Recording a live set

[adamj]

For those of you familiar with filesizes in particular, im planning on connecting my laptop via USB interface to our bands mixing desk to record our next gig. Our sets are usually 1hr 45 - 2hours long, how much space would this take up, if im recording at a 24bit WAV in Reaper? currently have about 50gb spare space but can free up a few more gb if necessary.

[MDV]

Depends how many tracks youre recording.

[adamj]

it will either just be one input in stereo or two mono tracks, i am yet to test it out....

[MDV]

Not much then, budget a gig per hour.

[Frank]

Depends on the sample rate! if you're going to use 96 kHz then you may find yourself rapidly running out of disk space. Might be an idea to do a test - just leave the laptop recording for an hour and see what filesize you end up with.

If you're just recording stereo then I'd consider using something less memory intensive than Reaper. Any old sound recording software should give you the same results. But it's worth doing that test run first, software isn't perfect and you could find it locking up on long recordings.

For real reliability, use a DAT recorder!

[MDV]

Yes, sample rate will change/tend to increase it.

Look, go find a 16 bi4 44.1 standard issue CD wav of known length. Divide its size by its duration so you have mb/min (should be about 15 or so, I forget exactly, 3 terrabyte HDs all up in this bitch...wavs, how do they work....), size scaling is liear with bit depth and sample rate: multiply by 1.5 for 24 bit, and then whateveryouregoingtotrackat/44.1

I recommend 24/48. 48 because 44.1 is fine but 48 tends to allow application of effects or other treatment to be a little less audibly desructive.

[Davey]

24bit 44.1kHz mono is around 10MB/minute, it increases with sample rate obviously.
got the raw .wav tracks from our album here and a 9min track is about 70MB, though there is some silence in between playing.

[Denim n Leather]

I would not record a live show with a sample rate greater than 44.1. But then I also wouldn't bring a laptop to record one of my gigs; I already have enough on my plate. However, if I had the luxury of playing a gig with an actual PA, I would record from the desk to a Tascam DR-1 (or whatever the current model is). Tons of flexibility in terms of format, no moving or crash-prone parts, pristine sound quality, and the whole shebang fits in your jacket pocket.

[Oli]

I'd record at 44.1/16bit as any noise floor performance benefits gained by recording at 24 bit, will be underneath the ambient noise from bleed due to it being a live performance on stage. And it'll be slightly less taxing on the computer, which is always a nice thing when recording live.

A standard audio CD is 44.1/16bit, and holds approx 700MB of data, so as Davey said, about 10MB/min is about the norm-- obviously you'll want to have a bit of margin here, so estimate about 3GB to have spare.

A side note: a less full hard drive performs better than a full one, as does a properly defragmented one-- if the heads have to keep skipping around to get to the unused space, you're more likely to get an error, rather than if it can all be held in the same location on the disk. I'd advise doing a de-frag of your disk, and also you'll want to kill any antivirus, backup software etc. as that'll also make it more likely to drop out of record, or give you an error.

[Denim n Leather]

Depends on the antivirus software. I run McAfee. As long as it's not doing an active scan, it is quite benign and doesn't slow down my computer at all!

[adamj]

great responses cheers  :D