When I borrowed a Firepod from a friend to record my band's new cd, I vowed that I would stick to recording at 96Khz. I knew it would be tough on my computer and that I'd have to do things differently. Before, I was recording at 44.1 and could squeeze in about 32 tracks with all their effects before Samplitude would start crying. Now, it's like I'm twisting my poor baby's arm just to playback my 8 drum tracks, 4 guitar tracks, and bass. And forget previewing VST instruments in realtime! I'm thinking that I really need to buy some more RAM, but i'm not sure if that would solve my problems. I need some serious advice. I don't even have vocals yet and my computer tries to crash whilst playing the tracks. And I don't want to sacrifice the quality that I'm finally getting. Should I bounce the drum tracks?

AMD 64 3000+, 1Gb Ram, 200Gb SATA HD, Samplitude 7 + various DX, VST plugs

I have the same deal with Sonar. At 44.1 it seemed like the sky was the limit, import 12 tracks at 96 , add a few plugs and the drop outs are rampant. I only have an Intel 1.7 gig processor with 512 ram. This was a big part of my decision to get outta da box.

Rocky

bluz,

so, did you get out of the box and still recorded at 96k? it seems like the main problem was processing the 96k data, not recording/playing back, right?

Oh, have any of you tried 96k recording in SawStudio? it is a very ver lean program (about 8mb in TOTAL, compare to ~250mb of Nuendo), and uses the CPU very efficiently.

I recorded the tracks on my Alesis HD24, actually it was at 24/48. I imported them into my PC with the Alesis firepod which seems to have taken a turn for the worse;read it doesn't work and it was a pain in the ass to get it working to begin with.
I think your right about processing the data. I enjoying the outta the box thing for the time being, it's a different way of working.

Rocky

quote:

it seems like the main problem was processing the 96k data, not recording/playing back, right?

I think that's wrong. You're gonna kill a modern hard drive well before a CPU. Your not gonna get more than 12 tracks or so off a single drive. RAID those babies up...or, can you split the session over two(or 3) drives like ProTools?

Repeat after me. "My hard drive is not much faster than the one in my 7 year old computer. When I am waiting on my computer to do most anything, I am really waiting on the hard drive."

Now go buy one of those new Apples that holds 16gb of RAM. It's only like $15k fully popped. :P

Why then record at 96 kHz ?
You state AMD 64 3000+ , 1Gb Ram, that should be fine for 80-100 tracks 44.1 audio and some plugins.
Soo finding the bottleneck, what chipset is there on the motherboard ? or even better what motherboard is it ?
Is the harddrive connected to the standard onboard controller or a additional Raid controller or PCI bound sata ditto ?
A modern HD should not be the problem, they are almost all 7200 rpm but the make and model would be a help to know.
How many plugins are you running and what are they ?
And yes bounce the tracks when you need to or freeze them if you have that option.

FWIW, my tracks were over 20 minutes long. I recorded a session as one song, now I realize that's a bad idea. At the time it seemed like a good idea; less messing with the gear, easier mixdown,etc.

Rocky

My suggestion is that you try a little test if you haven't done this already. Record 8 to 10 tracks of a 2 or 3 minute song at 44.1/16 and then record the same parts/tracks at 96/24. Now, mix them down with no plugins or eq and compare the two mixes.

I did this when I got my Delta and the results blew me away. The 44.1/16 sounded better. The band I was recording at the time heard the difference too and we were all amazed. We really thought the 96/24 would sound better but it didn't.

We then tried 44.1/16 vs. 44.1/24 (they were a patient band) and we couldn't tell the difference. I've recorded at 44.1/16 ever since.

Could very well be that your setup is going to respond different than mine but you owe it to yourself to try the two settings back-to-back to make sure that the pain of recording at 96 is worth it. I think my recordings suffer from my lack of skill and cheap gear much more than the a/d conversion quality.

First of all I doubt whether anybody can actually hear the difference between 44.1 and 96, and if somebody could, certainly not without some very expensive playback gear - most of which your cd buying audience doesn't have anyway.

As for the problem - a faster CPU would help more than more RAM (assuming you have at least a gig). RAID will help (assuming we're talking about a RAID 5 stripe set) as will using SCSI disks and disk controllers (as opposed to ATA and SATA and whatever they call it nowadays - it's still essentially an improvement over the old EIDA design).

Anyway, I'll stick to 44.1 for now...

All the issues I've met with 96K are plug in related...even the UAD card states the higher rates cause the card of offer only 1/2 of the number of effects....

Some good workarounds (especially in Samp) include:

- Applying effects on subs instead of tracks
- Object level editing, then freezing
- sending out to hardware then back in, 100% plug free...
- Using the AM Suite instead of UAD or other 4d party plugs when possible (they sound better, anyway, IMO)...

The Firepod is a decent unit (use one in my remote rig) but a better set of convertors will support the idea that a great sounding 44.1 or 48 recording sounds significantly better than decent ones at 96...but that is my opinion ONLY and really don't want to get into THAT discussion...

Yep, let's keep this discussion from turning into a 44.1 vs 96k debate ...

I've run sessions in 96kHz when I know beforehand that tracks will be 4 or less. Is it significantly better? I can't tell if the conversion is better, but I've noted that the Waves EQ is "smoother" than when run on 44.1 material. I don't know, I'll give the higher sample rate the benefit of the doubt.

I have a question for those that have run sessions at 96kHz: not counting DSP processiong, how many tracks can you handle? and what drives are you using? anyone using those >10k RPM drives?

Digidesign recommends 12 tracks of 96k per drive, FWIW.

wow, so much response since the last time i checked in. this is great, but i do need to clarify somewhat.

I've been using Samplitude for a couple of years now, so Freezing, Object level FX and editing, Sub and Aux busses, and "gluing" are all familiar and used especially since the 96K decision.

My mother board is a Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9, which includes onboard SATA RAID. I bought the board because it uses PCI Express instead of AGP and the videocard I needed was PCI Express and on sale. I bought everything in the spring of this year at Fry's. Until starting on the band cd, I was mostly using my computer to edit the wedding and event vids that I shot. It's lame, i know, but much less so than working at some other job. So i have my super computer that would kill if i was more into video games. But who has the time for that?
More SATA Info:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/static/html/sataarticle1.html

Like i mentioned before, I recorded our stuff at 44.1 before borrowing the Firepod, but I was using an ST Audio C-port 2000. Since the change, I've noticed that the FX behave differently, especially EQ. Okay, it may just be in my head, but it really does seem that the EQ is more responsive and limiting is much...much more smooth. With the ol' Cport, I had two preamps and mixing was becoming very frustrating. No matter how many times I reset everything and started a fresh mix, it always wound up too muddy or too....blahhh. Just not good enough. I also wanted to have files that I could keep for a few years so that we could remix for Audio DVDs or super audio cds or whater they're called.

Now, all that said, I think the next project I do will be at 48K instead, just until I have more processing power and a better HD setup. My motherboard will support 3 more SATA disks, in RAID, which I could really use.

Thanks again and tell me if I'm way off on something.

Have a look at:
http://studioforums.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1936000294/m/3601043231

Oh one thing you could check is the memory sockets. There has been some confusion with the color code before. My computer came with 2*512Mb DDR installed in same-color sockets, that makes them run significant slower. The bios settings where as usual not tuned in.
Btw. AFAIK the Nforce4 raid is a software raid, there should be little if no performance gain compared with WinXP's software raid.
As you can guess I don't use 96k, but you might want to check out 48k or 88.2k some soundcards sound better at a given rate than others, some sound worse at 96k.
Now thank god you didn’t try a 192k card :-)
I have to try 96k again, my new ADAMS go to 35Khz ohh wait I need a new microphone that will go this high... naahh.. I just play some software synth and look for the cat to go berserk

I've experimented with 96k out of the box only with my Alesis HD24 via RME ADI-8DS converters. The recorder seemed to handle the signal a little bit differently at 96k--mostly it didn't seem like the inputs were clipping as easily and when they did it didn't seem as drastic. For this I would work in 96k if only it were a little less fussy...

The main reason I think I'm going to stick with 44.1 or 48 is that 96k halves the number of converter inputs available and sometimes discombobulates my HD24 in that it won't see an input sometimes--can't explain why this is. It's the only thing even close to a glitch I've had with the HD24. So generally I've said screw it and stuck with 44.1 or 48.

Sonically, I noticed a little something on the high end, but nothing that knocked me on my ass. I actually just got some new monitors in (Dyn BM15As) so I actually think I'll try 48k vs 96k again since these monitors show ya if something changes at all!

Hey bluz, what's up with your Fireport? My problem with it was that one day, Alesis FST just up and decided to not work anymore. Far as I know the hardware itself is fine. Alesis offered me no help whatsoever. I'm pissed.

quote:

Hey bluz, what's up with your Fireport? My problem with it was that one day, Alesis FST just up and decided to not work anymore. Far as I know the hardware itself is fine. Alesis offered me no help whatsoever. I'm pissed.

Here's the whole Saga: I bought the fireport and a firewire card for my computer. I couldn't get the two working and decided the firewire card I bought was a piece of garbage. I bought another firewire card from Comp USA and it seemed to be communicating with windows fine but the FST software still didn't see the drive plugged into the fireport. After several re-installs and trying different things I went to system devices and started changing settings on the drivers associated with the fireport. I did something that made it work, about that time I finally got an e-mail reply from Alesis' tech. I sent a reply back explaining that I got it working and what I did. I had it up and running for about 2 uploads and then one day it quit working.
I thought the fireport was gonna be the shit but it ended up just being shit.
I'm gonna try tracking at 44.1, that way I'll have3 the ability to import tracks into Sonar via my Roland VM-3100 and the RPC card. The only reason I haven't used that work around yet is because I've only tracked at 48 with the HD24.
I'm still doing the outta the box thing but I'm still working on my studio space and it will be awhile before I'm done.
Now are you sorry you asked?

Rocky

it might be worth noting that my onboard firewire wouldn't recognize the fireport, so i had to get an Audigy2 with a better firewire connection. I'm not dissatisfied with the fireport. It does what it's supposed to.

Oh, and I was suprised that more people don't record at 96K. I figured I was behind everyone else on that. As a result of the problems, I signed up on another forum, forums.pcper.com, to get more computer-related info. Some of you might benefit from the site as well.

quote:

Originally posted by bluzdog:

quote:

Hey bluz, what's up with your Fireport? My problem with it was that one day, Alesis FST just up and decided to not work anymore. Far as I know the hardware itself is fine. Alesis offered me no help whatsoever. I'm pissed.

Here's the whole Saga: I bought the fireport and a firewire card for my computer. I couldn't get the two working and decided the firewire card I bought was a piece of garbage. I bought another firewire card from Comp USA and it seemed to be communicating with windows fine but the FST software still didn't see the drive plugged into the fireport. After several re-installs and trying different things I went to system devices and started changing settings on the drivers associated with the fireport. I did something that made it work, about that time I finally got an e-mail reply from Alesis' tech. I sent a reply back explaining that I got it working and what I did. I had it up and running for about 2 uploads and then one day it quit working.
I thought the fireport was gonna be the shit but it ended up just being shit.
I'm gonna try tracking at 44.1, that way I'll have3 the ability to import tracks into Sonar via my Roland VM-3100 and the RPC card. The only reason I haven't used that work around yet is because I've only tracked at 48 with the HD24.
I'm still doing the outta the box thing but I'm still working on my studio space and it will be awhile before I'm done.
Now are you sorry you asked?

Rocky

That's just a bitch! I didn't have any computer fussiness (I'm using OS X) and it was working just fine until one day I clicked to open FST. It didn't open and instead I got a message saying it unexpectedly quit. Been like that ever since. I can't explain it. Far as I know there's no problem at all with any of the hardware. The FST Connect software is poo, and was definitely not worth the wait for an OS X version The HD24, on the other hand, has been great! Bah, at least we can still FTP the files...


Pardon the hijack

i am really begininning to wish the fireport software had a software mixer included. Even my old STAudio had a mixer, so I could mute certain tracks, pan, and so on. It would be nice.

I really wish the fireport and software would just do what it was designed to.

Rocky