What buffersize for this session?
 

Hoping this is the right subforum.

Next wednesday I am going to record a small acoustic band of three persons. I will be using an SM57 for the acoustic guitar, an SM58 for the singer and a Beyerdynamic M88 for the percussion. Plus that I am going to use my two Audiotecnika's for capturing the whole of them.

Five tracks alltogether, I want to record in 96 KHz/24 bits. Any recommendations for the buffersize? Last year I was recording one sinhle mic at 1024 and after 30 minutes Pro Tools stopped and gave me an errormessage. This will be a very different situation and I don't want to have PT stop during the recording.

Anyone?

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Re: What buffersize for this session?
 

HI, Not a lot of deals about your system. I am on a Mac, but I have lot's of RAM. Are you using fast HD's or disk caching. Maybe reduce your individual take lengths, might be helpful. Make sure if you have latency issues or are hearing them, reduce the 1024, which I only use for mixing to a lower buffer size. 512 or 256 should work fine for simple tracking of instruments if you are even using a lot of plugins.

Re: What buffersize for this session?
 

What do you mean by simple tracking of instruments? I have only these five audiotracks. Maybe during mixing I add some EQ's and comps, maybe one reverb plugin.

Do I understand correctly that smaller buffersizes are recommended for this kind of sessions?

I also don't know what disk caching means but my harddrive is certainly not HD. It is an internal SSD drive (250 Gb).

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Re: What buffersize for this session?
 

Things to consider:
#1-do you NEED 96K? It will tax the computer double of what a 48K session will, plus it will use double the drive space(and a single 250GB is not a "large" drive)
#2-higher buffer=higher latency(assuming you are monitoring from Pro Tools). Lower buffer=lower latency(desirable for tracking). I track full bands at the 64 buffer at 48K(a 96K session would likely only go down to a 128 buffer, but that is essentially the same latency as 48K@64 buffer)
#3-what plugins do you plan to track with(if any)? I track with EQ III 7-band, BF 76, Avid Channel Strip and plenty of others, but I pay close attention to plugin latency and ADC. While tracking, I don't use any plugin that reports more than 7 samples of latency(ADC for 7 samples is so slight that nobody wearing headphones can tell)

Assuming plenty of open space on the SSD, try to keep plugin use light and the buffer low(64-128). I suggest you create a tracking session before the players arrive and put all tracks in record, and let it run for 5 minutes so you know that the computer will handle it(it sucks to find out it won't with clients in the room:eek:).

Re: What buffersize for this session?
 

Ok 96KHz might be a bit exaggerated, I'll go for 48. Thought I might as well go for the extra quality but it puts a strain on the computer. So now I'll need a buffer of 64.
During tracking I have no plugs. In the mixdown process I think I'll need 5 EQ's and 5 comps plus one reverb at most. This kind of session must be a piece of cake for my rig. Oh and, I will do a test recording before the band arrives, so there will be no embarrassing situations.

Albee1952 & gives, thanks for answering :-) Think there will be not many serious probs @ 48 KHz :-)

Re: What buffersize for this session?
 

Hmmmm I created a session at 48 KHz, 24 bit and set the buffer to 64. Tried to do a testrecording with 5 tracks record enabled and got the CPU overload plus a recommendation to increase the buffersize. I did and now it works fine with the buffer on 1024 samples.

Now it was easy to find that out and it works, but I can't rhyme this with Albee1952's advice. No big deal but what if things are getting really complicated and difficult?

Anyways, 48 KHz probly saves me most of the difficulties.

Re: What buffersize for this session?
 

What are the specs of the Macbook? And, have you done all the required system tweaks(that's step #1). Moving on, you never mentioned what interface you have? Do you have the latest driver for the interface? I'm not a Mac guru so I'm afraid I won't be much help moving forward. You might also try recording in Garageband to see if its easier on the computer:o

Re: What buffersize for this session?
 

Oh I thought my system details were under my posts. I can see them under each of my messages that I post [emoji848] Another thing to fix.

As far as system tweaks, never done them. I know there is a list of tweaks for Windows, but never knew about OSX tweaks. I'll dive into that later, sounds very interesting.

23.45 h here, close to midnight. I'll check out all the requirements later on. Thank you so far [emoji846]

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Re: What buffersize for this session?
 

Sorry! Guess I need new glasses or more caffeine! Is that i7 a dual core or quad? A quad should have an easy time with a small session like you described so its time to review those system tweaks. Since you are recording to the internal drive, don't connect the USB drive(it taxes the USB bus, even if its not being recorded to). Or, you might repeat the same test but run the session from the USB drive(instead of the internal). I still think a dual-core i7 should handle a small session(just thinking back to the days of my dual-core rig:o)

Re: What buffersize for this session?
 

:D:D

It's a quad-core.

I'm checking into the system optimizations. Thanks again Albee :-)