jdbakker
Well-known member
How are multiple takes of one track handled in a studio with an analog mutitrack tape recorder? Is there a convenient way to have several takes of, say, the lead vocal coexisting to later pick the one that fits best in the mix, or are you limited to keeping the last (overdubbed) take you recorded? Having never worked with anything other than a DAW where you have the luxury to save as many takes as the HDD will hold, I don't quite know how to get similar functionality with a traditional multitrack recorder.
Context: still working on the Portable Multitrack Recorder. When I started the project, I intended to use it in 'Record'-mode only: set it up at a concert, hit REC, wait for the concert to end, hit STOP, go home, get some sleep, mix. At the time I was doing mostly live recordings, and except for the very rare re-take that was all I needed. However, these days I find myself doing more and more studio-type recordings, albeit still often on location, and having the ability to (re-)record only one or two tracks becomes increasingly useful.
Problem is that disk drives are really just tape recorders with fast forward/rewind capability and a small buffer. My original plan - dumping all channels to one big file - matches this model really well, as the drive only has to write one stream of data to sequential sectors on the disk. Destructive overdubs would only be a bit harder, as I now have to pre-read sectors of the file, change only those samples that belong to active channels and re-write those sectors. Alas, non-destructive overdubs (with retention of the old data) leads to a jigsaw of files on the disk, with in the best case 'only' one file per track/channel. Still, this could lead to severe fragmentation and possibly dropouts due to the frantic seeking of the disk head. It's surprising how much difference this makes when recording 16 channels @ 24/96. Before fixing this the DAW way I wondered if there would be an easier solution.
(On the gripping hand: I wonder how often I would need more than two takes per track/channel: the latest version, and the best version so far. I have on occasion gone through a few dozen takes of a track while mixing, but that time even the artists and the composer had trouble distinguishing between the 'best' and the 'latest' mixes).
JDB
[almost 4AM, can't sleep. On re-reading I see I'm even less coherent than normal. Sorry about that.]
Context: still working on the Portable Multitrack Recorder. When I started the project, I intended to use it in 'Record'-mode only: set it up at a concert, hit REC, wait for the concert to end, hit STOP, go home, get some sleep, mix. At the time I was doing mostly live recordings, and except for the very rare re-take that was all I needed. However, these days I find myself doing more and more studio-type recordings, albeit still often on location, and having the ability to (re-)record only one or two tracks becomes increasingly useful.
Problem is that disk drives are really just tape recorders with fast forward/rewind capability and a small buffer. My original plan - dumping all channels to one big file - matches this model really well, as the drive only has to write one stream of data to sequential sectors on the disk. Destructive overdubs would only be a bit harder, as I now have to pre-read sectors of the file, change only those samples that belong to active channels and re-write those sectors. Alas, non-destructive overdubs (with retention of the old data) leads to a jigsaw of files on the disk, with in the best case 'only' one file per track/channel. Still, this could lead to severe fragmentation and possibly dropouts due to the frantic seeking of the disk head. It's surprising how much difference this makes when recording 16 channels @ 24/96. Before fixing this the DAW way I wondered if there would be an easier solution.
(On the gripping hand: I wonder how often I would need more than two takes per track/channel: the latest version, and the best version so far. I have on occasion gone through a few dozen takes of a track while mixing, but that time even the artists and the composer had trouble distinguishing between the 'best' and the 'latest' mixes).
JDB
[almost 4AM, can't sleep. On re-reading I see I'm even less coherent than normal. Sorry about that.]