disc size?
Just out of curiousity…
I have read many posts about recording live performances. I am wondering what sort of disc space is required for what must be pretty long segments? What size discs are most of you using? Do you use RAID or SATA setups? What config is probably the most common? I have 4 PCs networked, each with a couple of HDs to use for storage. Is there another way or does everybody use either a GREAT BIG disc or several decent sized ones? do you dump song files (raw tracks) onto CDs for backup? Just curious…
At 16/44.1 you need roughly 5Mb per minute, per (mono) track. Knowing that you can gauge how much space you need. Scale up/down accordingly for other bit depths/sample rates.
As for offline storage, I too use another drive in another PC for adhoc backups and then archive to DVD once finished. I do, however, leave the project on the “live” system too - hard drive space is so cheap nowadays there’s little point in deleting things.
I upgraded my PC recently and now I have a SATA drive. The thing flies compared to my old ATA66 drive (which I now use for offline storage).
Going off on a tangent, the biggest issue I seem to face with going back to old (archived) projects is that of plugins. There isn’t an automatic way of saving all the plugins used in a project along with the project so often, when loading an old project, a plugin goes missing, or I load the project on another system that doesn’t have the necessary plugins… I have, at times, saved the whole VST directory on the DVD, but that doesn’t help with DX plugins (and I’m not sure that there would easily be a way to handle those).
Mark
Mark, I keep the install files from everything I install. Makes it a lot easier when I reload my system, and helps a little for your issue too. Not ideal, but what else can one do?
VST sure is easier, all of them being in one folder. I guess that’s a reason to use a VST in preference to DX, all other things being equal.
BTW, I’m sure there’s a way to dump the DX registry and save just the DX DLLs. If I understand it right, the only real difference (from install perspective) between DX and VST is that DX’s have to be registered, and there’s a simple program to register them. IIRC, it comes with Flavio’s “paid-mode” FX from V3 days, and can be found elsewhere.
It might be nice if some Windows guru could write us a nice little program to archive all registered DX plugins, similar to saving the VST folder. It wouldn’t be guaranteed to work for all cases – some DXs probably require a whole package to be installed. But it probably would work for the majority.
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| Mark, I keep the install files from everything I install. Makes it a lot easier when I reload my system, and helps a little for your issue too. Not ideal, but what else can one do? |
Yes, I tend to do so too, but over the years…
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| I am wondering what sort of disc space is required for what must be pretty long segments? What size discs are most of you using? Do you use RAID or SATA setups? What config is probably the most common? I have 4 PCs networked, each with a couple of HDs to use for storage. Is there another way or does everybody use either a GREAT BIG disc or several decent sized ones? do you dump song files (raw tracks) onto CDs for backup? Just curious… |
I can’t really answer your question quantitatively, but my philosophy on disks are the faster, the bigger - the better. I create really large .wav files (96/24) & I do live recording, creating tracks that span 1 hour.
My home DAW is set-up with 2 SATA drives in a RAID-0 configuration. It’s very fast & it works well for what I do. The DAWs I sell to my clients have SATA drives & some are in RAID-0 configurations and some are not.
Could I get by with a non-RAID setup? Maybe. But my philosophy is if I can get the speed, then I want it. So I didn’t spend anytime trying to quantify what my requirements are - I just go for the fastest I can get.
I hope this makes sense.
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| I am wondering what sort of disc space is required for what must be pretty long segments? What size discs are most of you using? |
My PC has 2x40 and 1x160 hard drives, all PATA. The 160 gets all my recording sent to it, while windows XP boots off one of the 40’s.
I use a Hercules FW 16/12 to record around 10 tracks for 45-50 minutes each, although one set was 120. The Herc hasn’t been completely flawless solution yet, but it gets better every time after post gig evaluation. I’m currently running the ASIO buffers as big as they get with the current drivers by as many as I can do per track. Last time I was at 3584 by 2, but I still got a few droppouts, so it’ll be 3584 by 4 next time.
I might even try and run the WDM drivers harder/larger.
Four sets of 12 tracks, roughly as I’ve deleted a few, has come to 14gig or so at 24/44.
BTW, for live recording with n-Track, I find it works best to record one set at a time, and start a new song file for each set. (That is, if I’m just recording and if it’s not a hassle – otherwise I start it up and just let it run.)
In a long set I’ll usually stop and restart with a new song file at some obvious point, like when the vocalist starts chatting up the crowd. Winding up with 40 to 80 minute sets seems to work well.
Working with sets this way has these advantages:
- If the power goes out or computer wigs out, you have all but the last set recorded. (Note: there is a method for fixing wave files that n-Track hasn’t finished. Nontrivial, though.)
- Very long audio files can get tedious to work with in n-Track or a wave editor.
- With just a few sets, it’s easy to adjust the controls for each track and reuse them for each new song. When you finish the first set, save it. Then use “save as” to start a new file for the next set. Delete each wave file but NOT the tracks. Import the wave files from the next set into the same tracks, and away you go. This is a bit tedious, but isn’t too bad to do for a handful of sets. It’s too much hassle when broken up too much, as in one song file per song.
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| - With just a few sets, it’s easy to adjust the controls for each track and reuse them for each new song. When you finish the first set, save it. Then use “save as” to start a new file for the next set. Delete each wave file but NOT the tracks. Import the wave files from the next set into the same tracks, and away you go. This is a bit tedious, but isn’t too bad to do for a handful of sets. It’s too much hassle when broken up too much, as in one song file per song. |
Never thought of doing that, good call.
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| - With just a few sets, it’s easy to adjust the controls for each track and reuse them for each new song. When you finish the first set, save it. Then use “save as” to start a new file for the next set. Delete each wave file but NOT the tracks. Import the wave files from the next set into the same tracks, and away you go. This is a bit tedious, but isn’t too bad to do for a handful of sets. It’s too much hassle when broken up too much, as in one song file per song. |
I left out an extra step here that’s worth doing if you have more than 2 sets: After deleting the wave files from the song (be sure to click “Do not delete”!!!), save the “empty” song to use as a template for the subsequent sets.
However, the disadvantage of this is that, through the night, things can change and if you make EQ/FX adjustments in later sets, you lose them this way. So, whether to bother with this extra step depends on how steady the band sound & recording situation was through the night. For road-warrior bands with a savvy FOH, steadiness is more likely.
I just recorded a 5 hour stint in one shot. N-track broke the segments up into < 2gig pieces. So at the end of the night, I ended up with 3 wav files: 2 at 2 gig, and 1 smaller (don’t remember the size). This was recording 2 mics in stereo, 24bit, and 44k (i think).
hth
oh yeah, this was on a dell 600m, with 39g free. After two nights, the total space taken was ~10 g. I recorded through my Tascam US-122 with very good results.