Remote Recording - Streamlined

Leaving the Nigerian scammers aside for one moment, it occurred to me that there's actually a lightweight, relatively affordable way to record 24 tracks at once, directly onto HDs of your choice - the JoeCo BlackBox recorder, which is only a 1u rackmount device - it uses external storage. And you can chain them into a larger device if you want, as well.

http://www.joeco.co.uk/main/BBR1-B_Summary.php

Bookmarked that site. A very interesting line of gear. Makes you wonder why this isn't a long time on the market.

Can't find prices. Are they hidden somewhere?

After an intensive search, I found a UK price of 1740 pounds or about $2777. Nice looking product, but I'll stick to my laptop plus FW-1884.

available from at least one supplier in Nashville for a couple of hundred (US) less maybe $24-2500

still not cheap but my dilemma is trying to guess when Adat HD's will dependable has they have been will break down or need to be replaced . . . invested almost their price in HD recorder strategies (including some really cheap prices on some discontinued 16bit 8 track recorders) during past year and if I could have got one of these for under $2k would have probably picked one up this past year . . . particularly for the way I work, a variety of long term, short term projects intermixed the idea of simply moving the media (drive) from tracking to editing is very attractive

still not cheap but my dilemma is trying to guess when Adat HD's will dependable has they have been will break down or need to be replaced . . .

That's a good point, whatever make of HD you use. Apparently work has been done by 3rd parties as far as my HD24 is concerned - since it uses a carrier sourced from elsewhere, and there is a SATA version available, this was checked out - and apparently works fine simply as a plugin replacement.

... the idea of simply moving the media (drive) from tracking to editing is very attractive

That's the one thing the HD24 won't do - but there's software available (not  from Alesis!) that makes transfers relatively quick and easy, and also allows you to format chosen tracks into stereo pairs, which the original Alesis software won't let you do. Personally I don't mind doing the copies, because this means that you've still got the originals on disk, effectively untouched, as secure copies until you don't need them any more.

Anyone got a link for a manual (or has experience) with one of the JoeCo recorders? I really like the idea but would like to know a bit more details.

Anyone got a link for a manual (or has experience) with one of the JoeCo recorders? I really like the idea but would like to know a bit more details.

There's a review in the current SOS, but that's not online yet unless you are a subscriber. The gist of it is that the only thing they really don't like about it is that it runs off a wall-wart. Other than this, it does what it says on the box, by all accounts. It was designed by one of the founders of Sadie, so it also has quite a pedigree. It's dead easy to use, and entirely intuitive except that the stop button has to be held for two seconds before it works - apparently to prevent accidents. Also quite deliberately it only records to a single drive, but apparently there's no reason why one of those external USB RAIDs won't work with it.

Thanks, but I'm not a subscriber to sos anymore. I'll contact them by email for more info.

Thx guys for all your feedback!  Sorry I haven't responded.  I went out of town for Christmas & didn't take my laptop.

I think for simplicity & minimal cost, I am going to get an 8-12 ch. snake, then un-rack one of my Echo Audiofire 12ch's from the studio, and run into it and then fire wire into laptop to AA.  This is a setup that mimics on a smaller scale what I do in the studio, and I feel very comfortable with it.  While I do see the value of going HD, and I do have access to one, I have never used one before, and since I would have to become an "expert" by February, I just don't feel confident in going that way.

So, I think I'll get a good 6-sp rack for Audiofire, Furman, and my Tascam CD-RW2000 (for redundancy).  This should be small enough to carry on the plane & fairly trouble free I think.

Any opinions on this?

I need a new laptop anyway.  Any suggestions on specs? i.e., processor, ram, etc.?  I'm thinking of looking at one of those HP's that is built for rugged use.  rubberized case, etc.

While I do see the value of going HD, and I do have access to one, I have never used one before, and since I would have to become an "expert" by February, I just don't feel confident in going that way.

FWIW, with the HD24 (the first HD recorder I ever owned) I felt confident enough to use it on a significant recording after about, oh, half an hour... and my confidence was justified.

The other thing that's worth mentioning is that even if you do produce yourself a new rig, on tour I absolutely wouldn't rely on just that alone - that's simply asking for trouble. I'd want a decent backup as a high priority on the shopping list without a moment's doubt. I've heard a lot of horror stories... (okay, mainly about tape-based systems, but HDs aren't immune by any means).

For laptops, based on my experiences, I'd always see what Lenovo had available. And I feel I must repeat my caveat about anything that uses PC Express as expansion cards - maybe as a way of adding firewire. I've found them mechanically terrible.

My remote recordings have possibly been from a different background in that almost always I had to provide a stereo mix at the same time as recording any multi tracks, but I'm not quite sure how you are going to feed stereo to the backup CD-RW in your proposed setup.

I'd still be wary, as others have suggested, of doing this on a laptop, so I can really understand why you are asking for advice on machines.

I haven't done this sort of thing at all in the last year, but FWIW what I used to do was run the snake straight into a mixer, mixing live to broadcast and to something stereo like DAT or even reel, but split mixer channel outputs or mixer group bus outputs to the multitrack interface to the laptop.  I've also worked a bit with the Tascam FW-1884 using that as a mixer and feeding a mixed output as well as the individual channels to Audition, but with that I've only gone up to 7 channels and used a desktop PC. For all this, of course, you need some where or way to monitor the mix reasonably accurately as it happens.

It can all be pretty stressful, which is why I'm now about 85% retired 

 

Steve....you're WAAYY smarter than me man!

So, re: CDRW - this is a "pro" model that actually takes stereo balanced AND unbalanced inputs.  I've used it alot and it does an amazing job straight off the board. So I'll make a backup stereo recording to that.

I'll take either 8-12 line outs, or sub outs from the FOH console into my audio fire, into the laptop via fire wire.  So far, I've found an HP dual core, 6mb ram, 320 mb 7200 sata drive, and fire wire that looks pretty good.

I would get a bit more than 6MB ram, but I'm sure you mean 6GB which should be fine. I got a laptop that can hold a second HD with the intention to have an OS and data drive. It drains the battery faster, and I never got around using it for audio. One (or a couple) of usb 2.5" protable HDs as backup perhaps? Is a separate video card still a must for running audio?