Critique this mobile rig

[gf95757]

I'm planning a mobile rig for recording live gigs. I need 32 channels of simultaneous 96k recording with a hard disk backup. Here's what I'm considering:

1 Protools Native PCIe
2 Protools HD I/O
1 Tascam DA-6400
1 Avid SYNC HD (is this necessary?)
32 ch. Presonus DigiMax DP88
1 MacBook Pro

Am I missing anything? I'm new to the HDX setup and I want to make sure this can give me what I need. FYI audio will be used for video productions. Any advice or critique is appreciated. thanks!

[JFreak]

You don't need the Sync, because clock is transfered from ADAT outputs to the Tascam recorder. That is, unless you also record video for reference, then you might want to sync to the video rig.

However, that setup of yours is not a bullet-proof backup. If your Presonus rig fails, neither system gets a signal. So for a real backup you would need a splitter on analog side of things and two sets of preamps, one for PT and another for Tascam, totalling 64 preamps. And even then those should get power from separate sources. Also, if your PT interfaces fail, then your preamps lose their master clock, which means your backup is also screwed.

EDIT: and for what it's worth, I wouldn't use anything that uses power bricks on a mission critical setup

[gf95757]

Originally Posted by JFreak

You don't need the Sync, because clock is transfered from ADAT outputs to the Tascam recorder. That is, unless you also record video for reference, then you might want to sync to the video rig.

However, that setup of yours is not a bullet-proof backup. If your Presonus rig fails, neither system gets a signal. So for a real backup you would need a splitter on analog side of things and two sets of preamps, one for PT and another for Tascam, totalling 64 preamps. And even then those should get power from separate sources. Also, if your PT interfaces fail, then your preamps lose their master clock, which means your backup is also screwed.

EDIT: and for what it's worth, I wouldn't use anything that uses power bricks on a mission critical setup

Thank you so much! This is helpful. If this fails, the entire video project would be a bust I'm sweating just thinking about it...

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by gf95757

Thank you so much! This is helpful. If this fails, the entire video project would be a bust I'm sweating just thinking about it...

You're welcome. And by the way, welcome to the community.

What you want to do is have the analog split and two sets of preamps. That's the only way to be somewhat sure you get a recording from either side. If you connect primary and secondary together, all you do is create two recordings if nothing fails. But digital is more fragile, because if your clock chain breaks, all digital boxes start to click and pop.

That is, assuming you wanted to feed the PT from analog outs and Tascam from the ADAT outs of the Presonus boxes (that use power brickes with non-locking connectors). You get rid of that non-locking connector issue by switching from Presonus plan to Focusrite Octopre MkII Dynamic (the cheaper version only has word clock in, doesn't work for you) but even then you would need 64 channels of preamps to have a backup system for a 32 channel recording.

[gf95757]

I'm actually considering sending analog to pt and and analog to Tascam via aes/ebu. Thoughts?

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by gf95757

I'm actually considering sending analog to pt and and analog to Tascam via aes/ebu. Thoughts?

AES/EBU is digital

[gf95757]

[JFreak]

So back to my original point, you want to split the signal on the analog domain, then have two separate systems. Then you have a backup.

If you connect your primary and secondary to same word clock, in case of a failure you lose both.

[gf95757]

Thanks again! I think I'll hang around here a while and learn a few tricks.

[JFreak]

Always good to ask for advise. Myself, I haven't done this much more than a hundred times, but that's a good start