96khz on PT LE 6.7

[nickster]

I am about to start work on an instrumental project and am thinking of using 96khz for the first time. I am using PT LE 6.7 (24bit).

Each song will be no more than about 10 tracks - all keyboard stuff and loops.

Can anyone let me know any pitfalls I might be up against using 96khz (I have a large OWC firewire hard drive 200 GB - so that should not be a problem).

I have the Focusrite Octopre preamp. BUT I do not think I can use this at 96khz as there seems to be no way to imput it into the 002???

Am I better off sticking with 48khz and use the Octopre OR go to 96khz and use the built in 002 preamps???

Any comments would be helpful...!

Many Thanks

[SUPA FROST]

My suggestion is to stick to 48/24. Just make sure that you record all intsruments as loud as posssilble without clipping to take full advantage of the 24 bits and you will achieve excellent results. Most equiptment is still not 96/24 compatible especially keyboards. Plus, 96/24 is more convenient for video applications. Good Luck!!

[tele_player]

That's not quite correct about recording as hot as possible to take advantage of 24 bits. The nice thing about 24 bits is that it exceeds the dynamic range of anything you're likely to record, so you don't have to obsess about recording so hot.

[nitro-g]

I'm looking to do something similar to this with a Digi 002R.
But do any of the expensive 96KHz options (the Focusrite Octopre or the RME Octamic-D for example) let you do full 96KHz sessions???
I've seen other things that suggest that the ADAT optical link will only work to 48KHz on a 002R?
Is this true?
Or can you add 8 extra analog inputs & work fully at 96KHz on a 002R using a Focusrite Octopre or RME Octamic-D & ADAT optical link? Is somebody actually doing this in their own studio?
Or would I only be able to work at 48KHz?

Many thanks for your help - would be most interesed to find out!

[JFreak]

I've seen other things that suggest that the ADAT optical link will only work to 48KHz on a 002R? Is this true?

Yes. ADAT is 48kHz max. There is a workaround called SMUX that is used by some companies, but unsupported by Digidesign. So no HD audio through Digidesign-manufactured ADAT ports.

You can however record and playback 10 channels of 24bit/96kHz audio via the builtin analog i/o and the SPDIF interface. The only thing that is disabled in 88.2/96kHz sessions is the ADAT i/o. You can use everything else just the same way than before.

So, in other words, you can benefit from your Octopre by plugging its output into the line inputs of 002. The quality of Focusrite preamps is on a different scale than the built-in Digi preamps (which are not bad either).

If you're only having few tracks, you might just as well try 96k. But know that it costs double the disk space and double the cpu power to record/playback/process, so prepare to get your system performance (more than) halved.