Would like to record directly into computer

Hello. I am fairly new to the board and using the Adobe Audition software for about a month now. I currently record into an AW4416, backup the tracks, use a program to extract the wav files then I import them into each track individually. My sound controller is a SB X-FI. These are the specs of my PC:

OS Name   Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium
Version   6.0.6001 Service Pack 1 Build 6001
Other OS Description    Not Available
OS Manufacturer   Microsoft Corporation
System Name   LISA-PC
System Manufacturer   GATEWAY
System Model   FX541X
System Type   X86-based PC
Processor   Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad  CPU   Q9300  @ 2.50GHz, 2499 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date   American Megatrends Inc. 080014, 2/14/2008
SMBIOS Version   2.4
Windows Directory   C:\Windows
System Directory   C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device   \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale   United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer   Version = "6.0.6001.18000"
User Name   Lisa-PC\Lisa
Time Zone   Eastern Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM)   3.00 GB
Total Physical Memory   3.00 GB
Available Physical Memory   2.06 GB
Total Virtual Memory   6.20 GB
Available Virtual Memory   5.22 GB
Page File Space   3.29 GB
Page File   C:\pagefile.sys

Sound Device Info:

Name   Creative X-Fi Audio Processor (WDM)
Manufacturer   Creative Technology, Ltd.
Status   OK
PNP Device ID   PCI\VEN_1102&DEV_0005&SUBSYS_60071102&REV_00\4&62409B&0&4878
Memory Address   0xFE7F8000-0xFE7FBFFF
Memory Address   0xFE400000-0xFE5FFFFF
Memory Address   0xF8000000-0xFE7FFFFF
I/O Port   0x0000C880-0x0000C89F
IRQ Channel   IRQ 16
Driver   c:\windows\system32\drivers\ctaud2k.sys (6.0.1.1281, 513.29 KB (525,608 bytes), 4/5/2008 6:34 PM)
   
Name   AVerMedia M791 PCIe Combo NTSC/ATSC
Manufacturer   AVerMedia
Status   OK
PNP Device ID   PCI\VEN_14F1&DEV_8880&SUBSYS_D4391461&REV_0F\4&38FBA975&0&0098
Memory Address   0xFE800000-0xFE9FFFFF
IRQ Channel   IRQ 19
Driver   c:\windows\system32\drivers\aver88xhd.sys (6.104.0.5, 392.00 KB (401,408 bytes), 4/5/2008 7:04 PM)

I'm sure my computer is powerfull enough to handle this but what do I need to get started? Do i need some kind of an interface specific to the computer? I have an XR2012 mixer and a Mackie 1202 vlz-pro.

My experience has been that, no matter what the spec of the machine may be, the only way of really knowing if it will work is to try it out.  Although the basic spec might indicate the PC will be suitable, so much depends on the individual setup that it's almost impossible to definitively say 'yes' or 'no'.

FWIW, I went the other way. 

Having spent many years recording into a computer, I finally bit the bullet and purchased a hard disk recorder.  My own experience is that this has been a lot better than any computer based system.  Now I record everything into the HD recorder - and quite frequently do most/all of the mixing in it as well.  I will import the mix into Audition for final tidying up as it's not really capable of tight editing without a lot of faffing around.

There's no way I could record 12+ tracks on the computer and the HD recorder is much easier to use away from home.

I went the other way.

After many years of using a KorgD16 (still a great machine but a bit dated) I went for the PC option.

There's no way I could record 12+ tracks on the computer

I can easily and without any drama record 16 tracks (more if I had more preamps).

I got sick of trying to edit through a mailbox slit and now I have 2 very wide screens  and can drill down to the sample if need be

I also got sick of moving wav files off the Korg - yes a standalone DAW has many plusses (portability, no Windoze OS) but I am more than happy going this way.

BTW I still have the Korg just in case I ever have to do a remote 


Graeme is right there is no way to tell if a particular setup will work for you as there are so many other variables.

[Rachel Elliott]

I can easily and without any drama record 16 tracks (more if I had more preamps).

Me too!  Using two Firepods/FP10's I don't have any trouble recording 16 tracks, and I'd love to try more if I had access to another Firepod.

My first dedicated DAW was a PIII 750, and I could easily record 24 tracks  at 44 KHz x 24bit.  Recording doesn't need a lot of CPU, but it needs a clean system that doesn't have a bunch of crap running in the background that might limit disk access or other resources a recording system needs.

How many tracks do you want to be able to record simultaneously, and what is your budget?

I just realized by reading at the AW4416 forum I belong to that it is not compatible with the PC in that way. If I can't use what I already have to make this work then I will continue using the same method. It's working fine for the moment.

Hey folks, the first thing to note is that MissNfinity is going to need a different sound device in order to record more than a couple of tracks at once on the PC - The X-Fi is definitely not the way to go. And in general you will get a better audio performance, certainly in terms of using up resources, with XP, not Vista...

Like everybody says, what suits you best can vary. I have both approaches available here, and having compared them directly on live recordings, I agree with Graeme - a dedicated machine is far less nerve-wracking to use, especially for things that can't be repeated - like live performances. But that doesn't mean that you can't also get on fine doing all your recordings on a PC - which I did for years.

But I have to say that once you've got used to dedicated recorders, even if you have a perfectly adequate PC-based system, it's very hard not to find the convenience of them rather compelling.

I just realized by reading at the AW4416 forum I belong to that it is not compatible with the PC in that way. If I can't use what I already have to make this work then I will continue using the same method. It's working fine for the moment.

Yeah, it's a shame that they don't make a suitable Firewire plug-in card - because then you could run the AW4416 as individual channels directly into your PC. Although if you think about it, you wouldn't really get anything of an advantage operationally - you'd have to lug an extra box about with you for direct-to-PC recording - why not just do it on the AW4416?

Hold the presses! I found something:

http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAMM02/Content/Yamaha/PR/MY8-mLAN.html

Hold the presses! I found something:

http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAMM02/Content/Yamaha/PR/MY8-mLAN.html

I had a sort-of feeling that there might  be one when I said that there wasn't... and this was entirely because that mLAN card isn't in my list of 01V plugins (I have an 01V96MkII) and I didn't look any further, when perhaps I should have. This is because there's an MY-16-mLAN on the list, and I know that these only work with a restricted range of devices. And now I've looked, I can't find anybody who has MY8's in stock either - I think that you might have to hunt around for one.

The other thing is that an MY8 only lets you transmit 8 channels from the mixer - which isn't a lot considering the price of the interface. I'm not quite suggesting not to get one, but in many ways I can think of better ways you might spend the money...

Personally, I would be very wary of going the mLan route.  It's a protocol which has largely proved to be dead in the water.

The Yamaha 01x was a wonderful concept - so wonderful that I bought one - but it proved to be difficult to get running satisfactorily (it took me three weeks and a lot of hair tearing before mine was working the way it was supposed to).  Since its introduction, Yamaha have ceased to produce the both the 01x and the i88x (a very useful add-on device to give you more channels) and their involvement with mLan seems to lessen as the days go by.

Yamaha 'support' was/is practically non-existent and I have vowed never to buy another Yamaha product for as long as I live, as they let all their customers down very badly where mLan was concerned.

Yeah...I'm gonna stick with my current method of backing up and then importing the wavs into Adobe Audition. It's working fine at the moment.

If it ain't broke ......... ..

Personally, I would be very wary of going the mLan route.  It's a protocol which has largely proved to be dead in the water.

Bear in mind that I don't have the aforementioned plugin for the mixer (and wasn't thinking of getting it either), so I'm just curious - how different from a standard FireWire connection is mLAN?

Yamaha 'support' was/is practically non-existent and I have vowed never to buy another Yamaha product for as long as I live, as they let all their customers down very badly where mLan was concerned.

Okay, I'll confess. I bought the 01V96MkII because it was second-hand, in good nick and going very cheap. I didn't need it for anything at the time, but I was quite intrigued about how it would function as a basic mixer in real time - was it going to be a complete nightmare (could I cope with only having one set of controls for all the channels, etc), and did the automation it offers do anything useful - that sort of stuff.

I quite like it, and it's very compact for what it is, but I have to say that the jury is still out on it for fast-change live applications - but that's mainly because I haven't had it for very long, or got my head entirely round it yet. Is it intuitive? Well, I'm not going to sit on the fence about that; the answer is a straightforward 'no it's not'. But that doesn't mean that you can't learn to use it, or that it doesn't have some nice features. I like being able to toggle channels on and off immediately with a switch, for instance - and that's one control that is per channel. Makes it a lot easier for some broadcast operations too. As for Yamaha support - well, I wasn't expecting any. As you've observed, they've never exactly been wonderful about this anyway. I got a couple of software/firmware upgrades, and that's about as much as I'm expecting. It doesn't owe me much, so whatever happens it's hardly the end of the world...

It sounds good, though!

Oh, I got the PC interface for controlling it running without too much difficulty, but before anybody asks whether I've figured out how to make the control interface work with Audition, the answer is that I looked at the protocol and decided that life's too short already, and that banging one's head against a brick wall is not the most productive way to spend any of the rest of it. So unless I get entirely and seriously bored at some stage, I'm not even going to contemplate that at all; somebody else can do it.

Personally, I would be very wary of going the mLan route.  It's a protocol which has largely proved to be dead in the water.

Bear in mind that I don't have the aforementioned plugin for the mixer (and wasn't thinking of getting it either), so I'm just curious - how different from a standard FireWire connection is mLAN?

My comment was mainly directed towards MissNfinity. 

I've never looked into the detailed differences between Firewire and mLan, but I doubt if they are that great, or it wouldn't use a firewire interface.  I do know that mLan can be a bit picky with respect to what interface you use though.  I was lucky, I bought the Firewire card from the same company that supplied the 01x - thinking that if it didn't work it would be their problem, not mine - and it worked perfectly from the off.

The manual for the 01x is confusing.  Nearly everything you might want to know is there, but it's hard to find the information when you need it (which is usually NOW!).  Like your mixer, it's not very intuitive to use.  However, one point in its favour is easy integration with AA (and a lot of other softwares as well).

I have an alesis usb mixer and it has 8 tracks.  They offer mixers that have more tracks than that.  This is a cheap mixer around 150 dollars.  Of course they have other ones that are better quality. Records directly into audition.