Follow Ups:Category: General Interest
From: bt3 (Bill Thompson)
To: cjh (chris hemphill)
Date Posted: November 11, 1999 at 12:09:28
Subject: Re: multi-trach recording with pc
Reference: multi-trach recording with pc
Hi Chris,The good news is that it is pretty easy (and inexpensive) to
assemble a PC Digital Audio Workstation!!!Let me answer your specific questions first, then I'll throw in
some general thoughts...>Is NT better for this?
Sadly, yes, NT is a little more stable than Windows 9x, and there
even appears to be a slight performance benefit. The problem is
that there is little support for NT amongst the really good
audio interfaces. This is changing, but slowly. If you choose to
go with NT, check out the sound card first to make sure they
are within your budget!FWIW, I've temporarily given up on NT. I get quite good results
with Win98. The cards I use (Frontier Designs Wavecenter, Midiman
Winman 4x4/s) do have NT support, but I was running into some
odd problems with MIDI, so I gave up. (Also, the Frontier driver
is beta, and well, the hassles outweighed the benefits!) >Is 128 megs ram really necessary?
Repeat after me... "Memory is my friend!"
The more memory the better, my first system (Pentium Pro 200)
had 128M and I seldom ran into problems. My current system
(Celeron 300 overclocked to 450MHz) has 256M, and runs well.>What cards give me effects too?
Ah, there's a rub... windows does not yet have a standard for
using coprocessors for effects. What this means is if you choose
a card that lets you use it's DSP chips for effects, you are
pretty much locked in.I've decided to wait for a standard because I can use DirectX and
VST plugins on the host, and I seem to have enough processing
power to do the things I want to do.>Will an EIDE or IDE cd recorder work as effectively as SCSI?
"The difference between theory and practice is that in theory,
there is no difference, and in practice there is!"Wish I knew who said that!!!
In theory, (E)IDE works as well as SCSI for all but the most
demanding projects. This has not been my experience. I prefer
SCSI because I find it easier to configure, and it just works.If you do go with (E)IDE devices, look for at least ATA33 drives,
and bus-mastering on the adapter.>Will the cd recorder that comes eith the PC be able to work
>with the card's software and actuall burn cd's at 44.1khz,
>16 bit to be compatable with all cd players?It depends on the CD recorder that comes with the PC! Most of
the devices sold today will do just fine. It is really more a
software issue, you need software that can create a "RED Book"
CD.>If I record at 20 bit will it sound worse on a 16 bit cd player than if I
>had recorded it in 16 bit to begin with?Great question... it could sound better, it could sound worse.
If you record and process at 20 or 24 bits, somewhere along the
line you will have to perform wordlength reduction to get 16 bit
audio. If you simply truncate (remove the lowest 4 or 8 bits), it
can affect the sound quality. If you use a dithering process, it
depends on how good the process is.For a long time I resisted the temptation to use different word
lengths or sampling rates. I still avoid sample rate conversion,
but I've found that the ditering processes available from most
of the vendors work pretty well.Now, you want specifics?
Well, I need some specifics... what is your budget? What kind of
music will you be recording? What other gear do you already have
or plan to buy? Will you be integrating MIDI and audio?Let me lay out my system: I use MIDI, Digital Audio, and Analog
audio, I record a lot of acoustic guitar type stuff, and some
good old rock and roll.I have a pretty decent analog studio, good monitors, decent
monitoring environment, some great mics and decent preamps, etc.I record drums, electric guitars, and bass to an analog 2" 16
track cause I like all the "character". Vocals and acoustic
instruments usually go straight to the computer. When it is
time to lock everything up, I'd like to sync the computer to
the tape deck via SMPTE. This is one of those things that
doesn't work real well yet because it requires on-the-fly sample rate
conversion or some other really complex math. (The alternative
is to sync the tape deck to the computer... but my dinosaur won't
do that!)Typically, I'll transfer the analog tracks to the computer for
mixdown if I am having problems. I have, on ocassion, transferred
the computer tracks to the tape deck if I had the spare tracks.I use only external analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog
converters... I have yet to see a card with internal converters
that was worth squat. This may be the best thing you can do to
improve your recordings... the improvement in Signal-to-Noise
is definately audible on my monitoring system!For software tools, I use Sound Forge, CoolEditPro, and
samplewrench for digital audio recording and editing. I am still
auditioning plugin suites, and I've narrowed it down to DSP-FX
and Waves... I'll probably end up with both! For MIDI I use Cakewalk, and MIDIQuest is my editor/librarian.
For CD Burning, I use Goldenhawk CDRWin... this is available
directly from Goldenhawk on the web. I've used dozens of other
packages, and this one just plain works! The only drawback is
the lack of a GUI for CD layout. If you need that, Sonic Foundry
sells a toll that works and has the GUI, but it is pricey.On the hardware side, I use a pair of ISA cards, the Frontier
Designs Wavecenter - a digital only card that provides S/P-DIF
and ADAT interfaces - and the MIDIMAN Winman 4x4/s - a 4x4
MIDI interface. The only real disadvantage of these is that
they are not "Plug-and-Play", so configuring them takes some
effort. I have yet to run into a bottleneck on either though!If I were to upgrade (which I probably will) I'd probably go
with Frontier Designs new card, which us PCI, and has 2 ADAT
interfaces (16 channels), and expands to 8x8 MIDI.One caveat... I do some consulting for MIDIMan, and the owner
of Frontier is a very good friend, so I am biased. There are
lots of other cards out there, just remember the external
converter thing!Well, that's a lot of general info... if you have more questions
feel free to ask, and please include the specifics I asked for
previously... it'll make it easier to answer.Bill