So, I like my record rig. But I know it's a matter of time before I'm gonna have to have a forced upgrade.so I'm preemptively asking what direction I should go.
Currently, In my big room out in the backyard I have a PreSonus Firestudio 2626 with 2 PreSonus Digimax FS'. 24 channels of firewire input feeding a Toshiba Satellite laptop running Win XP. With an external HD that I take back and forth from there to my desk inside the house for mix/master. DAW is Studio One 2 Pro..
My drummer is an IT guy, and he's offered up 3 different laptops that are newer and have had Win 7 or Win 8 on them and they have not been able to integrate into the rig for various reason (wrong FW chipset, CPU can't hang, OS won't recognize Firestudio, etc...)
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Sure. And with the exception of one random bout of the FS not syncing (for a couple weeks), it's not broke. But I'm sure someday it will. I bought the Firestudio new 8 years ago, so I guess that's a pretty good run.
The downside is, that Firestudio is a pretty sweet unit. To replace that unit (no longer supported, blah blah blah) I would need to get a Central Station, Central Station Remote, 6ch headphone amp and Lightpipe just to take its place. Gets spendy, for sure.
What I see in my future is: I'm going to get a flat tire and not only do they not make that tire anymore, but I'll need a whole new axle, drivetrain and rims.
I like to keep mics on everything and record rehearsals even when we're not 'officially' recording. My own band and projects mostly, but I do record other bands on occasion.
I put mics in front of things and record them. And I look at the computer as a glorified tape machine. I just want stuff to work and keep working.
So I guess I'm asking if anyone has any suggestions for incrementally 'upgrading' without losing any of my function/capability.
Or, ideally, is there a USB(2 or 3) interface that can ADAT to the two Digimaxs and feed two or three sets of monitors and four or more monitor mixes?
Sorry if that was a bit rambling...
Sean
Comments
They are ordinary .wav files that can be opened directly in a DA
They are ordinary .wav files that can be opened directly in a DAW. The recording device (USB stick, external HDD) must be FAT32 formatted.
From the UFX manual:
The recording is done at the current sample rate as 24 bit WAV file. A file can be up to 2 GB in size and includes all (up to 60) channels in interleaved format. The filename is UFX01_00.wav. After reaching the 2 GB limit a new file is automatically written, with an incremental file number (UFX01_01.wav). The UFX will write up to 100 files consecutively (UFX_01_99.wav). After that, a new recording has to be started (UFX02_00.wav).
At a sample rate of 48 kHz, up to 60 channels (inputs and outputs), at 96 kHz 34 channels, at 192 kHz 16 channels can be selected. The actual number of channels that can be used error-free depends on the media.
One single change that would get you on the route to where you w
One single change that would get you on the route to where you want to end up would be to upgrade the Firestudio 2626 to an [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.rme-audi…"]RME Fireface UFX[/]="http://www.rme-audi…"]RME Fireface UFX[/]. It has both USB and FireWire host interfaces, and would take the ADATs from your Digimaxes and give you 8 mono plus 2 stereo outputs for monitoring. You can also plug in a USB stick or external hard drive and record directly to that to avoid having to force the audio to go through your laptop.