[LAU] newbie to Linux audio

[Russ Button]

A lot of good recommendations!

I am doing this on a serious amateur basis, not a production 
professional basis.  And I'm not recording complex situations either, 
but rather am looking to record live chamber music.  I've got a brass 
quintet these days and my wife plays with a string quartet.  She's the 
professional musician in the family.  I'm also in the Union (Local 6), 
but that's so I can work the Chinese funerals in San Francisco.

So I figure to just put up a couple of good condenser mikes in an ORTF 
configuration, in just the right spot in the hall, and do it that way.  
No PA systems in sight.  I used to use a Revox A77 open reel machine for 
this sort of thing years ago and got pretty decent results.  It would be 
nice to be able to add in another couple of mikes later to experiment 
with other mike techniques, but I doubt I'll ever need more than 4 mikes 
tops.

I saw a friend using a mike preamp feeding into some sort of USB audio 
interface, feeding into a laptop at a Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra 
concert in Berkeley a few months ago.  I began figuring it was time to 
get back into it, especially now that the wife and I are both playing 
chamber music again.

I just scored a Behringer tube mike preamp today off of EBay, so for 
right now, I just need something pretty simple. 

I want to do 24 bit, 96 kHz recording and then produce DVD-audio discs 
for playback on my hi-end audiophile system at home.

I'm not familiar with Audour, but I'll look into it!

Russ

Reuben Martin wrote:
> I'm in the middle of building a rig for live location recording.
>
> My recommendations are:
>
> - You might want a RAID array if you plan on doing live multitracking
> with a lot of channels. If you are just placing a pair of your own
> condenser mics out to pick up the PA mix then that's not as important.
>
> - Stay the hell away from USB, and be suspicious about firewire units.
> Use PCI, or even better PCIe interfaces. I like (and use) RME's PCI(e)
> based stuff. M-audio is good too.
>
> - If you're going to be using the same mics as the house mix, get a
> hard split and mount it on the back of your recording rig. Live
> locations don't always have nice snake heads with splits built into
> them and taking sends from a house or monitor console can introduce
> all kinds of problems.
>
> - Use external pre-amps and AD converters (i.e. don't try to get a
> sound card that does everything. they suck)
>
> - If you plan on using Linux, do your homework first on how well the
> hardware is supported.
>
> -Use Ardour, not Audacity
>
> Of course, all this is expensive and assumes you are doing this for
> production work and not just as a hobby...
>
> -Reuben
>
>
> On 7/17/07, Russell Button <russ at button.com> wrote:
>> Hi Ken!
>>
>> I'm going to have to pass. USB 1.x just isn't going to cut it for 24
>> bit, 96 kHz, live location recording. As you well know, a lot of
>> products get built before they should because of issues like this.
>> Reminds me of the NeXT computer, which probably would have been great on
>> a 300 Mhz Pentium, but not a Motorola 68030 processor.
>>
>> Coolness,
>>
>> Russ
>>
>> Ken Restivo wrote:
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> > Hash: SHA1
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 06:45:12AM -0700, Russ Button wrote:
>> >
>> >> Loki Davison wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>> Russ Button wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>>> I'm looking to move into using Linux as my music platform for live
>> >>>>> location recording.
>> >>>>>
>> >>> I'm very happy with my echo
>> >>> interface and know some of the nice ones can be found on ebay 
>> that use
>> >>> cardbus and pci if you want to use it at home too. I.e Mona.
>> >>> http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/Discontinued/Mona/index.php
>> >>>
>> >> Okee Doki Loki!
>> >>
>> >> I'll bet nobody's ever said that to you before...
>> >>
>> >> But another question now comes to mind.  Do you use this Mona 
>> interface
>> >> with your Linux box?  If so, do you use the Windows driver for the 
>> cardbus
>> >> card with ndiswrapper or something?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> > I have an old M-Audio Audiophile USB for sale. Has stereo RCA 
>> connectors in and out, line in, and requires a wall-wart. It also has 
>> SPDIF in/out which I haven't tried to use.
>> >
>> > - -ken
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
>> >
>> > iD8DBQFGnSPQe8HF+6xeOIcRAi/QAKDANKU27Z3LAowFj5kJ/jncG5QEjACg1Mg6
>> > fs06Fd85Lw+Pdld9OqnKcPU=
>> > =9kpG
>> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Linux-audio-user mailing list
>> > Linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
>> > http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user
>> >
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Linux-audio-user mailing list
>> Linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
>> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Linux-audio-user mailing list
> Linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user