Semi OT: Vegas 8a Audio Multi-Track Recording

fldave wrote on 2/24/2008, 2:18 PM
I tagged this as Semi-OT because it pertains to Vegas Audio only, but wanted to post here for feedback also. My main question pertains to 24/96 vs. 24/48.

I have a new Presonus FP10 (old Firepod) and am putting it through stress testing prior to a shoot of an acoustic concert. I'll be getting a stereo mix from the mixer as well as some feeds from a mic and three guitars. I will be focusing on the video part mostly, a couple of audio people will be manning the sound part.

I am running the FP10 (firewire) into a dual core Gateway laptop (not Core 2 Duo) running Vegas 8a. All seems working fine after I have been testing it a bit. My laptop got flakey after an accidental powerdown with settings at 24/96, but a restart of Vegas solved that. 100GB free disc space on the laptop. I am running the FP10 ASIO drivers, although I did download and install the ASIO4ALL drivers just in case. Vegas seems very nice and solid

The shoot will be an FX1 with two HC7s, so it would be nice to go to Blue Ray in the future, strictly SD now.

One of the main sound guys will also capture (redundant) from the Mackie 1640 to his computer, but he said he usually captures at 24/44 (?) since he is not in the DVD world, just CDs. I told him I needed at least 24/48, and he said that he could not reliably do 24/96 using the supplied software that came with the Mackie. I think his problem is he is not using Vegas!

Will 96Khz give me that much more benefit vs 48Khz weighed against any throughput risks I may encounter? FP10 runs 8 line/mic inputs. Also consider my desire to go to BluRay in the future with this.

Any comments and horror stories welcome!

Edited:
Another question I meant to mention was is it safe to run the recording straight through, or is it safer to stop say between main show/encore or more frequently ( remember we have redundant audio captures) as there will be sections of talking like in a Storytellers show.

Comments

kdm wrote on 2/24/2008, 3:15 PM
The best thing to do is to test run the system at 96k for the full length you expect to track, just to be sure, though with only 6 tracks (if I'm counting correctly). As far as advantages over 48k, that is debatable in most cases, but technically, yes it should sound better as long as you have really good mics, a good board for the stereo feed, etc to really take advantage of it - and esp. for an acoustic concert, it's worth considering. The FP10 should show a noticeable improvement.

Personally, I would be hesitant to run a long multitrack project to a single drive laptop at 96k (I assume this is the system drive and not a secondary SATA or at least ATA133), but being only 6 tracks it might be fine. A better bet might be a FW800 drive (if you have a second, separately bussed fw port, though I doubt it), but there again, test it first before going live just to be sure the fw port isn't in conflict with something else on the laptop.

Even at 24/48, it's better to run audio to a second drive. Test it and see - newer laptops can be pretty resiliant to that kind of loading.

As far as the audio recordists' reluctancy to record with the Mackie interface - drivers are everything here, and Mackie's drivers may not be as fast as Presonus', so no surprise there. Probably a good call to track with the Presonus in that regard.
Chienworks wrote on 2/24/2008, 3:53 PM
Firewire can carry more than 100 96K/24bit channels. So don't worry about this from the connection standpoint. Now, whether the Firepod can encode that fast and your computer decode it, that's another matter. However, i would say that 6 channels isn't even going to make your system raise an eyebrow, much less stressing it.
deusx wrote on 2/24/2008, 6:46 PM
I always use 96k/24 bit at 2ms latency ( RME fireface ) and have never had problems. Usually end up with 15-30 tracks.

I doubt you'd be able to notice the difference in sound quality, but why use lower rates when this works fine. Firepod should be able to handle it as well.
ChristoC wrote on 2/24/2008, 7:21 PM
If you are envisioning syncing Audio to Video later, the only problem is lack of timecode or common wordclock.
fldave wrote on 2/24/2008, 8:10 PM
Thanks everyone, my latest test seemed to be a solid 24/96 throughput on a 1hr 45 min recording of 8 tracks.

Synching with video is what is planned, and is a headache, but I've done ti for several years so I'm kind of used to it. Vegas to the rescue!

Thanks, all!