Tom is replying to BONNIE who replied to TOM on 10 Jul 96 07:26pm
 BG>  Great to hear from you again., Glad to hear you have been busy. I've 
 BG>  been preparing for a video shoot of a group that I'm in.. the local 
 BG>  cable company is in need of "public access" material, and the kicks 
 BG>  band needs some booking material, so what the hey.. stone two birds 
 BG>  with one kill. Other than that, have been mostly in getting set up to 
 BG>  record some original material here that I've been wanting to get 
 BG>  around to slowly getting an album of material together for possible 
 BG>  release in the near future. My other kicks band may also get a video 
 BG>  shoot in the near future, and a third shoot here at my studio may also 
 BG>  get done. Lots of editing to do on that (will be using three VCRS and 
 BG>  syncing to a Tascam Portastudio 4 track cassette) which will be flown 
 BG>  into my Spectral workstation for editing, maybe a little sweetning on 
 BG>  a couple more tracks and then mixed down to DAT as the master for the 
 BG>  audio. Would be nice to just play the music, but also have to deal 
 BG>  with power distribution for the lighting, co-program the drum machine, 
 BG>  direct the band, be audio engineer, and then co-producer of the video 
 BG>  editing sessions. Too many hats to deal with at once, Trying to get 
 BG>  the "shoot" to the point where I don't have to do much except music 
 BG>  when the tape finally rolls, and then spend many hours in audio 
 BG>  production and video editing afterwards before it gets to "air ready". 
You're rather busy there Bonnie!  I'd like to hear the results of these
projects some time.  Why not offer them for sale in this echo?  Just a
thought, but I am sure I'm not the only one that would like to see/hear
what you do!
 BG>  Now, regarding what you wrote about:
 >> A maximum db law finally has been enacted (hurray).  We still have
 >> the flappers, but perhaps not at the overall levels I was hearing
 >> before.
 BG> I recently wrote about the newly enacted local law here so won't repeat 
 BG> all of that. Pretty stiff fines though.. ought to get the cop's 
 BG> attention to help put money in a government's coffers and solve much of 
 BG> the problems. Those with the flapmobiles caused this all by themselves.
Yep.  It's about time.
 >> I am taking the MiniDisk and using the SP/DIFF outs into a Digital
 >> Only card on a PC.  Then I bash the audio around with Sound Forge
 >> and burn it to CD.  This setup works really well for me - BUT -
 >> I need multi-tracking.  I am looking at the new ADAT and a Mackie
 >> 24x8 board.  Not heavy hitting studio gear, but what think?
 BG> I have a copy of Sound Forge, but have only fiddled with it a little. 
 BG> It's not a legit copy for me to use, but I have looked it over and it 
 BG> should do much of the things needed as I can do on the S ectral 
 BG> workstation, just slower (I have a lot of DSP number crunching that 
 BG> helps speed things and with 8 tracks of digital to lay to, you can do 
 BG> bounces through FX on the Sound Forge to get complicated sounding multi 
 BG> effects if you need to with a free track or two on a digital multitrack.
Basically, I use SoundForge to sweeten things up - mostly to bump EQ
around and to 'normalize'.  I prefer not using analog compressors during
the session if I can avoid them (likely due to the fact that my
compressors are not all that great).  By doing a little EQing and then a
normalize, I can get perfect level throughout the cut.  Not like
compressing, but a similar effect without the pumping and breathing (now
THAT sounds like fun!)
 BG> You just can't do much better than a Mackie as far as quality unless 
 BG> you pay much more, so that much is good thinking on your end. The 
 BG> choice of digital recorder to use might be looked at a little more 
 BG> closely. 
>> I seem to remember that you have pretty extensive ADAT experience?
 BG> I don't use ADAT at this time, but have used them, and they are getting 
 BG> to be used a lot by the home/project/musician studios. My biggest beef 
 BG> with the ADAT is that there is no digital I/O only analog. Especially 
 BG> when using computer software for individually doing tracks, when 
 BG> staying in the digital domain and not going through A/D/A conversions 
 BG> is important. In your case, I'd at least look for a solution using 
 BG> digital I/O or having it available to keep from going through 
 BG> conversions. Remember that ADAT format is also made by Fostex and who 
 BG> knows who else has the licensing. ADAT is going to be a musical conduit 
 BG> though, it seems, so that format might be the best bet. > What about 
 BG> the Tascam Hi8? 
That was another thought.  The DA88 is at least another grand, but I
believe it does have optical outs.  I thought the ADAT XT did have
digital outs.  THANKS for telling me that!
 BG>  There are things I like about the Tascam format, and things I don't 
 BG>  but a number of folk seem to think this format is better than ADAT. 
 BG>  One thing has to do with writing and overwriting tracks on things like 
 BG>  punch-ins and such. 
I'll shop this around and see what I come up with.
 >> SAW?
 BG> Well, the Sound Forge is a good software for processing audio in many 
 BG> ways as long as you have time to wait for it and do one thing at a 
 BG> time, but it will do much of what you need FX wise while using a 
 BG> digital recorder. The SAW and some other low end plug and play 
 BG> workstation options may be very lacking in multitrack modes, with 
 BG> bottlenecks in data to and from drives being a factor to look at very 
 BG> strongly. My Spectral system as an example has seperate SCSI ports for 
 BG> each 8 tracks of audio. A good option to consider is the Otari harddisk 
 BG> recording system which has analog I/O and switchable AES/EBU (AES3) 
 BG> digital I/O. Since hard drives are dropping in price so quickly, this 
 BG> is getting much more of a realistic option for the average person.
Yeah.  I have a catalog with NEW 2.9 GIG Seagate ST43400N AV hard drives
for $339.  Good drives for digital audio work if you have the space for
full height drives.  (408)743-8720
 >>  I have $5 - 6000 to put into the recorder and board.  I KNOW you get
 >> what you pay for, but I think I can achieve some pretty good results
 >>with this setup.
 >> (Session 8 would be cool, but I keep hearing that it does not
 >> sound as good as some other alternatives).
 BG>   Check out the S ectral Prisma series of workstations. Much superior 
 BG>   to the Session 8 in sound quality.
I will do that.  Thanks Bonnie and take good care.  Nice to hear from you
always.
Be good.
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