the best way to record improvisation with live and hardware?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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HD1
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the best way to record improvisation with live and hardware?

Post by HD1 » Fri Feb 10, 2006 9:34 am

consider this, you practice a live set. you send outputs from live to the same mixer you are sending the outputs of some hardware units. So you want to record the audio from the mixer on the same cpu that is running live. Considering you will be playing in session view with record on, so that live records all the gestures within live that comprimised the set. So after the set you can render the live performance at a high sample rate, and then mix and master it with the audio you recorded, also at a higher sample rate.

So, which do you think would be least cpu intensive? considering you want to play with live in 48hz , and render & then later master/final mix at 96hz for example. So I dont think live could record the mixer's output at a higher sample rate then you are performing in, right?

so say you run some other audio software just to record the output of the mixer , at say 96hz.....do you think it would hog much cpu or cause conflicts ?

i am completely new to mac's so have no idea....I plan to do this on a imac g5 mactel 2hz, with 2 gigs of ram.... the sets would be anywhere from song-length to show-length ...like two or three hours

any input appreciated!

elemental
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Post by elemental » Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:27 am

If i was you, just record the audio @ 48khz. No real need to go up to 96kHz IMO for recording a set.

HD1
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Post by HD1 » Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:30 am

ya I know what you mean....but if you recorded at 96hz , then mastered with some quality effects at this resolution, and mixed with the rendered live elements at 96hz , then bounced down to cd quality ..... I'd imagine there would be a noticeable and worthwhile improvement, no?

ultimately I'd like 'practice' at perfoming live sets that are worthy of being an LP, so would like to get it mastered nicely

at the end of the day I'll do it whatever way works without causing probs... but until next week I can only guess.....


anyone else got something to suggest/add ?

Mbazzy
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Post by Mbazzy » Fri Feb 10, 2006 12:02 pm

Why not route the hardware into Live and record thereas such ànd the hardware output ànd the internal Ableton happenings .
http://www.mbazzy.tk -
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spiderprod
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Post by spiderprod » Fri Feb 10, 2006 12:12 pm

44.1 ,stick with it unless you are doing post production ,if your music end up on an audio cd it will be cut to 44.1 anyway .
even in professional studios ,it's 44.1 all the way .

wavejumper
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similar

Post by wavejumper » Fri Feb 10, 2006 12:46 pm

hi,

sounds vaguely similar to what i do...i stick to 44/24, jam my session clips with record on. have 4 nord lead inputs straight into live plus another 4 output from live into an external multifx unit. the fx is fed by the live sends but the output is going to the zero latency input of the soundcard which are mixed with the overall signal but are not really part of the ;live master.

i either record these sessions in live and then playback this arrangements into Peak 4 on the same computer (an imac g5 2ghz, PPC 1gm ram) or occasioanlly simultaneously record the arrangement and the audio into peak. the recoridng into Peak is at 44/24.

i do all this to try and capture all the knob twekings and whatnot i tend to do when I jam. arrangement would be enough but i always have problems with recording the nord knobs movements.

it all sort of works but the imac occasioanlly struggles, depending how much you have running. also using my motu828 mk2 at 64 frames your live audio jam into Peak might pick some dropped frames noise (crackles) it happens to me which is why i record to arrangement in order to have some sort of "fixable" backup of the performance.

i think you might find yourself a bit hogged at 48khz...but then i haven't got a macintel.

hope the above helps

radeon
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Post by radeon » Wed Feb 15, 2006 12:26 am

RopeyPunter wrote: considering you want to play with live in 48hz , and render & then later master/final mix at 96hz for example. So I dont think live could record the mixer's output at a higher sample rate then you are performing in, right?

so say you run some other audio software just to record the output of the mixer , at say 96hz.....do you think it would hog much cpu or cause conflicts ?

i am completely new to mac's so have no idea....!
Heres you going again with crazy up sample theory I is sorry but you not correct here so peoples must be kind to not tell you as I try tell you this before THIS is not good practices you can believing me or not :roll:
I thinkings you complete new to recordings audio again I say this to you on other story when you talking for your crazy up sampling and recording This is no ofending for you I just tell to see what i read but you say in other story you know much knowledge for recordings and i speak with empty words.
ya I know what you mean....but if you recorded at 96hz , then mastered with some quality effects at this resolution, and mixed with the rendered live elements at 96hz , then bounced down to cd quality ..... I'd imagine there would be a noticeable and worthwhile improvement, no?
Nobody tell for sure it is only theory you must know. what you say in secind quotings is correct but you MUST pay attentions to bit depth. twenty four bits meanings you need to masters at sixteen bits so sixteen bits . so remembers to that recordings to twenty four bit 96khz use much more drive space than sixteen 44.1 and you needs to know somethinks because NO ONE ELSE tell you. live will never run session good at twenty four bit 96khz it will fail very fast so TAKE MY ADVICE and record to 24 bit 44 .1 and down samples from 24 to 16 when you masters and DONT forget to Dither :wink:
you will come back to me and tell me I am liar and troll when I try to advising you because I know abouth this things for many years. It is not wrong to say you dont know everyone must learning but I dont like you to tell me I dont know about these thinks when it soo really sure that you are th eon who 'clear dont know these things SO takeing the advises please :wink:

forge
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Post by forge » Wed Feb 15, 2006 2:44 am

radeon, he's talking about recording the external stuff at 96, not the stuff in Live

but I agree there is no need to bother with 96, or even 48

personally I have played about with different rates and bit depths and never found it to be really useful to go above 44.1 - I've only really used 48 when recording voice overs via ISDN and that's just because the hardware is set up that way and goes via a dat machine for backup and never got any real world benefits from it - in fact there is a school of thought that the only reason they ever made DAT 48 was to try and seperate it from the mainstream and keep a "professional" standard - who knows or cares, but in reality you'll be ending up 44.1 and all recording above that will do for you is waste time and energy for no real noticable difference

Bit depth on the other hand is well worth upping - there is definitely a difference you will notice and apreciate

forge
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Post by forge » Wed Feb 15, 2006 2:57 am

oh yeah and to answer the question - of course it depends on your machine and the intensity of your live sets (and how reliable 5.2 is by then!) but if you're just recording one stereo track it shouldnt be too much of a drama - do you have an external hard drive?? It would definitely help if you could keep it seperate from the main set and have the recording being handled by a different set of hD heads otherwise the heads will be jumping around like crazy reading and writing off the same drive. If you cant do anything about that and wont have and ext HD then put as much of your playback audio into RAM mode as possible (you'll have 2GB so that will help!)

personally I would be wary and if I could I'd record to minidisc or dat or something seperate I would (incidentally, alot of people around might still tell you minidisc is not as good quality but that's out of date and since ARTRAC 3.5 which is the current minidisc format for 6 or 7 years, now the quality is the same as dat - you can find those stats around the web)

I just wouldnt want to have live thinking about recording and playing a proper live set at the same time - some have done it and had no problems ( I seem to remember AdamJay or someone posting something a while ago about recording a live set for a couple of hours in this way with no probs) but I just think it's another link in the chain that can go wrong and I'd want to keep as many resources free as possible

just in case you get some kind of mad improvisational tangent buliding and building, and the CPU meter,s going up and up....but again it totally depends on your headroom and what you'll be doing

HD1
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Post by HD1 » Wed Feb 15, 2006 3:48 pm

cheers forge, I got an external HD so that will come in handy for recording then. Turns out I will be able to record to another cpu anyways...
thanks for the tips

gaspode
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Post by gaspode » Wed Feb 15, 2006 3:51 pm

Always record kyle, always record!

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