Live recording gig questions

bennals · Post by **bennals** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 11:36 pm

G'day.

I'm hoping someone with some experience in this area can give me some advice. I've got myself a job doing live multi-tracked recordings at a largish festival. Never done anything anywhere near this big, but plenty of smaller jobs. I'm guessing at this stage their will be something like 32 or even 48 channels coming off stage, presumably from an active microphone splitter and my current rig is either a dual 1.8 G5 or C2D 1.83 Macbook with a MH ULN/2 and a MOTU 1224 for interfaces.

Obviously my interfaces won't cut it so I'll be looking at hiring, purchasing or a combination of the two to cope with the required inputs.

I've never used large units like the Alesis HD24 but I imagine they're pretty straightforward so a couple of them would be an option, the other being setting up my G5 with a bunch of interfaces. I'm guessing the MacBook with external drives might be too much for the firewire bus to handle given the number of channels being recorded.

On the interface front MH 2882 would be my preference but perhaps a couple of MOTU 24i/o (I have a 424 PCI card) would be more realistic rather than 4 or six 2882s. If I go the DAW route then DP 5.11 will be doing the job.

So, I suppose I'm looking for information on how many simultaneous tracks people have successfully recorded with any combination/permutation of the above components, how reliable it's been and any other useful observations and considerations people might have.

Cheers.

Bill.

BradLyons · Post by **BradLyons** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 4:54 am

I do large-scale live-recording on a weekly basis, it's not a big deal when you're setup for it properly. I use a VENUE console which has a digital split directly to ProToolsHD, but previous to that I was using a pair of Alesis HD24's and that's the direction I'd recommend to go. It's much easier for location recording to show up with (2) of these and (6)8-ch pres to place in front of them (you'll need your own pres, too). The HD24's are solid units that sound great, and when using the Fireport option--you can easily feed your tracks into the computer to use in DP.

bennals · Post by **bennals** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 10:15 pm

Thanks Brad.

The HD 24 does sound straightforward, but let's just say for arguments sake I go the DAW route and take a pair of G5s and a bunch of MH 2882 interfaces. It's for a rock festival so quiet sound sources wont be a trouble for the pres on the 2882 devices. How many tracks can I reliably expect to record simultaneously via firewire over a sustained period without dropouts? Anyone else have any experience with this or a similar setup?

Cheers.

Bill.

Mr_Clifford · Post by **Mr_Clifford** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 12:18 am

hi bennals,

greetings from the other side of town.

The most tracks I've done live was 16 using a Behringer ADA8000 into a MOTU 896 which was recorded using a Powerbook G4 with a FW800 Hard Drive running Cubase SX. That setup ran pretty easily and wasn't pushing it real hard.

I'd say that your best bet would be to use a single computer (who needs all the hassle of sync etc.) with multiple interfaces like the ones Brad recommended. Just make sure you have enough hard-drive speed to handle all the tracks. Possibly 2 or more drives on FW-800 or eSATA.

burn em · Post by **burn em** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 5:24 am

Any G5 with a second internal big SATA will handle 48 or even more tracks without breaking a sweat. It's pretty easy to stack up MOTU devices and adat devices into them to get 64 tracks.

Just make sure you test everything thoroughly days (prefferably weeks) before the gig. Get there really early, bring at least one spare of everything and expect things to go wrong.

Dive in the deep end buddy, DP people usually know how to swim.

I used to do 40 tracks with an 867 mhz powerbook for years with next to no problems.

good luck.

bennals · Post by **bennals** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 6:00 am

Thanks fellas. Those figures sound pretty encouraging, especially yours burn em', and I'll definitely be testing thoroughly before the event. The second computer will be for backup rather than running synced, so if one dies I can quickly switch the firewire interfaces over to the other machine.

Still keen to hear from any others with experiences in this area. Particularly those using Metric Halo interfaces.

Cheers.

Bill.

BradLyons · Post by **BradLyons** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 6:31 am

IF you wanted to go the computer route, my best advice is get a MOTU 24ioCore and add as many io expanders as you need. For live recording, thoese interfaces are very good.

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 1:13 pm

If the recording is critically important, I'd show up with a redundant computer, "just in case." If your computer were to fail during the recording, be careful upon rebooting. As you reboot it, a dialog will appear asking of you want to rescue the tracks that were lost in the crash. Say yes, of course. Then they will appear, but I think you have to go digging in the trash to find them. Having a redundant computer ready to go, as soon as one crashes, you hit "record" on the other one, and continue. Then, with the files you dig out of the trash upon recovery, you will have missed only a few seconds of the entire concert.

Shooshie

sdemott · Post by **sdemott** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:10 pm

My largest live recording was 24 tracks...2 metric halo 2882s w/ an 8 channel Behringer thingy (don't remember the name or model) coming in on the ADAT ins on one of the 2882.

Used the MIO console recording feature to capture all the audio to a PowerBook G4 with an external eSATA drive (via PC-Card). No hiccups & the MIO console was operating at about 50% on the CPU meter.

Oh - I should also mention I was recording at 24/88.2.

For my money - the MIO recording console is all I will use on location - it's bullet proof & very CPU friendly. I don't think I could have pulled that off with DP.

I pull everything into DP afterwards to mix et al.

I think I recall BJ (at Metric Halo) saying he was able to get 60+ tracks to an internal MacBook Pro drive with the MIO recording console.

All that being said - I'd go with 2882s and the MIO console. Simple & solid.

HTH

-Steve

bennals · Post by **bennals** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 3:12 pm

Fantastic info guys. Thanks.

Shooshie, that's pretty much what I was thinking with the backup computer. Switching a firewire cable should be able to be done in a few seconds and I know the MIO console picks up newly connected hardware really quickly.

Sdemott, you've pretty much convinced me to go with the 2882s. I've emailed Metric Halo to see what there official word is on recording to a G5. I've never used the MIO recording console before but when I'm stress-testing the rig I'll give it a try.

Cheers everyone.

Bill.