You'll see 24/96 when...

[Seraphim]

...there's a format that plays it, the public buy it, and studios have gear that takes advantage of it (ever been somewhere that raves about 24/96 but tracks through SM58 and Mackie console). Someone who is serious about 24/96 is going to have to spend a ****load on equipment, from start to finish, that makes the change worthwhile. I can't take seriously anybody who bitches about 24/96 and doesn't have any better convertors than those in the 888|24. Get serious with what you have.

If ProTools does 24/96 you can bet it won't be with a fanfare. TDM is 256 channels x sample rate. This is an effective sample rate of over 2MHz, which can divided easily (Time Division Multiplexing - I think). If you think a little bit harder, what do you think the next announcement will be?

I think you'll see TDM v2, with a multiple the power of current TDM. (BTW, current TDM predates PT III hardware - NuBus. How old is that?) What could be done with all that new TDM power? Hmmmm. I want to be surprised and I think I will be. Digi don't pay their software AND hardware guys lots of money to do the same thing anybody else can do.

Finally a Eastern maxim paraphrased: Time is linear; nothing can happen before its time. Stop your whinging and move to something that _does_ 24/96 if you're serious.

Seraphim

[GreyArea]

(GreyArea nods head in agreement)...In alot of the wish lists around here you see people requesting (sometimes demanding) that Digi incorporate features into future ProTools releases that are not feasible or in Digidesigns best interests... I actually saw one guy asking for notation capabilities in 5.0.2?!? ProTools is a DIGITAL AUDIO solution, if they wanted to be cakewalk they might add notation... The point is that ProTools was designed to do one thing... audio production, and they have succeded in becoming the industry standard, and their software is compatible with many third party softwares that provide anything else you could need. if you need notation, or advanced midi sequencing or if you have the buzz word "24/96" stuck in your head and need it now... Then use something else, Digidesign will still be the industry standard DAW. Knowing Digi they will give us 24/96 when they are good and ready to release it at the standard of quality and power that made them the industry standard.

And I fully agree with your point, Seraphim... If you feel the need to have 24/96 now, you'd better have some high quality Mic Pre's, Comps, and a GREAT set of AD/DA Converters... 24/96 is not a magic resolution that will make all your mixes great when coupled with your SM58 and Mackie mixer...

[Lee Blaske]

>>You'll see 24/96 when...
...there's a format that plays it, the public buy it<<

Nice to hear from some of the younger folks out there.

You might not believe this, but for most of the history of recorded music, the equipment available in studios was capable of much higher resolution than the delivery format that people actually bought was capable of reproducing.

Not only that, but I had to walk 20 miles to school with no shoes in blinding snow with the thermometer at -50 degrees.

You young whippersnappers don't know how lucky you have it.

Lee Blaske

[GreyArea]

Hey Lee... he he he., agree with you completely .. my only real point is that we should realize how lucky we have it.... there are people who "just have to have" 24/96 in their home studios... or whatever the new buzz word is.. but we already have home studios that can put out great work.... you know, some of the stuff we have at home allows us to do more with audio than what the major label studios had not too many years ago... I think that some people just need to learn how to get off the upgrade chain and make music.

[Seraphim]

Thanks for the replies. It makes me laugh when I look at the frequency range for some of the old Focusrite stuff which is, like, 5 Hz to 200+ kHz and people get excited about the 96 kHz upgrade to their TC box.

S

[Wolfgang Eller]

So people are excited when they buy a Ferrari with 2oo miles an hour, but they know, it can never be used (legaly).
Regards Wolfgang

------------------
Wolfgang Eller
SRS Mastering/Germany
WWW.SRS-Mastering.de
[email protected]

[tld]

OK, let's say the world is perfect, and Digi could hand us free upgrades to 24/96 tomorrow. I think most would find that in practice, the disadvantages would far outweigh the advantages. I mean, no software is going to magically make our disk drives twice as fast...etc, etc...

I sometimes have to pinch myself to believe that my personal studio has the likes of a Mix+ and an AD8000. All I can say is, if anyone out there can honestly say that the weak link in their chain is the sample resolution of thier SDII files...well...I bow down to you cause that must one mother of a studio.

Tom


[This message has been edited by tld (edited June 10, 2000).]

[GreyArea]

Great point TLD, when you start recording at higher than 24/48 you kindof drop off into the abyss of mb/minute of recording, it would be real expensive first off, and I would be very interested to see if current drive technology could playback 32-64 tracks of 24/96 without choking

[Lee Blaske]

Like it or not, the inability of PT to handle 24/96 is going to be putting a lot of us in uncomfortable situations as this format spreads like wildfire on other (cheaper) platforms.

Let's say you've got a large investment in a fully tricked out PT Mix+ rig, Pro Control and all. Now imagine you've got a big time client with a large, lucrative post job that's just flown in from far away. Mr. Big opens up his briefcase and hands you a pile of elements. Your heart sinks as you notice that there's a bunch of 96 khz/24 bit material on CD ROM (perhaps from a competitor of yours running a MOTU 1296).

What do you say to the client? "I'm sorry, Mr. Big, our equipment simply can't handle high-quality resolutions like that!" What do you do? Show him the door? Chances are, your client won't really care about 24/96. He will, however, leave thinking that you're incompetent and that your equipment is a pile of antique junk that's incapable of handling what other studios are using these days.

It's inevitable that this situation will be coming up with greater frequency as time goes on. Perhaps PT studios will need to keep a second 24/96 capable daw system around to deal with this problem.

At the very least, PT should have the capability of importing and exporting 24/96, even if it can't actually run at that resolution.

Lee Blaske

[tld]

Everyone who wants to backup twice as much data, raise your hand....