M-audio 10 * 10 as alternative to hard disk recorder ?
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- KVRian
- 520 posts since 26 Oct, 2005
I was wondering would an M-audio 1010 and desktop PC be a suitable cheap alternative to a hard drive/multitrack digital recorder and desk ? I realise its got less channels but we dont need more than ten inputs/outputs. All the mixing could be done digitally but how does the latency compare to an actual hardisk recorder ?
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- KVRAF
- 16861 posts since 8 Mar, 2005 from Utrecht, Holland
Yeah, it will work... for line signals. If you want to record eight mics you'll need a whole bunch of preamps or a mixer with direct-out (or inserts) on at least eight channels.
Two of those ten channels are the spdif, so you have eight analog inputs. If you have something with spdif output, only then you have ten inputs. If you have another M-Audio Delta / AudioPhile card then it's channels will be merged by the driver.
With multi-track recording you don't deal with latency that much. The recording app should do that when you add tracks to an existing project. And it's not that hard to shift the newly added tracks a bit to the left if it doesn't.
Two of those ten channels are the spdif, so you have eight analog inputs. If you have something with spdif output, only then you have ten inputs. If you have another M-Audio Delta / AudioPhile card then it's channels will be merged by the driver.
With multi-track recording you don't deal with latency that much. The recording app should do that when you add tracks to an existing project. And it's not that hard to shift the newly added tracks a bit to the left if it doesn't.
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- Banned
- 1842 posts since 4 Aug, 2004 from just right here
You have to weigh up the costs. Multitrack hardware is gradualy comming down in price. Iv got 2 M-audio cards installed and working. For microphone you have the added cost of preamps. I think the more channels you have the lower the sample rate? A multitracker is a bit more portable and so can a computer too. Iv got 2 M-Audio cards which gives me 6. I thought if I went for more channels it would cost more and then there is the added preamp cost, and only needed a few extra. You could buy or build a second computer just for multitrack recording whith many channels. I don't how that would weigh up against a multritracker. I think the Fostex? one allows you to transfer your data to computer, but its only 44khz/16bit. I was thinking about building my own preamps, but homemade ones can turn out a little bit noisey. Software does count too, don't think all of them allow you to utalize all your inputs and outputs. That is one feature I realy like about tracktion. Its like this the bigger the mixer the more it cost to utalize every channel.BertKoor wrote:Yeah, it will work... for line signals. If you want to record eight mics you'll need a whole bunch of preamps or a mixer with direct-out (or inserts) on at least eight channels.