31 May
2009
31 May
'09
5:29 p.m.
On Sun, 2009-05-31 at 19:37 +0200, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
Fons,
If I were building a studio for myself I would purchase something like
a new Neve 5088 desk, and use Ardour with RME, and Mytek converters.
And when I win the lottery, I will. :-)
Say 48 in and
48 out, or even 64?
Does the RME hardware allow for that?
I've been using MADI cards from RME, each of them provides
64 ins and 64 outs and they work a charm. For interfacing
to analog you need external converters (first to/from ADAT,
the RME ADI648) and then to/from whatever your budget allows.
The cheapest converters are Behringer, performance is not
top grade but if you use only the line inputs you can
modify them so that the line signals goes directly to
the converters instead of being attenuated and added to
the mic input. Signal quality goes up considerably by
doing this, and you get rid of the variable gain. Regarding Ardour it sure can do the job, but coming
from
a 'real' (or 'reel') multitrack you will have to adapt a
bit. No more rocking the reels to find the exact punch-in
spot...
I only rock reels when I razor-blade edit. I'm not completely
unfamiliar with digital audio software, but every studio I ever
engineered in has been analog. I do some mastering in Sound Forge.
Provided you have enough physical ins/outs, the
tracks
will autoconnect to them, so you don't even have to
open the mixer window if you just use it as a tape
machine, just create a template with mono outs for
each track.
Ideally I'd like to submix the drums down to a stereo pair of outs so I
only use 2 channels on my console, same for guitars, percussion
overdubs, etc...
You can set up the tracks as 'tape' tracks
which means
that if you punch the original signal will be overwritten
as would happen on a real tape. The alternative is the
standard mode, where a new region will be created (on
the same track) if you punch, and you can edit the
transitions later.
I'd be comfortable with either. After all, they made records with
destructive editing for decades. :-)
Regarding punching, I've found Ardour on the
unstable
side when doing that, even recent versions.
Well that changes things considerably for me. Punch-ins (and outs) are
a fundamental function for any recording device like this. Why is it
unstable in this area?
From what I've seen there should be a workaround for this, right?
Record another track, or region in the same track and drag the regions
to fit around the punch. No?
I just installed Ardour on my desktop at home. I don't do any audio
work at home so the machine is running Ubuntu (not studio) and it's
primarily used for surfing and other basic productivity activities. It
doesn't have any special audio hardware in it. I installed it to begin
familiarizing myself with it.
Rich...