…and join the digital age.
I just picked up a Akai DR-8 HD recorder and tower of drives with all the accesories. (Mix tab, remote, VGA card, MIDI I/O.)
I am now wanting to be able to integrate it with a computer so I can post stuff to the world with decent audio. It has Toslink, AES/EBU, ADAT, S/PDIF or individual analog in/outs. What do I need to interface to a computer?
Assuming I am starting with nothing, what is a good way to start recording to a PC. Software, hardware requirements. resources? I know nothing about any of this. Last time I used a computer with music was an Atari Mega4 ST laptop.
it’s not easy to get the tracks you’ve recorded on your HD recorder onto a PC…I have a Fostex D160 and an Alesis HD24 hard disk recorders, and I have done only minimal research into dumping the data from the HD recorder onto a PC. Remember, this is 20+ year old technology, and the interfaces and drives required to connect to a current PC-based recording/mixing system are not easy to come by.
hard disk recorders were designed to replace tape machines in recording studios using analog mixing boards. Which is how I use mine…at home, I record tracks through a mackie 24.8 bus mixer (tracks recorded ‘dry’, EQ, panning and effects added during mixdown and for monitoring the live performance) into the HD24, mixing down (up to 22 tracks) manually onto 2 unused tracks of the HD24. I burn the finished stereo mix on those last 2 tracks onto CD and from there use itunes to rip mp3’s from the cd tracks. that last step is the only thing i use my computer for…everything else is manual/old-school recording and mixing.
i use the fostex d160 to record my band’s live performances…i use the insert jacks on an allen/heath mixwiz16:3 to send a pre-fader/pre-EQ/pre-effects dry signal of 14 tracks to the recording deck, setting the recording levels with the channel trim pots. i set up the rest of the mixer for the live performance (mains and monitors), and press ‘record’ on the d160 at the start of the gig…press stop at the end, and find time to mix down in the days/weeks that follow onto tracks 15-16, adding EQ and effects to the individual tracks using outboard gear.
Definately use the digital optical outs to the pc.
You can use a program like “Switch” audio file converter to convert them to mp3. It sucks though going digital because as good as that sounds, you generally still have to convert the files to something like an mp3 (which compresses the hell out of them) to convert them to a file size small enough for a place like reverbnation or myspace so you are going to lose quality. You have to keep it at a high bitrate on the conversion (196kb usually) or else it will sound like a tin can. So use the Digital Optical outputs to whatever interface you get and the highest quality stuff will be on cd for family and friends to appreciate (16 bit, cause not too many cd players on the market now are 24 bit).
I used to use creative recorder just to master stuff with so I coudl burn cds. From what I was used to, the audio quality was fine from the RCA to the 1/8th audio input on the sound card. This worked fine for me until I recently upgraded my studio.
i think you won’t really know until you get the unit in your hands and try the output connections, but in the manual, it looks like you cannot get individual tracks routed to any type of digital output…