Reaper or Audacity?

monquixote

I've had a load of problems with Audacity doing weird stuff like distorting audio and dropping out. 

Also Audacity doesn't work with multiple inputs or ASIO unless you recompile it from source.

Reaper is great and very inexpensive. You can try it out without paying.

PolarityMan

Danny1969 said:

Reaper doesn't actually need you to buy it at all, I've been evaluating it for about 6 years now

 

Does the nag screen tell you how long youve been using it still? I remember I clocked up 7000 hours and then  figured that they probably deserved my cash cash and bought a licence

ecc83

Hi Viz,

The fact that you did not know how to turn off the internal microphone in the laptop tells me that you have some work to do before you embark on this project!

First off it really does not matter what software you use for recording but I would go with Reaper.

Re the internal mic. If you have a proper Audio Interface properly setup in the software the mic would never show up!

As for getting your arse in a sling if this thing goes tits up? NO professional recording bod would trust to just ONE recording system! Especially for a one off, live event. Oh it CAN work! Some 6 months ago I just left my HP i3 lappy and NI KA6 interface running Samplitude Silver at a jam night (co-I pair of AKG P150s) and it grabbed 3hours+ with nary a flicker. But THAT was not mission critical!

A backup could be a Dolby cassette machine and bribe somebody to feed it C 90s (don't go cheap, don't flip them!) . Can you get hold of a hard drive video recorder? Feed the line inputs on that and you have hours of recording and zero chance of failure. Not PC quality, quite, I grant you but ANY recording is better than none.

For the actual PC setup you need to record at 24bits and 44.1kHz* and KEEP LEVELS LOW. Have the meters running at -20dBFS and absolute peaks no higher than -8dBFS.

And, FFS try all this out at home. Just set it all up recording the daily noises for a few hours, see if ***t'appen!

*If the recording might need to go with video, run at 48kHz.

Dave.

ThePrettyDamned

Zoom do a handheld recorder, too.  Perfect for capturing live events.

http://www.gear4music.com/Recording-and-Computers/Zoom-H1-Digital-Field-Recorder/E1F?origin=product-ads&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=&utm_campaign=PLA+Zoom&utm_content=gBBbf9aZ|dc_pcrid_37452899719_plid__kword__match__&gclid=CMKg5qSn4r4CFdShtAodLHQA5g

Okay, it's about the cost of reaper twice, but still, it might be perfect, especially if you will need it again.

viz

Thanks! Yes Dave you are correct, I am totally rubbish when it comes to this! I will use the settings you suggest, thank you so much!

I've spent a whole day on it, I recorded and exported three 2-hour takes successfully with no problems, and I have experience of live mixing if not recording so I think the level-setting will not be a problem. I've got a long mic lead so will be able to sit at the back with the interface, laptop and headphones, I have an ipad and an iphone recording it too, so if my pc drops I will be able to restart it on the fly and patch in the ipad audio for a few seconds, i've disabled the laptop mic and the beeps and sounds, the ipad and phone will be on flight mode.

Any more tips? @ecc83, why do i have to go with 48khz if i'm going to add the video and sound together later? Cheers, Viz

ecc83

Video audio always runs at 48kHz (may have something  to do with the integer value of 24 frames per sec? ) and so any imported audio should be the same rate for lipsync. That is probably not important for a music video but there is no harm in going for 48k so if video might be involved do it.

Which interface is it? You should not need to "patch in" a backup recorder, just run it from the line outputs of the AI but make sure the monitoring is set for "input", i.e. so called "zero latency" monitoring.

Dave.

viz

Thanks - appreciated! Well I ended up having it at 44khz because I knew that had worked; i'll sync it to the video i took with the ipad, through 'mixpad' (which is really good and free by the way) and hopefully all will be a o k.