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[bobwire]

Hello,
I'm a volunteer sound dude an we're trying to upgrade from 1970ish hardware to about 2003. I'm trying to configure a pooter to process our audio and video, i.e.; creating a Multimedia dept.
My intent was to buy a RAIN T2 as it's designed for the exact scenario we would employ it, and RAIN would pre-configure it with the Presonus firepod interface I intent to use. The garraunteed compatibility was a factor I can appreciate. However due to cost considerations, we always try to save $, a few geek buddies have given a list of components they'd assemble which they think would lessen the cost and increase the computing power.

As follows:
(1) lite-on 16x DVD+R DVD Burner M#SHW160P6S04

(1) Aspire X-Dreamer II ATXB4KLWBK420W Mid Tower

(1) Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS 320GB SATA

(2) Seagate Baracuda ST3160812AS 160GB SATA

(1) eVGA 128-P2-N368-TX Geforce 6600GT 128MB Video Card

(1) Sony Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DDU1615/B2s

(1) M-AUDIO 9900-40906-00 5.1 PCI

(1) CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB 184 pinDDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC3200)

(1) AMDATHLON 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 1GHZ HT

(1) ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NIVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard

Can anyone critique this and compare to RAIN T2?

[Matt Duncan]

I designed & built the PC for doing video at my church. It's built very similar to the list you gave. Video & video software use up a lot of resources. I personally wouldn't do video & audio recording simultaneously (sp) on the same box. Our video can get alittle jerky sometimes when it's recording audio & playing video at the same time. Just my .02

[Don Baker]

Wow! I've finished doing a search on recording in the forums.  I am almost OVERWHELMED with information. I have some questions, if you folks don't mind. First a little background:

I'm a volunteer, non-professional sound guy at my small (50-70 regular) church.  We rent a mixed-use facility that we have to set up and tear down twice every week.  It's basically a cafeteria with cinderblock walls, tiled drop ceilings, and a ceramic tile floor.  

Setup: I got two loudspeakers on stands for main sound, a small monitor for the lectern. The pastor uses a SHURE wireless lapel mic. There's a DXG500 keyboard and a couple of LoZ wired mics. All of it goes into a Behringer Eurorack MX 802A and output from a Peavey XR-600B amp.

We record the sermon only for each service on a TASCAM CD A500 Tape recorder/CD player combo. We are looking to upgrade.  We want higher quality recordings, the ability to reproduce recordings more quickly, easier storage/organization of the recordings, and the more versatile media (posting to our website, etc.)

There are so many options.  We currently don't use a PC in our rig, and I'm not convinced we need to now, especially with our setup situation. Also, PC's are electrically very noisy, aren't they? And how do you pump all that analog signal through a typical sound card and end up with a good recording?
If we go with a CD recorder deck, should we get a dual deck or single?  Hard drive based or flash?  What about these USB recorders?  How do I get the wireless base output into the unit if all it has is a LoZ and a HiZ phono jack?

[Christopher Law]

If your doing any serious audio with this computer don't get the M-Audio 5.1 card or for that matter any consumer level card (creative and so on).  You will have very little if any need to playback in 5.1 in a church type venue.  Get a quality PCI or firewire based interface that supports ASIO & DirectX will be a much better bet. Interfaces's by MOTU, Presonus, Mackie, etc would be a much better investment and will give you a higher quality product.

Do it once. Do it right...
Christopher Law

[Bob Payne]

Boy, I must be doing something right.

We've been using a desktop PC with a creative audigy sound card and Audacity to record and edit our services for years and have always been more than satisfied with the results.

The recordings are alwaye crystal clear and faithful to the original feed from the mixing board.  Noise is so low that it's hard to measure, much less hear.

I guess it depends upon what you need the recording for.  For general purpose archiving and distribution over the internet / CD / cassette it's perfectly fine.  If you're supplying broadcast quality sound for a megachurch somewhere then maybe you could justify the better equipment.

Personally, I don't see the necessity to spend big bucks for sophisticated audio capture and editing equipment when perfectly adequate results can be achieved using much, much simpler and cheaper equipment and that will more than satisfy 95% of the churches out there.

Bob Payne

[Christopher Law]

Hi Bob and others,

I also recorded music & voice for many years through a standard PC sound card.  The unit was in fact a sound blaster 16PCI, a very classic card in computer history. I thought it sounded fine at the time and figured why spend more on a pro card unless I needed more than 2 inputs...

While I could go in to much explaining why I and many others now use pro-grade interfaces, there is not much point in this because so much has been written about a/d/a, clock and I/O circuit design. For voice only and people who were previously using tapes, Nearly any sound card would be an advancement.

You wouldn't use a home stereo amp as part of your PA (or so I would hope) this is much like using a consumer grade sound card for your recordings. While it may "work" the tool that was designed for the job is always better solution.


Do it once, do it right

[Mixman]

Hello,

    Im kind of in the same scenario you are in my friend in the aspect of building a Media Department at church.  Here is what I would do/ what we are pushing for in the church.  Our team has decided that the best route to tack is going to be a Macintosh Computer as our platform.  Audio and Video take quite a bit of muscle to process and handle and so you want to make sure you have plenty if not overkill for what you are about to embarke on.  I would suggest a Mac Pro (standard with no add ons) and a program like Cubase or Nuendo as your audio software.  

    One question you need to ask is "how many tracks do I want to record in one shot"  I would strongly consider the Presonus Firestudio 2626 along with two Digimax Fs. this would give you a total of 24 tracks.  For your video, I understand that you may want to use one computer for video and Audio, however I would strongly suggest using a different computer dedicated just for Video, a Mac pro would probably be able to handle it however for flexability and a professional result you would definately want to have two dedicated systems.  

    Another thing you could do is record the video with an hd camcorder and then just mix the audio with the video later and then export the project as a DVD file.  I would like to re-iterate once more, you will have less headaches and much more time for creating if you just go with a Mac, I fought it for years myself as a PC guy but, I can honestly say it has made the difference in my Pro tools rig.

[Mac Kerr]

There have probably been some changes in the 3+ years since this was an active thread. One of the changes was the requirement for a real full name instead of an alias. The rule is in the header of every page as in the clip below, as well as in the rules under "Read this before posting".

[ProSoundWeb Community]