28 Jan
2007
28 Jan
'07
6:20 p.m.
Hello,
I have been asked to organize/setup a recording system for a community
event that will involve recording a single session of around three hours
every day. The audio consists of some speaches and some live music and
singing.
It is a volunteer effort and I suppose they do not have much funds to
invest for this recording setup. They already have a 2.5 GHz computer
with 512 MB of arm (I can use the computer in whatever way I deem
necessary), a bunch of older computers (maybe around 500 MHz with 256MB
RAM lying around), a 12 channel mixer which has around 4 or 6 mics
connecteted to it and an amplifier.
Here is my first tentative idea. Split the Sub R and Sub L output of the
audio board (currently they are connected to an amplifier) and take one
part of both of these channels to the Line In of a computer (and the
other parts go to the amplifier). Install Ubuntu (or maybe another
distro) and use Audacity to do the recording (I am more familiar with
Linux, haven't considered Windows yet). I understand that in Audacity I
can specify the duration of the recording. So it appears that it won't
be difficult for anybody to start Audacity, type in the duration in the
"duration window" (say, 3h00m00s) and press "record". Hopefully,
Audacity can be set to record directly to ogg format.
This way, I won't have to be present there all the time to start or stop
the recording and also won't need to post process the audio to get it
into ogg (if it were recorded in Wav to begin with).
I haven't done this kind of a project before. I am assuming:
1. The outputs Sub R and Sub L are can be directly connected to a Line
In of an audio device
2. The PC I mentioned above would be sufficient to do live recording and
encoding without any problems.
3. Audacity is appropriate for this project.
4. The computer's line in would be sufficient for a fine quality recording.
Having said this, I would sure love to have some advice from experienced
users. Also, I need to buy these connectors and cables:
- 1/4 in. mono pins to two RCA connectors (Y connector),
- a two RCA to 1/8 in. connector (Sub RL -> Line In of comp.), and
- RCA-RCA connector(Sub RL RCA -> amp.). Any recommendation for a good
place (I don't want the quality of the audio to suffer just because of
low-quality cables)? Also, any suggestions on how far can I take the
recording computer from the audio board's outputs (cable length
problem). And, if a Line In of a computer is not good enough, which
sound card should I look for?
Thanks,
->HS
28 Jan
28 Jan
10:29 p.m.
Hi!
Once I recorded a concert (which I also took part in) for about 2.5
hours long. It was not that long session you plan to try, though :)
But I have some ideas to share.
0) computer is definitely OK for your task.
1) Audio card. I don't know, may be that computer is lucky enough to
get good on board sound. But 3 of them I met in person, were simply
horrible.
If you spend about $100 you can buy M-Audio Audiophile 2496.
You will have dramatically better audio quality. I'd even say that
only from here you can call it "a quality". Btw, it has RCA
inputs/outputs (and an S/PDIF).
2) If Audacity needs fixed recording time, I'd sugest another way:
I used excellent timemachine by Steve Harris (
http://plugin.org.uk/timemachine/ )
The plus side of it, it just records, from one button push, to
another. No need to set up recording time. Just make sure you have
enough disk space.
On the minus side, you have to install jack for it. But for recording
you don't need low latency, so no special kernel tuning is required.
Just set up maximum buffer size (4096 samples?) and go :)
Another "minus" is that it records 24-bit WAV files (WAV64 exactly, to
overcome 2GB file limit of normal WAV files). But you can later edit
and compress it to OGG if you wish. As a bonus you will have greater
audio quality in a source material.
So, on the software side I'd recommend
1) jackd + qjackctl
2) timemachine
and for post processing I used
3) mhwaveedit.
I don't know if audacity can read WAV64 files. But if the recording
session will fit into 2GB, timemachine has an option to write common
WAV files.
Hope it'll help a bit.
Regards,
Dmitry.
10:45 p.m.
Dmitry Baikov wrote:
I don't know if audacity can read WAV64 files.
Audacity uses libsndfile and therefore can read WAV64 epecially since
timemachine uses libsndfile to write WAV64 files.
Cheers,
Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"It is forbidden for a Muslim to be a loyal friend to someone who does
not believe in God and His Prophet, or someone who fights the religion
of Islam." -- Fifth grade text book from Saudi Arabia
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR200605190…
29 Jan
29 Jan
7:59 p.m.
1) Audio card. I don't know, may be that computer
is lucky enough to
get good on board sound. But 3 of them I met in person, were simply
horrible.
If you spend about $100 you can buy M-Audio Audiophile 2496.
You will have dramatically better audio quality. I'd even say that
only from here you can call it "a quality". Btw, it has RCA
inputs/outputs (and an S/PDIF).
You should invest some money in a decent audio card. Onboard sound is ok
for playback of the system startsound and YouTube videos, but certainly
not for recording. Something like the recommended Audiophile cards are
ok. Make sure your Linux uses the ALSA sound system.
If you just need a simple way to record you can just use the "arecord"
command which ships with the ALSA drivers. It can record in 32bit
formats (if your audiocard supports this, why you should invest some
money here) and can stop after a specified duration. It is currently
limited to plain .wav files (thus 2GB max), but will split if reaching
2GB, so no audio will be lost. When you edit your recordings later on
you can merge your audio files again.
--
---> Dirk Jagdmann ^ doj / cubic
----> http://cubic.org/~doj
-----> http://llg.cubic.org
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3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Dirk Jagdmann -
Dmitry Baikov -
Erik de Castro Lopo -
H.S.