Hi Marik,
I'm not familiar with the alesis, or pro tools for that matter.

Neither the audiomedia nor your current converter can handle 24/96, so it may not make sense to record 24/96. But others may know better.

(BTW can PTLE even handle 96k?)

Before you get the alesis, you need to make sure your home system is equipped to handle 24/96. You don't want to convert from analog to digital, back to analog and then back to digital, you'll lose sound quality. That will mean new hardware and it may mean new software, so it may be in your best interest to build a laptop system instead. Get a laptop with an RME multiface, and you're set! However no PTLE in that scenario.

Also, should I assume the rest of your recording path is as good as your budget allows? Mic's, cabling, preamps, compressors, etc. They are very important to the sound quality. 16/44 is not bad at all my friend, especially if you're working with better mic's and pre's. You will see a huge difference at 24/96 though.

What is your current A/D converter? That may also be the weak link. Lucid makes some highly regarded ones.

How do you get the recordings home from 'location' at present?

mitzelplik

Oh yeah, check out the apogee minime and the grace design lunatec v3, both designed for high fidelity location recording.

PT LE can only handle 96/24 in the digi 002 setup, not on an audiomedia card.

As I have seen in several forums, the Masterlink is not that BIIIG leap from the Bounce to Disk of PT.

Thank you guys for taking time to reply.
Currently I was recording on Tascam DA-30 DAT, but now have reliability problems. As a converter, I used old 18/48 Sonic Solutions. For awhile I was thinking of building my computer into 2U server case, and getting budget 24/96 converter, for use for field recording (actually, thats only what I do), but now I tend to get Masterlink- for ease of use.
I know that I won't be able to use its whole potential, as AMIII does not supports higher than 48K, but I think for time being it should be OK.
I do only classical music editing--cut and paste, duplicate, crossfades, inserting wrong notes, editing dynamics, etc. I am very comfortable with PT. The Digi 002 will be really overkill for me. Do you know any other program which will be similar to PT in use for this work, and would eccept 96k, so I could use it with generic 96k card (M Audio, for example)? I tryed Cubase and Sonar 2.2, but even the way they look makes me overwhelmed.

Cheers

its the d/a on the masterlink that is subpar... the a/d are on the same level as lucid, and a different flavor then the basic appogees.

The masterlink will allow you to burn a DATA cd that you can copy over to your computer like a normal file copy. So for monitoring purpouses, you only need a 2496 d/a converter on your computer

Marshall

Marik

I do a lot of work similar to yours, location recording of classical and contemorary music ensembles; the problem with 96KHz isn't in the PT software, but in the hardware you have: the Audiomedia III will not handle 96KHz, no matter what software you use on it (its A/D and D/A won't handle double sampling rates, Pro Tools can Handle 96KHz from v 6.1), so unless you upgrade it to a newer Digidesign HW (like the 002 or 002R) you won't be able to edit 96KHz files.

My solution to the remote recording setup was a rack (I'm still building it piece by piece) consisting of a Mackie SDR 2496 HD recorder, my preamps and a RME ADI8DS converter; I then take the drive out of the Mackie, pop it into my Pro Tools (001, PT LE 5.3.1) system and do all of the post in there.

The only workaround I know to solve the 96KHz problem in your system is to open the 96KHz files in one editor like Sound Forge on PC or Peak on Mac, you should at least be able to open the files, even though they won't play, I did it in sound Forge, and do sample rate conversion down to 44.1 or 48KHz (BTW if your final target is 16/44.1 CD I suggest you record 88.2KHz that will make for a simpler downsampling with less conversion errors, being the exact double of 44.1);
Save the files at the new sample rate and go edit as you would normally do; there are, however, downsides to this, as dither and src should be the last oprations to be performed on a file, so that you would be able to work throughtout all of the process at full resolution , taking advantage of all of the processings at double samplig rate, and then finally bring it down to CD specs, but at least you would be able to work at DSR.

Hope this helps

L.G.

The covertors in the Alesis HD24/96 are ok. They aren't going to be Apogee Rosetta800 quality or anything. Considering thousands of top 100 CDs were done on 16 and 20 bit Adats, you could do worse.