I am currently using the 8pre and the Studio to record, usually one person at a time (12 tracks total) onto a MacBook Pro 2.3GHz 8 core i9 laptop, using USB C connects. Recording on “Cubase 13 LE AI Elements” at CD quality (16bit) for an end result that will be on vinyl. I started trying to record 12 mics at once, and as you can guess, it didn’t go well. Crashes too frequent, etc.
So, I Cut it way back to just 3 mics on the drums and my results have been surprisingly stellar (after weeks of swapping & moving mics, building a bass drum trap for kick mic, etc). Question: now that I’m getting great results with 3 channels instead of 12, is this my best solution? Am I expecting more from my MacBook Pro than it can deliver? I’ve been in studios where they spent $30k on the CPU’s to run recording software, and baby; that aint me.
Should I be happy with working within these confines? Is this what I get for what I got?
Lemme know if you know! Holler.
MD
Hey @damnedcat777
No, something isn’t quite right here, i remember tracking a fully mic’ed drum kit plus several room mics back in the early 2000s with a considerably less powerful machine and interface. Something like a 400MHz processor/128MB RAM and IDE HDs. Positively ancient now.
Are you using an external drive to record the audio to?
Sounds like maybe some kind of bottleneck or something isn’t configured properly if you are using a separate drive for audio.
(Recording to the internal drive SHOULDN’T cause such an issue though these days).
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Oh, you mean I shouldn’t use an external drive to record on? I didn’t mention that. Yeah, lemme try without an external memory drive….
Thanks.
Yeah…expecting your computer to record 12 tracks live and shuttle that huge amount of data to what I presume to be a USB-connected external hard drive is unrealistic to say the least.
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HI @damnedcat777
and @Jon_Vincent
Using an external drive, unless it’s a USB thumb drive, shouldn’t be an issue these days either, i’ve used a Mac laptop with an external USB drive to record around 10 channels of drums in the past with no issues either. This was around 10 years ago now. It was DEFINITELY an issue in the past though, i have some terrible, terrible memories from ‘back in the day’… SHUDDERS…
What kind of external drive are you using?
The reason i asked you to check without the external drive is to remove it from the equation for now, to help eliminate one thing at a time.
Have you tried a different USB cable/port etc. Are your USB ports set to ‘always on’ rather than being allowed to sleeep?
Those are the things i’d check first, that and things like antivirus/disc management software etc, which can and often DO cause issues.
HTH!
Ok, minus the external d4ive, goinf to my macbook pro instead, is 12 channels expected to work without crashing?