I am one webcam students payment away from getting my Firepod

Mark Wein

Mark Wein

Grand Poobah
Staff member
My webcam students (and book publisher) pay through Paypal so I've made it my "gear slush fund". I'm only buying stuff when I have enough in there to cover whatever the items cost is. I have one guy whose payment I'm waiting on and then I can pull the trigger on this:

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.co...242036&src=3WFRWXX&ZYXSEM=0&CAWELAID=83356949

or

http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-PRS-FSPROJECT-LIST

I haven't decided which, yet. I'm planning on being able to record our classes for the students as well as do my own demo recordings so it'll be something of a business expense. Next year once we have all of the gear we'll also be offering "Desktop recording" classes, too :)




Then its live drums on my recordings! biggrin
 
Cool! :thu:

You'll notice a dramatic increase in sound quality in your recordings I'm sure :)
PreSonus generally have a great quality/price ratio.

I have the old MP20 preamp by them which sounds really great.
 
Dexter Inferno said:
Cool! :thu:

You'll notice a dramatic increase in sound quality in your recordings I'm sure :)
PreSonus generally have a great quality/price ratio.

I have the old MP20 preamp by them which sounds really great.
Click to expand...

I'll end up doing most of my stuff half in Cubase and half in Protools, I'm sure....that'll be fun...:facepalm:
 
I have the little brother to that - The Fire Box and I have been very happy with the quality of it - I only have done a couple of songs tho :)
 
I'm going to feel really bad if you don't like it. :embarrassed:


















I think you will like it though. I know I love both of mine. :embarrassed:
 
I think it will be fine for what we will use it for...ultimately I just need to be able to track a live band for classes. My personal benefit of being able to make cooler demos is really just a side benefit. Many of the people in my current crop of classes have told me that they would love to take more months of their classes if they can record the music they've learned. Thats a good enough reason to do it...

How much RAM do you have in your computer that you record with? The one I'm putting this on has 2 gigs and a 3ghz single processor (its about 4 years old at this point).

I'll also have a 320 gb USB external hard drive for the audio....
 
That's more than adequate Mark.

I get 16 tracks at once with 1 gig and an ancient 1.7GHz P4 processor, never had a hiccup. This is with a 9 year old self built pc :eek:
It's the mixing/playback that hogs RAM (plugins and such), not the recording process.
As long as your interface has good drivers you shouldn't ever have a problem :)
 
My desktop (which I use for all but live recordings) is an older Compaq Presario with a single core Pentium 4. 2.6 ghz, 1.5 gb RAM. It can easily record 16 tracks simultaneously. As for playback, if you don't have any plugins running, you can get 24+ tracks playing back without a problem. Once you start putting compressors on the inserts of each channel, and running reverb, delay, and EQ plugins, you start running into problems. Usually if my project has more than 16 tracks of audio, I'll start applying the inserts to the track itself so I don't have to run a plugin on every channel.

The plugins in the auxillary aren't as bad because one plugin runs every track. With inserts though, you've got seperate plugins running on each track, and that eats up a lot of your CPU and RAM capabilities.

Still, your computer is better specced than mine, and I don't have any trouble getting big projects done on mine, so you should be fine.

Just make sure you've got a huge 7200 RPM hard drive.
 
OK....trigger pulled. :embarrassed:

Now I need to stock up on some other stuff to make this actually work...a few mics to do drums, cables and stands....most of our mic stands in the studio are due for replacement (5 years of students not loosening things before they adjust them can be a little rough on stands :facepalm:). I think most of what I need I can get through my accessories vendors for cost, though...
 
The 5400 rpm drive may be alright, but it's been my experience that when you're recording multiple tracks, having a faster hard drive is more important than a faster CPU.

My laptop has a 5400 rpm drive and if I try to record 12 tracks simulaneously, the drive sometimes can't keep up. If I plug in a 7200 rpm external drive via eSATA or firewire, it has no trouble at all.

Your computer's internal drive should be 7200 rpm. As long as you have 20-30 gb of free space on it, you could record to that and use the external drive to back up your data. Then you could clean up the internal drive when it starts getting full.
 
Prages said:
The 5400 rpm drive may be alright, but it's been my experience that when you're recording multiple tracks, having a faster hard drive is more important than a faster CPU.

My laptop has a 5400 rpm drive and if I try to record 12 tracks simulaneously, the drive sometimes can't keep up. If I plug in a 7200 rpm external drive via eSATA or firewire, it has no trouble at all.

Your computer's internal drive should be 7200 rpm. As long as you have 20-30 gb of free space on it, you could record to that and use the external drive to back up your data. Then you could clean up the internal drive when it starts getting full.
Click to expand...

OK....worst case is that I have to put another internal drive in the computer idn_smilie
 
markwein said:
OK....worst case is that I have to put another internal drive in the computer idn_smilie
Click to expand...

That's actually not a bad idea anyway. That's how I've got my desktop set up. I've got a 120 gb drive that holds all of my program files, Windows, and any other data files I have. Then I've got another 500 gb drive that's just for audio data and project files. I've read that it's a good idea to have your audio data going to a drive other than the one you OS is on, just so your drive isn't having to keep up with the OS and the audio files.
 
Prages said:
That's actually not a bad idea anyway. That's how I've got my desktop set up. I've got a 120 gb drive that holds all of my program files, Windows, and any other data files I have. Then I've got another 500 gb drive that's just for audio data and project files. I've read that it's a good idea to have your audio data going to a drive other than the one you OS is on, just so your drive isn't having to keep up with the OS and the audio files.
Click to expand...

Thats why I bought the USB drive...I'm actually running Protools on my mac on an external like that with no problems...I'll gie it a try and if it doesn't work I'll just get an interal 7200 rpm drive. Actually, I think I have one in a dead computer in the studio that I can scavenge, now that I think of it....
 
When I was at band practice on Saturday our keyboard player (we practice in his basement) was in the middle of installing his second 12 channel firewire rack in his studio, so he will have 24 channel input capability's now. He didn't get a Presonus, and any brand I recognize off of the top of my head. But this way we can cut a demo easier since just micing the drums took up most of the original 12 inputs...
 
Denverdave said:
When I was at band practice on Saturday our keyboard player (we practice in his basement) was in the middle of installing his second 12 channel firewire rack in his studio, so he will have 24 channel input capability's now. He didn't get a Presonus, and any brand I recognize off of the top of my head. But this way we can cut a demo easier since just micing the drums took up most of the original 12 inputs...
Click to expand...

I normally do my bands rehearsals in the room that this is going in, so we can crank out stuff pretty easily if we want....I kind of forgot about that little tidbit biggrin
 
One word of caution about recording a live band situation...

You can run the mic cables to the interface and then out of the back of the interface to your live mixer. The problem is that there is a very slight, but perceptible bit of latency when you do that. It's not something you can really hear, but you can feel it. We did a gig that way, and while it worked, I think our performance suffered a bit because of the latency.

The way I do it now is to run to the live board first. Since we don't use anything in the live board's inserts, I run a TS/TS snake from the live board's inserts (if you only plug them 1/2 way in, it still lets the signal pass through to the faders but still sends a signal out of the insert) to the Firepod's inputs. That way, there's no latency in our live sound at all, and the signal still gets to the Firepod.

As an added bonus, by getting your source signal from the insert, it's not passing through the board's EQ or any effects you have running in the auxillary, so you get a straight, dry signal to the recorder. You can then do any EQing or effects you want in post.

A lot of boards have tape outs on each channel now, but ours doesn't, so I have to use the inserts as tape outs.
 
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Prages said:
The way I do it now is to run to the live board first. Since we don't use anything in the live board's inserts, I run a TS/TS snake from the live board's inserts (if you only plug them 1/2 way in, it still lets the signal pass through to the faders but still sends a signal out of the insert) to the Firepod's inputs. That way, there's no latency in our live sound at all, and the signal still gets to the Firepod.
Click to expand...

I think that is actually the way he is doing it. He has a 32 channel mixing console that is I believe what all the mic inputs are directly going in to, and then to the firewire channels. I'll have to check on that - that is some good advice to follow if it is done the other way (and he is still wiring right now...).
 
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