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Questions about recording to computer


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I have a couple of jobs coming up where I'm going to need to record quite a few channels of audio (more than 4, hopefully 16 or less). One job is with a lot of people talking and I'll be using a couple of Dugan Model-E's (which requires insert points). The other will be a doc about a modern composer and will include some live music recording. I own a Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 mixer, which I've been very happy with, and I've been using the firewire out from that to record multitrack audio. But up till now, I haven't needed to worry about maintaining sync w/ video cameras over long takes. I know the StudioLive's wordclock is not especially accurate (altho I haven't yet measured what sort of drift I would get over a couple of hours.) So I have 2 questions. First, What do I need to do to have accurate sync (on the audio side) between the audio and the video cameras? Is it best to get a couple of audio interfaces to go between the StudioLive 16.4.2 and my MacBook Pro or is there some way to make the firewire feed from the 16.4.2 more accurate (there's no Wordclock In on the mixer). Second, does anybody have any advice on a good application to use on my MBP for recording the multitracks? I've been using Presonus Capture, which has worked fine but it's pretty clunky. In the past, I owned Metacorder, but sold it and definitely can't afford to buy it as it's priced these days. The projects will probably be edited in FCP but post (in both cases) has been talking about jumping to Adobe. Boom Recorder would work although it also has gotten expensive. ProTools? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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+1 for Phil's observations. And the cost of Reaper's full license (the one you should buy if you're using it to make a living) is $225. Boom Recorder, which is way less menu intensive and lots easier to use on location for film and television production is $280. You'll save at least the difference in your time figuring out how to set up and most efficiently use Boom Recorder. Reaper's a full featured multitrack recording and editing platform, but for location origination, it's a bit like using a sledge hammer to put up a picture hanger - a lot more tool than is required.

Best regards,

Jim

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In theory, with the Presonus driver, you could aggregate the 16.4.2 with another Firestudio product that has BNC wordclock and then select the wordclock as the source. I wasn't able to get this to work with my old 16.4.2 and Firestudio Lightpipe, but I believe there were major issues with the Firestudio unit, you may have better luck with another box.

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I didn't have a lot of luck with device aggregation period, at least for multitrack recording. I had clock issues which made artifacts in the recordings (but not all tracks) that were not audible during tracking. I found it safer to run multiple rigs on the same WC and TC (2 per laptop) rather than try to get 3 or 4 interfaces onto one laptop w/ device aggregation. YMMV, but test test test.

phil p

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