[LAU] digital voodoo: master fader should be set at 0db

[Jörn Nettingsmeier]

On 04/14/2010 02:56 PM, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 12:23 AM, Rick Green <rtg at aapsc.com> wrote:
> 
>>   Last weekend, I was running FOH for a couple of concerts, and the artist
>> had hired a professional recording engineer to lay down a multitrack of
>> the show for possible commercial release.  THey had a few 'special
>> surprise guests' showing up, so I kept bringging out 'just one more'
>> microphone until the channel count was up to 22, I think.  After sound
>> check, the recording engineer expressed some trepidation that his
>> external hard drive could handle all that bandwidth.  I asked him if he
>> had pushed record and tried it during soundcheck, and he said "Of course,
>> but you know when they get excited and start playing loud during the show,
>> it fills up those bits pretty quick, and maybe then the firewire800 won't
>> be fast enough."
> 
> good story.
> 
> what's ironic though is that its now reasonably well documented that
> if the disk drive is in the line of fire when they start to play loud,
> it really will be unable to keep up. this has nothing to do with bit
> rates, but is (probably) caused by the the vibrations causing read
> failures which necessitate a lot of retrys, thus slowing down the
> effective streaming bandwidth of the disk. if the disk is kept out the
> way of direct incoming sound, the issue goes away.

MA lighting (the guys who sell the grand ma range of light controllers,
market leaders in germany) have a warning note on their boxen (which are
embedded pcs in effect) not to attempt disk backups in high-noise
conditions, because the vibrations can cause failure or even data
corruption. very funny. even more funny: they're right. i've heard quite
a few lighting engineers got bitten by this issue.