Re: newbie to Linux audio

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



A lot of good recommendations!

I am doing this on a serious amateur basis, not a production professional basis. And I'm not recording complex situations either, but rather am looking to record live chamber music. I've got a brass quintet these days and my wife plays with a string quartet. She's the professional musician in the family. I'm also in the Union (Local 6), but that's so I can work the Chinese funerals in San Francisco.

So I figure to just put up a couple of good condenser mikes in an ORTF configuration, in just the right spot in the hall, and do it that way. No PA systems in sight. I used to use a Revox A77 open reel machine for this sort of thing years ago and got pretty decent results. It would be nice to be able to add in another couple of mikes later to experiment with other mike techniques, but I doubt I'll ever need more than 4 mikes tops.

I saw a friend using a mike preamp feeding into some sort of USB audio interface, feeding into a laptop at a Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra concert in Berkeley a few months ago. I began figuring it was time to get back into it, especially now that the wife and I are both playing chamber music again.

I just scored a Behringer tube mike preamp today off of EBay, so for right now, I just need something pretty simple. I want to do 24 bit, 96 kHz recording and then produce DVD-audio discs for playback on my hi-end audiophile system at home.

I'm not familiar with Audour, but I'll look into it!

Russ

Reuben Martin wrote:
I'm in the middle of building a rig for live location recording.

My recommendations are:

- You might want a RAID array if you plan on doing live multitracking
with a lot of channels. If you are just placing a pair of your own
condenser mics out to pick up the PA mix then that's not as important.

- Stay the hell away from USB, and be suspicious about firewire units.
Use PCI, or even better PCIe interfaces. I like (and use) RME's PCI(e)
based stuff. M-audio is good too.

- If you're going to be using the same mics as the house mix, get a
hard split and mount it on the back of your recording rig. Live
locations don't always have nice snake heads with splits built into
them and taking sends from a house or monitor console can introduce
all kinds of problems.

- Use external pre-amps and AD converters (i.e. don't try to get a
sound card that does everything. they suck)

- If you plan on using Linux, do your homework first on how well the
hardware is supported.

-Use Ardour, not Audacity

Of course, all this is expensive and assumes you are doing this for
production work and not just as a hobby...

-Reuben


On 7/17/07, Russell Button <russ@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Ken!

I'm going to have to pass. USB 1.x just isn't going to cut it for 24
bit, 96 kHz, live location recording. As you well know, a lot of
products get built before they should because of issues like this.
Reminds me of the NeXT computer, which probably would have been great on
a 300 Mhz Pentium, but not a Motorola 68030 processor.

Coolness,

Russ

Ken Restivo wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 06:45:12AM -0700, Russ Button wrote:
>
>> Loki Davison wrote:
>>
>>>> Russ Button wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I'm looking to move into using Linux as my music platform for live
>>>>> location recording.
>>>>>
>>> I'm very happy with my echo
>>> interface and know some of the nice ones can be found on ebay that use
>>> cardbus and pci if you want to use it at home too. I.e Mona.
>>> http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/Discontinued/Mona/index.php
>>>
>> Okee Doki Loki!
>>
>> I'll bet nobody's ever said that to you before...
>>
>> But another question now comes to mind. Do you use this Mona interface >> with your Linux box? If so, do you use the Windows driver for the cardbus
>> card with ndiswrapper or something?
>>
>>
>
> I have an old M-Audio Audiophile USB for sale. Has stereo RCA connectors in and out, line in, and requires a wall-wart. It also has SPDIF in/out which I haven't tried to use.
>
> - -ken
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iD8DBQFGnSPQe8HF+6xeOIcRAi/QAKDANKU27Z3LAowFj5kJ/jncG5QEjACg1Mg6
> fs06Fd85Lw+Pdld9OqnKcPU=
> =9kpG
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Linux-audio-user mailing list
> Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user
>

_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user

_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user

_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user

[Index of Archives]     [Linux Sound]     [ALSA Users]     [Pulse Audio]     [ALSA Devel]     [Sox Users]     [Linux Media]     [Kernel]     [Photo Sharing]     [Gimp]     [Yosemite News]     [Linux Media]

  Powered by Linux