Hi all,
I'm putting together a list of gear for location recording (metal bands to be specific, not live however), and I'm just concerned about the bandwidth available for recording what will likely be up to 12 simultaneous tracks. The interface in mind is the Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 with the OctoPre connected via ADAT for the extra 8 channels.
I have a Macbook (not Pro) 13", which I think is 1 or 2 generations before the current lineup. The Liquid Saffire would connect via the Firewire 400 port and the internal drive is just the stock 120GB Hitachi, which I will likely upgrade to a 320GB (or more) drive anyway.
If I wanted to record at 24/96, that would be 2,304,000bps per track, and for sake of argument, 16 tracks would = 36,864,000bps. Firewire 400Mbps = 400,000,000 so theoretically I should be fine there. As for disk speed, will 5400 or 7200 make a difference with regards to recording that data? I will be recording in Logic Pro 8and I ran a little test by recording 16 simultaneous tracks at 24/48 and 24/96. I left both tests running for a minute with no issues at all. So unless I've missed something, theoretically I should be able to handle this data without any issues.
When I record I doubt I will be using any plugins so in terms of processing power and buffer size I shouldn't experience any dropouts. And I have upgraded to 4GB of RAM if that makes a difference. I wouldn't be tracking onto any external drive of course, nor would I be using any other external devices (and the firewire and usb busses are seperate anyway).
I just thought I'd ask here in case I've missed something, because I was speaking to someone at the AES conference who mentioned the risk of dropouts, but maybe he was referring to mixing. I understand that mixing in the box may well cause heavy CPU load, especially if I were working at 96k. I figure that if I can record at 96k, then why not do so? If mixing would be problematic at that rate however then I have no problem recording and mixing at 48k instead.
And one last thing, is the maximum I/O Buffer size in the Audio Preferences dependant on your interface? The maximum for me currently is 1024, is that a restriction of Logic Pro 8?
Cheers,
Mark
I'm putting together a list of gear for location recording (metal bands to be specific, not live however), and I'm just concerned about the bandwidth available for recording what will likely be up to 12 simultaneous tracks. The interface in mind is the Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 with the OctoPre connected via ADAT for the extra 8 channels.
I have a Macbook (not Pro) 13", which I think is 1 or 2 generations before the current lineup. The Liquid Saffire would connect via the Firewire 400 port and the internal drive is just the stock 120GB Hitachi, which I will likely upgrade to a 320GB (or more) drive anyway.
If I wanted to record at 24/96, that would be 2,304,000bps per track, and for sake of argument, 16 tracks would = 36,864,000bps. Firewire 400Mbps = 400,000,000 so theoretically I should be fine there. As for disk speed, will 5400 or 7200 make a difference with regards to recording that data? I will be recording in Logic Pro 8and I ran a little test by recording 16 simultaneous tracks at 24/48 and 24/96. I left both tests running for a minute with no issues at all. So unless I've missed something, theoretically I should be able to handle this data without any issues.
When I record I doubt I will be using any plugins so in terms of processing power and buffer size I shouldn't experience any dropouts. And I have upgraded to 4GB of RAM if that makes a difference. I wouldn't be tracking onto any external drive of course, nor would I be using any other external devices (and the firewire and usb busses are seperate anyway).
I just thought I'd ask here in case I've missed something, because I was speaking to someone at the AES conference who mentioned the risk of dropouts, but maybe he was referring to mixing. I understand that mixing in the box may well cause heavy CPU load, especially if I were working at 96k. I figure that if I can record at 96k, then why not do so? If mixing would be problematic at that rate however then I have no problem recording and mixing at 48k instead.
And one last thing, is the maximum I/O Buffer size in the Audio Preferences dependant on your interface? The maximum for me currently is 1024, is that a restriction of Logic Pro 8?
Cheers,
Mark
