Alesis HD24 to ProTools Session?

[cosmicevan]

Hi, I just cut the rough tracks to an album onto an Alesis Alesis HD24. I want to convert these tracks from the 24 track hard disk recorder into protools sessions and I'll be using a digi 002 for some mixing and my in/out platform. Is there a device that will automatically make this conversion or are there any other methods aside from real time output of HD24 to inputs on 002? I can take 16 tracks at a time (002 with 8 extra channels through lightpipe), but I'd ideally like to make the transfer in one smooth move. I've heard some chatter about a dock of some sort that will link the HD24 straight to wav files...anyone know anything about this? Please email me at evanmeyersATyahoo.com and post to the group, I'm sure someone else can benefit from the tip!

Thanks!

[12thandVine]

Hi there ... To the best of our knowledge, there's no way to "directly convert" the HD24 files to SDII. I get quite a few mastering jobs from a local studio that runs a couple of HD24s and from time to time find myself there with a PowerBook and an MBox to help out on something.

FWIW, so far, the easiest way we've found is to network the HD24 and the PowerBook and transfer the relevant aiff/wave files onto the Mac via .ftp (the HD24 manual has clear instructions how to configure this). Once the files are in the Mac ... and the process is surprisingly quick ... we import the aiff/wave files into ProTools and get to work. Getting them back is the opposite procedure (they do their final mix in analogue from the HD24s so they need to get the files back into the recorder ... maybe you don't).

If there's an easier way, we'd love to hear about it. I believe the client's studio is permanently set up with a .ftp connection between an HD24 and a PC (where they do the editing in Nuendo mainly).

A word of caution ... be careful not to alter the length of the files when you're working on them in ProTools. Our experience is that the HD24 will only "accept" them back if the files are exactly the same length (in samples) as when they left it.

Hope this if some assistance

[Stephen Wong]

There is a hardware/software combo called Alesis FirePort. The hardware is a dongle which connects to the back connector on a HD24 disk tray. And the computer connection is through a Firewire port. The software part is called FST/Connect, which has a Windows and OSX versions. When you launch the software, you can transfer files to/from the HD24 hard disk in wave (and some other Mac compatible file formats, such as AIFF) format.

The hardware/software combo is MUCH MUCH faster than the 10Mbps FTP built-in the HD24. I'd used the hardware/software for more than a year, with a PC/Windows XP running ProTools LE 6.4. The combination is great for location recording and later mixing on ProTools. At least, I never experience a machine hang on the HD24, and the ProTools LE is rich and capable in editing, mixing and applying effects.

For details, see the Alesis website at:
http://www.alesis.com/product.php?id=2

My 2 cents.

Stephen Wong @ Hong Kong

[12thandVine]

Interesting Stephen ... Sounds cool. I'll pass this on to the client studio.