Audio recording and loops

gordholio wrote on 11/20/2002, 8:35 PM
Hi everybody:

I've been toying recently with the demos of ACID, Vegas and Sound Forge, and I have a very important question that I hope might be answered here. Let me preface by saying that I have a R&R band. I want to record live audio (up to 4 simultaneous channels), edit the tracks and add effects where needed, then enhance everything with loops (again, where needed). How would you folks do this? Record the audio first in Vegas and then export the tracks into ACID? Would you lay down the loops first in ACID, send that to Vegas, and combine it there?

I suppose I'm asking two things:

1) In what order should I do things?

2) Which Sonic Foundry products would best suit my needs?

I don't know anything about MIDI, by the way, so that's not a consideration. Oh, and just FYI, I've been using NTrack up to this point. I'm quite willing to dump NTrack completely if it turn out that Vegas can do everything I need.

Thanks a lot!

Comments

Former user wrote on 11/21/2002, 8:18 AM
Gordholio,

Here's how I tackle my projects. I am not in a band so recording 4, 6 or 8 tracks at a time is not an issue. Vegas will do this but it is always a factor of your audio interface as to whether or not you can do this. For each live feed, you need one input in your sound card.

1) In what order should I do things?

A: Think ACID as "creativity" and Vegas as "assembly"

If loops are a requirement (and they almost always find a spot in my tunes) - I always start my projects in Acid and build them to a point where I can render each Acid track as a separate file and then fly those individual elements into Vegas. Vegas is the place to apply traditional instruments (guitars, pianos, live drums etc). effects, mixing etc....

The key thing to remember is Vegas cannot interpret tempo changes, loop parameters etc like Acid can. Vegas has some time stretching as so on but to get all the loop tracks to synch properly, you need Acid to line things up for you. For me and my workflow, ACID is NOT a multitracker like Vegas. You can record small one shot elements and so on in ACID but you will soon see that Acid's real strength is it's ability to lock loops to tempo and mangle them efficiently while really stretching the bounds of your imagination.

2) Which Sonic Foundry products would best suit my needs?

Tough question and of course wallet size matters. I started with Acid and then quickly found out that overdubbing traditonal instruments was a pain. So I bought Vegas and then I was really flying. Finally I realized - to really get full value in my workspace...I found I could not be without the BIG three...Acid for loop mangling and rhythm infrastructures, Vegas for my recording and assembly area to bring it all together and finally Soundforge for my 2 track editing/mastering workbench.

In your case, you will have to decide what's more important. If you have a band and want to include everyone in the recording fun, you almost have to start with Vegas. Soundforge is 2 track only and I wouldn't subject any of my bandmates to a multitrack session using Acid - it wasn't designed for this mind.

So Vegas to get things rolling....Acid later on to get your loops in play and Soundforge last in the chain to edit and master your stuff.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Cheers,

Cuzin B
williamconifer wrote on 11/21/2002, 10:14 AM
couple of thoughts. I believe Acid 4 is what you should be looking at (if you're not already). It offeres Multitrack recording and looping. I have not tried Ver 4 ( i use ver3). Vegas will not loop like acid. Vegas will play loops but it will not automatically time and pitch the loops to the proper BPM and key in real time as Acid will. I love the SF programs. However you should look at Sonar 2. I find Sonar 2 dead easy for multitrack recording. Currently I have 24 tracks playing at once (very litle plugins) with no problems at all. I figure I can go to about 32-36 tracks of audio and a reasonable amount of plugins before my computer will start to bog down. The big plus with Sonar is that it has very mature and robust midi editing features along with virtual instrument plugin support (via DX/DXi, rewire and with the proper utility VST/VSTi) This means you can run any fx plugin or any instrument plugin available within Sonar. If you are not aware what DXi or VSTi are, then just trust me on this it's a BIG deal! Sonar also loops like Acid. IMO Acid does a better job at looping but Sonar gets the job done in a professional manner. Sonar2 will also allow you to run an AVI file so you may score video.

Again I love Acid3/Vegas3 and Sound Forge 4. Acid 4 is on the right path to be a killer app. It has alot of ground to makeup on Sonar2.

good luck.
jack