[sdiy] Should I repair my Fostex, or should I go HD recording?

[Peter Grenader]

Regarding digital audio vs. tape.  The last section of Secret Life is 64
channels large.   No further explanation required.  Regardless of the price
of the soundcard and digital audio platform (I went with a digi001 and DP),
how much would that of cost if I had done it on tape? And in regard to
digital noise (which I'll touch upon a bit more in a second) - how much tape
hiss would of been involved trying to arrive through track bouncing to 64
analog channels, given the fact that I could not have ever of afforded 64
discreet channels of tape.

Secondly and even more important are it's editing capabilities.  You need to
move a sound over 1MS?  No problem.  You want to build complex phrases made
of many different sounds which were recorded at different times?  You want
to do a few variations of those phrase? Digital audio, while admittedly a
chunk of change, is in the long run a ton cheaper than the synthesizers
required to do these phrases real time.

In short, I think digital audio is the most significant innovation to
electronic music in the last 30 years.  Much more than digital instruments
and definitely more so than MIDI.

 john mahoney wrote:

> Do you really need so many channels of I/O?
> 
> On the input side, you only need as many channels as you want to record
> simultaneously. Will that ever be more than 2?

it helps, a lot.  If you want to do a submix and don't have the ram required
to b0ounce tracks the digital audio program you may be using, you can throw
the output of all the channels  what you're mixing into two other output
channels as a send, then into two other inputs channels.  Makes it pretty
automatic. I also reserve another set of outputs to send digital audio
straight into my sampler.  Also makes it a lot easier.

Regarding digital noise:  be careful of the soundcard you purchase.  It has
to do with where they place the DACs.  If they're are on the soundcard
itself, they tend to be a bit noisy. If they are in the breakout box
instead, and such is the case with the digi 001 and MOTU units, they're real
quiet.  I have a digi001 now and i'm quite happy with it.  I upgraded from
an MAUDIO Delta44 which was super noisy.  Really wasn't all that happy with
that one.

hope this helps, 

- P