly to the selected destination - when you stop recording, two things happen: Closing the .wav file requires an instant to go to the head of the file and write the file length into the first sector. A millisecond or so. (side note: I found out about this the hard way when we had a power failure during a recording session - thought everything was lost as opening the file in an audio editor said there was "0 seconds" of audio but checking the DOS file information said we had about 900 megs of data in each channel's .wav file... Wrote a utility to insert the file length into the first sector and voila' - back in business... woo hoo!) After closing, Vegas then scans the entire file and builds the peak display information for the visual display in the editor. This can take a while - quite a while for several channels of hour or longer recorded data. There's a progress bar in the lower left of the screen that shows what's happening. This scan process is OPTIONAL, and only useful if you're going to be mixing immediately after recording. Next to the progress bar is a 'Cancel' button that aborts the scan and puts you back into "Record Ready" mode. We can stop recording, close all files and be ready for the next take in less than 10 seconds. Carla |
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#19
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"Don Richardson" wrote in message ... Your comment is very intriguing----yesterday, a 50 minute set required 100 seconds to save each of 16 tracks. I'm running Athlon XP M2500+ (o/c to 3200+ with 200 MHz FSB) and 1 GB of PC3200 ram. One issue at the moment; the same internal drive (not the OS hard drive) is writing the temp file and the final save in its own project folder. Yes, during the file save, Audition/CEP is copying masses of data from the temp folder to the project folder. Copying a large file from one part of a hard drive to another part of the same hard drive is a well-known performance bottleneck. OTOH, disk-disk copies can be far faster. Maybe the hard drive is taking too much time to read then write..... I will get an external firewire drive up for the same save function, and see what time it takes then.... Thanks for giving me your experience with Audition. Glad to help someone who seems to be as enthusastic about live multitrack recording as I am. It's my preferred recording option. Obviously mine, as well. Back on topic... If you somehow manage to put the Audition/CE temp file on a separate drive from the project folder drive, it's easy to predict a performance gain during file saves on the order of 2:1 or more. If you can swing it, an external "project" hard drive connected a USB-2 or Firewire interface could be a big help. If the external hard drive is home to the project folder, you may have the option of carrying the external drive around, or having redundant external hard drives, instead of carrying around the computer or trying to have redundant computers. One nice thing about USB-2 and Firewire external hard drives is that they hot swap very nicely, even under XP. In contrast, splitting the Audition/CEP temp file folders has a completely different set of performance advantages. When there are two temp file folders, the I/O for writing is split across two hard drives. But, when you save, the save runs essentially from one temp file hard drive, and then the other. Only one hard drive is active at a time during the file save, so there is not much performance advantage. All other things being equal, a larger, emptier hard drive is faster than a smaller, fuller one. I can foresee the day when it might be practical to save large audio projects to USB flash drives, which are very compact, robust, and fast. |
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#20
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"Carla Fong" wrote in message news:T0Hke.13$qJ3.9@trnddc05... We use Vegas (Version 4 at this moment) - it records .wav files directly to the selected destination - when you stop recording, two things happen: Closing the .wav file requires an instant to go to the head of the file and write the file length into the first sector. A millisecond or so. (side note: I found out about this the hard way when we had a power failure during a recording session - thought everything was lost as opening the file in an audio editor said there was "0 seconds" of audio but checking the DOS file information said we had about 900 megs of data in each channel's .wav file... Wrote a utility to insert the file length into the first sector and voila' - back in business... woo hoo!) After closing, Vegas then scans the entire file and builds the peak display information for the visual display in the editor. This can take a while - quite a while for several channels of hour or longer recorded data. There's a progress bar in the lower left of the screen that shows what's happening. This scan process is OPTIONAL, and only useful if you're going to be mixing immediately after recording. Next to the progress bar is a 'Cancel' button that aborts the scan and puts you back into "Record Ready" mode. We can stop recording, close all files and be ready for the next take in less than 10 seconds. This looks like an attractive option. How is Vegas 4 as audio-only software? All the versions I find for sale online seem to be mainly for video, and run about twice the price of Audition/CE. |
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#21
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When the Mackie HDR first came out, TASCAM made a big deal about the superiority of the SCSI drives that they used in the MX-2424 as opposed to the IDE drives that the Mackie used. Which product lasted longer in the market? (Mackie) And what kind of drive does TASCAM's new entry, the X-48 use? (IDE). A marketing question I would imagine... SCSI used to be what you had to buy in order to get a fast and large capacity disk drive. No more. Show me a 10,000rpm ide (ata) drive and I might be interested. I've only seen 2 scsi drives break down I have seen many more ide drives die. |
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#22
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"studiorat" wrote in
oups.com: Show me a 10,000rpm ide (ata) drive and I might be interested. I've only seen 2 scsi drives break down I have seen many more ide drives die. Here you go! http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Produ...65&Language=en And it's FASTER then just about any 10k RPM SCSI drive with similar MTBF figures -- and they're only $200 a pop. Have a read: http://storagereview.com/articles/20...WD740GD_1.html Brendan |
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#23
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"studiorat" wrote ...
Show me a 10,000rpm ide (ata) drive and I might be interested. See Brendan's response. I've only seen 2 scsi drives break down I have seen many more ide drives die. Meaningless unless we know how many SCSI drives you have seen, and how many IDE. My recollection from back when we used to use SCSI drives was that only the expensive server-class drives had any significantly better reliability than current IDE products. Of course SCSI drives are going the way of the Dodo bird, so this whole argument is moot. |
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#24
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#25
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In article znr1119006584k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:
In article .com writes: SCSI used to be what you had to buy in order to get a fast and large capacity disk drive. No more. Show me a 10,000rpm ide (ata) drive and I might be interested. I've only seen 2 scsi drives break down I have seen many more ide drives die. Show me a need in recording for a 10,000 RPM drive. If you really want to record, play, and punch 100 simultaneouls tracks at 192 kHz then maybe you have a requirement, but for 24 tracks at 48 kHz sample rate, a 5400 RPM drive is adequate. Faster backups. As to reliability, there's no reason why one should be more reliable than the other. At one time, and perhaps still, SCSI drives, because of their greater cost, used better components than IDE drives, but these days you'd have to work hard (like you'd have to be director of manufacturing of a major manufacturer who sold both types of drives) to convince me that they aren't all assembled in China or Mexico using the same automated equipment and techniques. I haven't seen an IDE drive failure myself. That doesn't mean I'll never have one, but diligent backups should reduce the possibility of total project loss to near zero. You don't forego backing up because you use SCSI drives, do you? I see drive failures _all the time_. Don't trust _any_ disk drive. Make constant backups. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
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#26
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studiorat wrote:
When the Mackie HDR first came out, TASCAM made a big deal about the superiority of the SCSI drives that they used in the MX-2424 as opposed to the IDE drives that the Mackie used. Which product lasted longer in the market? (Mackie) And what kind of drive does TASCAM's new entry, the X-48 use? (IDE). A marketing question I would imagine... SCSI used to be what you had to buy in order to get a fast and large capacity disk drive. No more. Definately true. Show me a 10,000rpm ide (ata) drive and I might be interested. I'll show you such a drive and then tell you why you might not want it. Here is a 10,000 rpm ata drive: http://store.westerndigital.com/product.asp?sku=2325479 (there are larger models) The reason why you might not want it is because you can probably get as good or better performance with a lot more space for about the same money or maybe a little more. I've only seen 2 scsi drives break down I have seen many more ide drives die. Let's compare a number of relevant things: (1) The total number of SCSI and IDE drives you've seen in operation. If you see 100 times more IDE drives in operation and you see 100 times more IDE drives fail, then both are equally relaible, right? (2) SCSI drives have been shoved into the high-performance, high-reliability, high-cost end of the marketplace. If SCSI drives cost more for a certain amount of space, and also are more reliable due the fact that spending more on their construction is justified by the price, then who is surprised if they are more reliable? IOW, good diesel truck engines go 500,000 miles without an overhaul. If that's all that matters, why doesn't every car have a diesel truck engine in it? Bottom line, money matters. Zillions of people are getting great performance for complex audio applications out of good modern ATA drives or modest arrays of them. |
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#27
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#28
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In article znr1119025654k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:
In article writes: Show me a need in recording for a 10,000 RPM drive. Faster backups. But is it, really, and significantly faster? And what else does your computer have to do while you're sleeping or eating dinner? It can be, depending on what you're backing up to. If you're backing up to a second bank of drives, it can be a major improvement in speed. If you're backing up every couple hours in a production environment that's a big deal. If you can wait until dinnertime, it probably isn't. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
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#29
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"Mike Rivers" wrote:
I haven't seen an IDE drive failure myself. You've just been lucky. I've had a few go south on me. Fortunately, they don't usually quit abruptly. They become uncooperative and finicky first, to warn you that death is imminent. -- "It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!" - Lorin David Schultz in the control room making even bad news sound good (Remove spamblock to reply) |
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#31
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In article znr1119302181k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:
In article VXFte.71519$on1.14900@clgrps13 writes: You've just been lucky. I've had a few go south on me. Fortunately, they don't usually quit abruptly. They become uncooperative and finicky first, to warn you that death is imminent. Well, I'll admit to having replaced drives when I became suspicious of them, but the only time I had a drive fail before I could recover the data from it (it wasn't a situation where I was willing to pay for a high-priced data recovery service to work on it), it was an MFM drive, pre IDE. I suspect that the failure was in the electronics rather than the platters, so it probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal to read it if that was the only recourse. Since this was on the BBS that I was running at the time, I had a backup that was less than half a day old. That was in the days when you could do an incremental backup on a couple of floppy disks. For the most part, the operating system _should_ give you a way to watch drive error rates. But if it doesn't, your major tool is to listen to the drives. Most of the drive failures I see are due to main bearings going bad. When this happens, the whine from the drive stops being a pure tone and turns into a fuzzy tone with sidebands around it. When you hear that sound, the drive is failing. Drives that regularly go into tcal all the time are also probably doomed to failure soon, and that causes a particular sort of ticking pattern as the voice coil zeroes the heads out and returns them several times. That sound also is a sign of impending trouble. Make good backups, constant backups. Make more backups and use your ears. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
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#32
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Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article znr1119006584k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote: In article .com writes: SCSI used to be what you had to buy in order to get a fast and large capacity disk drive. No more. Show me a 10,000rpm ide (ata) drive and I might be interested. I've only seen 2 scsi drives break down I have seen many more ide drives die. Show me a need in recording for a 10,000 RPM drive. If you really want to record, play, and punch 100 simultaneouls tracks at 192 kHz then maybe you have a requirement, but for 24 tracks at 48 kHz sample rate, a 5400 RPM drive is adequate. Faster backups. What backup media's speed taxes a modern 5400 rpm drive? |
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#34
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Arny Krueger wrote:
What backup media's speed taxes a modern 5400 rpm drive? A 7200 rpm drive. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
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#36
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Lorin David Schultz wrote:
"Mike Rivers" wrote: I haven't seen an IDE drive failure myself. You've just been lucky. I've had a few go south on me. No doubt - I've personally had3 IDE drives fail on me and have at while working computer lab maintenance jobs at least another 30-40 fail. Fortunately, they don't usually quit abruptly. They become uncooperative and finicky first, to warn you that death is imminent. Usually this is true... and sometimes even after they die they can be resurrected long enough to retrieve the data. -- Aaron |
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