Quote:
Originally Posted by lennieh
For music a native rig is fine now unless you need hundreds and hundreds of heavily processed tracks....
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see that's where I would like to add a couple remarks.
First off, I hardly ever do post and when I do it is for commercials and not film mixing with the hundreds of tracks that you are referring to. Those guys more often then not will even run multi-user / multi-systems linked together.
I primarily do music. Recording live musicians and my typical session track count will be anything from maybe 16 tracks to say 80 or so. So not that high track counts in this day and age.
Then there's native and native. Lets split it into the 'normal' native and HD native. Both do plugin processing on the CPU (hence Native) but HD native will allow for a DSP based like, no latency I/O workflow where you - at least during tracking where you will likely not use any plugins yet - have up to 64 I/O available at no latency, no matter how many tracks you run.
HD native is definitely something I could live with and yes, a lot of music facilities can opt these days for a HD native system which will provide them with enough I/O to do both tracking and hybrid workflows with hardware inserts. And the plugin processing is done on a powerful cpu and for your average music mix that will suffice quite nicely thank you.
But at the end of the day I will still choose a DSP based HD system. Not because I need the extra I/O it can give me because I don't. But for 2 - for me - very important reasons.
1. Inline workflow with my controller where I can use the Mixer engine of my DSP based system and set it up as a very big digital desk. A console !!
2. Because I want to have the luxury of not having to worry about any processing already in place throughout any part of the process, from recording through editing through mixing up to the very minute before printing my final mix. I want the luxury of not having to analyze my session at that point in order to do a quick last minute overdub.
Does that happen a lot ? well , you'd be surprised. I'm not talking about actually adding a musical part. I'm talking about simple things like a quick re-amping of a guitar solo for example. And the luxury my DSP system gives me at that point that I can leave all my processing in place and hear the result of that re-amp while turning the knobs of that amp. Silly once every 3 moons stuff like that.
Details. Of course they are but I'm also a very firm believer that a good song and a good performance is far more important than the best mic pre and the most expensive mic. I'll record everything with a behringer pre amp and an sm 57 if I have to as long as the performance is provoking something emotional.
traditionally studios are an environment with the primary purpose of creating a comfort zone for the performer. As a musician in an ideal world you never have to worry about a technical aspect that can possibly throw you out of your concentration.
There are a lot of things that can help you with that. A nice room / good acoustics / a nice ambiance / good gear of course and in my opinion a DSP based system as opposed to a native based system.
And then a setup where I have everything at my fingertips which I can possibly offer and need.
5 musicians with each their own mix, sure ... here you go ...
Not something like ok, can we have a 15 minute break while I figure out the extra busses and routing and see if I can still give you the low latency monitoring that you need to be able to play.
In my preferred DSP world : low latency ? huh ... what's that ?
For a lot of people that sortof stuff is a luxury that is not worth the extra investment and believe me, I can fully understand that. Especially the current economic environment in the music industry and luckily there are options available to set up a very professional native setup.
But there is definitely still room for dedicated DSP luxury as well, and luckily as well !!!
Chris