hard-disk recorder based studio in 2014...am I kidding myself?

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JoshuaUnitt

Active member
Joined
Feb 22, 2013
Messages
37
Location
Northern California
Alright gents/ladies, I need some advice.
-I really want to put together a mobile rig for tracking full bands in more immediate/intimate/spontaneous settings, but with a decent helping of outboard (I'm fully onboard with DIY and plan on having most of my gear be made by myself).

-On top of that, the music/musicians I tend to work with lend themselves toward a stripped down, retro sound.

-And last but not least...I'm burnt out on DAWs/plugins. Dealing with h/w buffer, hangups, crashes, software updates, dongles, format migrations, etc, it all drives me nuts.

So with the rig I'm wanting to put together... would I be crazy to just get an HDR (like an HD24 or a Tascam 2424) and a mixer, and maybe dump files into PT if i really need to do editing? Or has that ship sailed?

fwiw, I've done a few tape sessions and my entire first year of audio school was with an SSL + HD24, so the stuff is not entirely foreign to me.

Any thoughts?
 
You can get 2424's  for real cheap now days.  They have a limit of 10 minutes per song title(projects) unless you go and change them. Their functionality as far integration with a daw is a big ol pain in the ass. Same goes for an HD24  by alesis. Well at least it has been for me. We have a hd24 we take for demos to the trade shows, I had to load a song on there from my laptop. It was only 24 tracks and took me the better part of the day to Ethernet the song over.  Then the hd24 would have the file but would give transfer issues but yet the track was still there. In short it doesn't function like they claim. However for straight recording in and out, yeah it does do that as long as you don't move elsewhere.

Have you seen the joeco black box. it's designed specially for what you want to do and is real compact. 1RU depending on I/O options might be 2RU|

http://www.joeco.co.uk/main/products.html
 
When 2" tape got really expensive, I didn't want to mess with a computer, converters, and connections, so I put a Mackie HDR 96 in the analog Control Room. I love it.
Biggest advantage, One unit, NO LATENCY, Editing, and track transfer, Just import the Wave files into the DAW, and I'm still working the same way, Like with a tape machine, only recording digitally. The Band can afford a H.D. and caddy and they take the tracks home to work on, or come in and add tracks.
I was also thinking about getting another Mackie HDR for live stuff.
It's the way to go.
 
If you're not worried about needing a computer for "editing", a hard-disk recorder is a nice option. The Alesis HD24 works well, but Alesis use some proprietary way to write to disk. They offered a Fireport, which aided in transfers to computer. Unfortunately, I don't think Fireport works with any of the latest OS versions. I still have both, kept to use on locations, however I haven't had much call for that type of work lately.
The Mackie recorders are excellent. The thing I really liked about mine was the availability of virtual tracks on each channel. You could record several takes then pick/choose/comp for your final keeper. I sold my Mackie only to get a RADAR24, which I believe is the ultimate digital recorder. If you need more editing capability than what is on the RADAR, the problem  - might - be with the "talent".
Of course, using only a hard disk recorder means you need a console  and outboard equipment.
 
Mbira said:
pucho812 said:
Have you seen the joeco black box. it's designed specially for what you want to do and is real compact. 1RU depending on I/O options might be 2RU|

http://www.joeco.co.uk/main/products.html

Nice looking box, but jeez-like $3K for a 24 track recorder (without hard drive)...

For a RELIABLE 24 track recorder.

Plus, dev cost vs. shipping quantity means higher price to recoup.
 
We have 12 MX2424 in the Remote Truck (3 x 96 tracks).  I have modified them all with higher cap fans, and an additional power supply for the hard drives.  They have been quite reliable, except for the alpha displays.  They are all locked together with time code and an external word clock.

I was not aware of any recording length limitations as we record all 24 tracks for sometimes over two hours non-stop onto 36 gig SCSI drives.  We record .wav files on a fat32 formatted drive, copy them via a Mac computer onto a firewire drive, and rename, import and spot into a Pro Tools session.

Just my $0.02

Best,
Bruno2000
 
I've used the JoeCo's as a secondary / redundant / BU MTR on a handful of gigs and can recommend them as solid in that application. I appreciate the 1RU and simplicity. This was just rolling on a number of inputs. Not punching in a things so there may be some details in the "wish-list".
If you just need tape machine functionality with some editing capability you can also use a MAC/PC running reaper with a simple/dedicated I/O complement with whichever converters you want to use. You don't have to use it like a DAW and you do get some DAW features if you want them at some point.
Cheers!
-jb
 
Mackie HDR i used for a long time and still have one in the rack (looking to sell it ;) ) Unfortunately, as computer hardware gets older it gets harder to maintain (specifically disks for these).  Mine has the bios upgrade which allows for large capacity disks, but youre not gonna put a 1tb drive in there and get it to see the full TB.  That being said, the converters on the HDR were probably my favorite ever.  I recently chatted with Mike Rivers about pulling the cards and making them into standalone converters, but unfortunately, there are some issues with doing that.  If you are going to go that route, consider that another contender over the alesis.
 
I have sailed many a ship with the Alesis HD24s. Hard drives are easy to find. Caddys a little harder. The converters sound really good.

My feeling about large capacity drives in general is DON'T. Would you rather loose 250 gigs of data or less? Or 1Terabyte of data. Think about it its like the difference between loosing a $20 bill or your whole wallet!
 
My current set up uses an MX2424.  Since I don't have an option to record at home, I made my set up so I can do location recordings.  There are no restrictions on project length with the MX2424 that I've experienced apart from the drive size.  I have recorded  gigs of over 2 hours with no issues on 24 tracks.  It actually works quite well because it's self contained. 

I dub into PT via an RME raydat card doing a real time transfer, which is far quicker & seems more reliable than doing ethernet transfers. I also have a Glyph scsi drive system, but I can't find a scsi card/option to run on my latest pute, so just transfer over lightpipe instead.  If anyone knows of a way to hook 68pin lvd scsi to a modern pc let me know.

I actually use the MX2424 for convertors in the studio too.  I tried selling it to buy something else but was offered so little I decided to keep it.  It sounds pretty good to my ears.....  The only thing that isn't great is the fact that the MX2424 isn't full duplex. you can only switch in banks of 8 to either be record or playback.  So if I'm mixing more than 16 tracks then I use an external 2 channel A2D for the master recording.

For almost all the machines mentioned if they have ADAT ports the RME raydat card is a very good option for file transfers.
 
First post on GroupDIY here we go!

Nothing crazy about recording onto a disk recorder nowadays. Lots of people still use RADAR, arguably there are sonic benefits to this sort of benefit - simpler clocking scheme means lower jitter than you'd end up with a ProTools rig (which can also start to get incredibly expensive) plus hard disk recorders tend to be more reliable.

Lots of places still recording on tape!

I'd have a computer handy for the odd bit of editing though.
 
If i remember correctly the Fireface UFX from rme has Direct USB Recording...might be worth looking into.

Regards,

Pierre
 
A little-known feature of Reaper is that you can record to two disks at the same time for redundancy! I do a lot of live classical recording via a laptop, and this is a huge feature for me. It would be cool to have a JoeCo writing to an SSD drive though...
 
Buy a used Mackie HDR/MDR, put a quiet ATX PSU, CPU fan and a SSD via SATA-IDE converter in it, be happy.  The cards are available for cheap,  A/D converters are decent.
After recording, connect the HD/SSD  to your DAW via SATA-USB adapter and import tge wav files quickly.
Or go the UFX route with DURec. Both are excellent recommendations.
 
I've used the Alesis HD24 in the last 8 years with no problems.

My experience is that its reliable and simple of use.

As for the transfer software, I was never happy with the Alesis software, and also having to use Alesis Dock with the Hardrives, but that situation was over with an alternative app called HD24 TOOLS:

http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/hd24tools/about.html

this app works in MAC, Windows or Linux, and you can put the hardrive in an external usb case or adapter and transfer to your computer, no need to use the Alesis HD dock at all.

If you dont want DAW and Plugins and want to DIY equipment, I would Built 24 Mic Preamps, or at least build 8 good DIY preamps. Thens connect them to HD24, and built a simple 24 channel line in mixer for the foldback from the HD24, and would have 5-6 aux outs on the mixer for musicians mixes, maybe even having an headphone amp on board for each AUX, and then havind also an headphone amp on board for the master of the desk.
Cant get more simple than this.

Hope this helps
 

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