Re: ADAT or other older multitrack, transfer to computer?

On 9 syys, 17:50, Mike Rivers <mriv...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Yeah, but how about the other seven inputs? And how about when you have
more than eight tracks? You need to find the button or pull-down menu
for the track where you designate the source (whether it comes from
Input 1, Input 2, Input 7 and so on). And in order to hear it you need
to assign the track to an output destination, which you have to connect
(hardware) to your monitor system. And you have to mix in the DAW.

What I see in my DAW is first ten channels; each channels master fader
and input meter and to the right if there is any actual stuff on the
track. For the first eight I don't need to select inputs, they are
preset to eight actual inputs. Output is also always to master output
by preset, unless I want to create a submix track for headphones etc.
and send stuff there as well. Usually I don't need to select anything;
just plug in to any input and I see the meter on the corresponding
track.

If I need more than eight, then I just click 'new' and then I need to
select which of the inputs I want to use.

Output to monitor is hardly harder than with a mixer; for me its a
single digital line to my amp.

When I have to work with a DAW, when I'm tracking, I do the simplest mix
possible. I usually leave all the levels the same, knock the pans
around, and leave it. And when I want headphone mixes for the players in
the studio, that's another headache that I frequently use as an example
for "why don't they design DAWs to do these things automatically?").
When I'm working on a real mixer, I do a real mix, refine it as we go
along, and it's pretty well set up (and I know the moves) when we go to
mix it for real. Now if you only record yourself, you don't need as much
flexibility as a DAW can offer, so you can ignore a lot of what it does
and how you have to get it to do that.

Here I must beg to differ. I also keep it simple when tracking; I do
however toss a master compressor on the mains output and do some
panning, but basically that's it.

But the headphone mix (which I seldom use) is so much easier on a
DAW...on a hardware mixer, you have to assign an aux for each channel
and send that to a submixer so you can give the singer some verb when
singing etc, which has always seemed like next to an impossible task
for most every engineer I have worked with. When I sing for instance,
I want a kickdrum and bass plus some guitars, not much else. I want a
certain delay and some verb as well. Whenever I ask an engineer for a
mix like that, they always take their sweet time trying to route the
stuff right, and still I usually get pretty horrible mixes on phones.

But with my DAW...I can simply turn on delay and reverb directly on
input and select it not to commit it to 'tape', only the dry signal
will be recorded although the singer hears the FX. Or I can just send
whatever I want to a sub buss where I can have any FX and settings
with a touch, and even have ready-made setups for different
needs....and no need for patchbays or routing cables.

Like you, whenever the guitarist is fixing his gear or whatever, I
also keep refining the mix, throwing a compressor here and a
noisekiller there, and little by little it starts getting better and
better....I don't think in that respect the hardware/software route
really differ that much. The only real difference I can see is I can
just throw in gates at each track or ten different compressors in just
a few mouse clicks instead of lotsa routing. And I can mute all FX at
once too to do some more basic EQ tweaking etc. and still be able to
listen to the 'final' product with all the compressors and such at any
time - at the state of readiness it happens to be.

You may be using "track bouncing" to describe something it isn't. It's
just a matter of making a mix of some (or all) tracks, patching the
output of the mixer to an empty track (or two for stereo) and recording

Yeah, I meant, on the fostex, you could somehow move the 8 'work'
tracks on the side, and have another 8 empty work tracks while keeping
the 8 there - you could do it thrice for 24 tracks...but it was such a
complicated operation I never could understand how to do it.

All in all, the Fostex had like a 200-page manual and I never even
found out how to really punch in properly, because it involved setting
some markers and what not, and I was usually quite lost with whether I
even had the right setting on the mixer (like I never understood how
do I select the tracks that are monitored...those knobs had two
functions to follow either 'track' or 'input' but their function
depended on whether I was in 'monitor' or 'track and monitor' or
'track' mode on each track and the master output track too...it was
unbelievably hard to try and figure out what needs be done to even do
simple tasks such as listen to a given track while recording the
other, and have those somehow balanced to headphones...I dunno, I find
stuff like that incredibly hard.

One other thing I always had real problems to use is the patchbay...it
hurts my brain trying to see what connects where when I take out a
plug or insert one...I have to follow each line with the finger to
make sure where it goes etc.

All that is gone with DAWs...you can just toss anything onto any
channel insert and never worry about any routings. Or make FX busses
as need be and never worry about routings. Anything.

I used to write that on the tape box, and I can still read it 50 years
later. Will you be able to read your disk files 50 years later?

Ah, that will be an interesting issue indeed :-)

Will you be able to find a tape machine to run your tape in 50 years?

The answer is: I dunno. But I do think that in the future storage
media is so cheap people can save pretty much everything indefinitely,
in several places, and it will just accumulate and never vanish.

I have recently transferred old films from the 70's to digital, and I
have all that on my HD's.
Musicwise, most all the music I've done since 1994 I have on digital,
and since 1999 I have pretty much every project still in multitrack
format. On my laptop I have my whole CD collection ripped now; about
5000 songs where ever I want. Also on my IPod and my work machine and
my normal PC.

All that doesn't take much room even...and these days a terabyte of
HD's is cheap as bread.
I keep everything in at least two places all the time...plus, like
this laptop's data is stored automatically over the internet onto my
ISP's servers...every day it makes sure every new file is copied
there. I only have 50 gigabytes of such online backup service, but
it's fine for my laptop. The music stuff...my 300GB usb drive takes
care of all my music backup for now, and when it runs out, I'll just
get a terabyte backup disk or two.

In just a few years, 100 terabytes will be the norm on any computer.
Then I will have all the work I ever did on all my machine HD's plus
most of it online somewhere. The storages just grow and grow. Hell, I
have 2500 hours(!) of online video storage for my digital TV already.
If I wanted, I could just select to save all the TV programs on all
channels for like a week and I'd still have lotsa room left. In
reality I only use maybe 160Gb for most my everyday timeshifting of TV
programs anyway.

If I now have a 24-megabyte net access with 2500 hours of video
storage, 50GB of backup data storage...what will it be in a few years?
I've no doubt in 5 years my net access will be 100+ and the online
backup storage is at least half a terabyte. And that means, even if my
house would burn and all my data gone, they'd still be safe at my ISP
and accessible from anywhere in the world.

I think that does beat a tape, however well they do survive otherwise.

Cheers,

Dee
.

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