Recording at 192 with Boom Recorder

[Steve House]

So we agree it is a waist to do 192. With the original question there is really no easy or logical way to record 192 on location unless i am recording with the 702T or other sound devices recorder.

That is not true - you were asking earlier specifically about MIXERS with a Firewire output. If you look at regular external firewire audio interfaces there are a number of multi-channel options. For example, the MOTU Traveler provides 8 input channels at 192 while my Echo AudioFire 12 provides for 12 input channels at 192. The MOTU 8 channels include 4 mic pre's. My Echo has 12 line level inputs and you need a mixer or preamps upstream on the analog side to control levels and such but it would just be a conventional analog mixer. Want more? You can daisy-chain 2 AudioFires for 24 channels.

 

[sysyphus]

Ok if you are going to get down to the very little details yes I did say mixer but I was assuming that would include all the options that you have spoke of. If you just want to argue then you are right I did say mixer I am sorry for not including MOTU and all the other input options. Is there something that I said to make you mad and want to prove a point? Its the internet not the best place to puff you chest. I mean if you knew all those other option what the point in not just saying them earlier? Instead of all the post saying mackie are crap. I know they are not good sounding preamps but that is what I am using now and was not asking mackie specific when I first asked the question.

 

[Steve House]

Ok if you are going to get down to the very little details yes I did say mixer but I was assuming that would include all the options that you have spoke of. If you just want to argue then you are right I did say mixer I am sorry for not including MOTU and all the other input options. Is there something that I said to make you mad and want to prove a point? Its the internet not the best place to puff you chest. I mean if you knew all those other option what the point in not just saying them earlier? Instead of all the post saying mackie are crap. I know they are not good sounding preamps but that is what I am using now and was not asking mackie specific when I first asked the question.

I don't know why you're getting defensive or think there was a note of anger or puffery in my recent post ... Back near the start of the thread in post #6 I suggested you look at a stand-alone multichannel interface and a converntional analog mixer and you ignored the suggestion. In the post that my most recent was answering, you said "With the original question there is really no easy or logical way to record 192 on location unless i am recording with the 702T or other sound devices recorder" and I was merely pointing out that no, that is not true, you have other easy and logical options besides the SD recorder and repeated the two examples I gave you earlier. You also said earlier that it appeared one could record a maximum of 2 channels - stereo - and that too is incorrect - with the 2 alternatives I suggested you can simultaneously record 8 and 12 channels @192kHz respectively. And for the record, I've never criticized Mackie or turned my nose up at them ... quite the contrary, I own a Mackie 1642 and use it daily with my AudioFire 12.

 

[Quintessential Studios]

Steve House, Thank you for the product references. Just out of curiosity, is there a cheaper solution?

By this, I'm trying to solve the following:

I would like to take my laptop, some sort of firewire/usb mixer, boom recorder and some mics and go out and do some field recording testing. I want to capture some 192 if possible and I want to spend as close to $0 as possible to do this.

 

[BRH]

"I want to capture some 192 if possible and I want to spend as close to $0 as possible to do this."

Best place to look is on CraigsList.

 

[puredrifting]

Wow, that 192KHz hype is still around? And to think, when I started out, everything was being recorded on clunky Nagras and Sony BVV-5 Beta backs and somehow, it all sounded okay. If you ask most television and feature sound mixers, they would tell you that 192KHz is a huge waste of time, money and resources for dialog.

I would only do it if you can charge them an exorbinant amount of money and you can make a ton of profit from the venture. In that case, go for it. To me, it's like 40-50 something guys who drive around in Corvettes. My wife always says it is because they are "compensating" for the lack of something. This seems to be the same way on your client's part.

For a live orchestral performance, perhaps might be a good experiment. For dialogue, you are so far away from quantization errors, zipper noise and any other digital distortions with a good A/D and D/A set at 48/16KHz with a good convertor like an Apogee, that 192 makes absolutely no sense unless they like to waste money. In which case, I say find the gear that will do it and charge them whatever you like because nobody else will probably do this for them.

Good luck,

Dan

 

[Steve House]

Steve House, Thank you for the product references. Just out of curiosity, is there a cheaper solution?

By this, I'm trying to solve the following:

I would like to take my laptop, some sort of firewire/usb mixer, boom recorder and some mics and go out and do some field recording testing. I want to capture some 192 if possible and I want to spend as close to $0 as possible to do this.

Hard to say just from that information. How many mics do you want to record at once and how many channels do you want to mix them down to in the recording process, ie, how many mics recorded simultaneously onto how many concurrent tracks? The answer to that is going to be a major driver of the cost. And while that determines the mixer and interface capacity required, even the "channel count" isn't the sole determiner of cost - my 4 mic input Sound Devices 442 ran several times the cost of my 10 mic input Mackie desk.

You may also need to experiment to see how many concurrent channels the laptop is able to handle - computer speed and memory are eventually going to enter into the equation. The higher the sample rate the greater the workload on the CPU and the fewer concurrent tracks you can have before getting artifacts, buffer overruns, etc.

I have to agree with other posters who say going to 192 is pointless. Other than as an academic exercise, recording for a major production limited edition 'audiophile' release, or highly specialized scientific instrumentation recording purposes, IMHO it's way overkill to go to 192. Unless you're recording very wide spectrum music such a symphony orchestra in an acoustically perfect environment through top-shelf state-of-the-art microphones and the very best analog electronics obtainable at any price and played back on state-of-the-art playback electronics and speakers (a "the sky's the limit" budget, not your "as close to $0 as possible" budget), you'll end up with HUGE files that are going to be indistinguishable from files recorded at 96, probably no better sounding on practical playback equipment than files recorded at 48. File size is a very real issue - 24bit / 192kHz consumes 33 megabytes of storage per track per recorded minute. That's 33 MB per minute required for ONE mono track - double it for each additional track you're recording. One gigabyte of space will hold only about 15 minutes worth of a simple 2-track stereo recording at that data rate. Can your existing laptop handle it?

Remember the sampling rate affects the audio by determining the highest frequency that can be recorded. According to Nyquist, the sampling rate must be double the highest frequency that is desired. 44.1 kHz reproduces up to 22 kHz, the upper limit of hearing. 48 kHz reproduces audio up to 24 kHz. It could be argued that overtones beyond the range of human hearing can affect the timbre of the sounds heard and recording at 96kHz would allow for the recording of audio harmonics reaching up to 48kHz, which some people claim gives rise to perceptual differences in the sound quality, ie, the recording of a violin sounds more like a live performance of a violin, for example. A few golden -eared people MIGHT be able to hear the difference. But for 192kHz sampling to have any detectable difference over 96kHz, there has to be some signal component activity taking place between 48kHz and 96kHz and it's very, very doubtful that there are any harmonics in that range coming from the mics or that make it through the analog circuitry. We're pushing the limits of audio here, spilling over into the zone of LF radio signals such as transmitted by aviation and maritime navigation aid beacons.