Re: RFC: music school recording chain

mchampag@xxxxxxxxx <mchampag@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
We have a pair of good spaces--a recital hall and an auditorium, in
which pairs of DPA mikes will be hung permanently, likely from
Servoreeler winches. I'm planning a pair of 4012s for the recital hall
and 4003s for the auditorium. They'll be sending mostly line level
back to the recording system.

How is it turning into line level? And are you suspending the things
in X-Y pairs or with a little space between them?

I suggest spending a couple afternoons with a ladder and some booms
to find the right locations in the room before you permanently install
the servoreelers. Try and keep the actual placement off the drawings
until as late in the process as possible.

Also... I would be worried about security. In any group of students there
will occasionally be a dishonest one. How easy is it to pull the mikes
up and secure them so that they cannot be removed? If there is a catwalk
up there, someone will use it.

Recording will happen in a centralized space with two or three Pro
Tools HD1 systems. In addition to the stereo pairs from the halls,
we're bringing 110-ohm Belden 1850F multicore (16 from the recital
hall and 32 from the auditorium) to Central Recording terminating in
an XLR patch bay. We'll also have a pair of PTZ cameras in each space
for monitoring what's happening onstage.

I suggest using the 110-ohm cable for everything, even the microphones.
It's fine for analogue signals, and you may need to run digital over it
someday. You cannot have too much digital infrastructure. Also run
twice as many pairs as you ever think you will need.

In Central Recording, the plan is to have 32 channels of Millennia
HV-3 preamps and Prism converters and mix and match as needed among
all the halls and rehearsal spaces (which will have a few channels of
their own tied to Central Recording). All that stuff is going to be on
TT patchbays.

I suggest having XLR patchbays for the mike-level signals rather than
running mike signals through bantams. And I do strongly suggest having
the mike signals patchable... someday you will lose power before a concert
and be glad that you could drop the servoreeler by hand, and plug a
portable recorder into the mike patchbay.

Audio capture on three minimal Pro Tools HD1 (one card +
one 192 Digital I/O on two machines for up to 16 channels, and a third
system with 2 192 Digital I/Os for up to 32 channels) running on Mac
Pros with a pair of monitors each. Again, we're going with Digi 192s
so that we can have flexibility with patching AES channel pairs to
whichever recording computer needs them.

If you have enough channels, you could consider just multing all of the
inputs to all of the computers. That way nobody gets confused about what
is patched where, or have the "my channel 3 is your channel 6, my channel
4 is your channel 7" headache.

I see no reason if you are making all the analogue stuff patchable to make
the digital stuff patchable too, but that's just me.

Safety/performer copies will be recorded simultaneously on an HHB
CDR882 and a Tascam DV-RA1000 via a Henry Engineering Digital D.A. 2x8
from the appropriate Prism (hall pair) outs.

I suggest making the safety copies off of the analogue feed out of the
Millennia... or maybe off a different microphone pair altogether.
Duplicate as much as possible of the system for the safety, because the
whole purpose if the safety is to act as a backup and the more of the
system that it backs up, the better.

Nightly backups (with either Time Machine or an rsync-based script) of
all data to a Mac Pro acting as a server.

Maybe a couple of lava lamps, too. That's basically it. Any comments
you could make are welcome and appreciated. Thanks!

Sounds like a nice facility. Don't forget to have a 2-track analogue
machine in the corner, though!
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
.

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