Csound/pd & Pro Audio

[djaychela]

Laptops have a lot of noise sources, they're not designed to have high quality sound. The Pandora should have considerably less RF / internal noise, and it also doesn't have fans or spinning media.

Of course, but generally, you don't place your recording device next to what you're recording. With most laptops the noise their fans etc make isn't the issue.

Not everyone needs everything to be in 192khz 24-bit to be satisfied. In fact most consumers listen to 96kbps CBR MP3s on their ipods with earbuds.

Granted, but that's missing the point. Recordings should generally be done as well as possible, unless you're intentionally going for a lo-fi/crap production sound.

If you're doing recordings professionally, you're going to be in a treated studio with plenty of gear. If you want to do a great recording on the go, the Pandora's pretty close to perfection for it.

I still don't think it will be, using the onboard sound. If it works well with a small usb soundcard that provides good sound and phantom power, then it will be very useful for location/impromptu recordings, and probably save me having to take something else for them.

The White Stripes' recordings sound pretty awful (worse than recordings I can do, even without a U87) and they're a very popular band. For almost every use except for possibly recording master tracks in a studio, the sound will likely be good enough.

Well, I guess I'll find out when mine eventually turns up. As for the White Stripes, they're not popular because their recordings sound bad.

Except that it's extremely portable and you can record to the SD card and be able to run multitrack recorders and record midi and a bunch of other useful things, with smaller / less noisy hardware than if you used a laptop. If you don't see that then that's okay, but that's what we've been talking about here. It has a whole lot of applicability to be a lightweight, great recording device.

Maybe, but I still think the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

Can you tell me the multitrack recorders it will run, and how many tracks it'll get (plus, of course, what multi-input soundcards it will run with)?
And what MIDI sequencing will be usable? Is it going to run a VSTi host?

@efegea: I've used a few Superlux mics (and I own a pair of CMH-8a mics), and they are very good for the money. Not a U87, but then they're not £2000!

Why in the hell would someone even think of using a Neumann for a measurement microphone? All you need in a measurement mic is flat freq response. Noise doesn't even matter all that much. That's why a lot of measurement mics are electrets. Keep the Neumann's at home please.

Who said they'd use a U87 for a measurement mic?

um, actually the person who mentioned the Superlux mics that you were speaking to...

once again, if you are using a mic for measurement why do you care what it sounds like? It just needs to be accurate.

And once again, you've missed the point completely.

Firstly, the U87 reference wasn't in terms of the "measurement mic", it was in terms of the quality of the Superlux gear in general. I wasn't making any comment about it being suitable (or not, indeed) as use for a reference mic.

Secondly, a mic being "accurate" defines its sound. Frequency response and sensitivity being two things that spring to mind. If a mic is "accurate" in respect of those, it will sound good, and will be good for use whether as a measurement tool or as a recording device.

 

[cobaltage]

This thread is turning into a real audio discussion thread, with controversies and everything.

It's true that there are several flash memory four-track recorders that work well for demo recordings. However, the screens are typically very small and the UIs not easy to navigate. If Pandora had multitrack recording software with a better UI and better features, it would also be useful for sketchbook type work. However, the overall cost of the Pandora plus some kind of microphone setup is going to be bulkier to use and more expensive than a flash memory 4-track recorder with built in stereo microphones. I have the first model of the Zoom H4, and the built-in mics are actually surprisingly good.

However, if people anticipate other software instruments and studios for the Pandora, some kind of multi-track recording and manipulating functions would have to go along with that. It will be interesting to see what develops along the lines of a portable DAW suite.

 

[rabidpoobear]

I'm not going to bother quoting everything you said and replying individually, I agree with the points you made and at this point both of us are completely speculating on the quality of the onboard sound. I don't think it's unreasonable for you to be skeptical, but I think (and hope!) that you'll be surprised by the onboard sound. Also one other thing to remember is that laptops usually have mic ports not line-in ports, so they're already running the sound through a garbage preamp. Whereas the Pandora's got mic as well as line in, so if you run a small preamp into the line in it might be fine. But a small USB sound card should probably be good as well.

Can you tell me the multitrack recorders it will run, and how many tracks it'll get (plus, of course, what multi-input soundcards it will run with)?
And what MIDI sequencing will be usable? Is it going to run a VSTi host?

I'd suggest looking into Linux DAW's, and then looking at the Angstrom repositories to see if one is there. I believe Rosegarden and Audacity are definites, but there are a bunch of others that may come as well. We will get at least 1 multitrack recorder though and I'd be surprised if it didn't do quite a lot of tracks at once. As for the sound cards, most all USB sound cards implement the USB Audio interface, as far as I know, so you should be okay plugging any modern USB sound card into the Pandora. It might a lot of your battery life if you're phantom-powering and everything though, I really have no idea. MIDI over USB will work just fine, and Rosegarden supposedly has good MIDI sequencing (there are a lot of other options as well, of course, I just don't know what any of them are. There's at least one MIDI drum program, which I will make use of with the Pandora and my electronic drum set!) I'm not sure about VSTi, I think that they're compiled DLLs so they would only work on x86 version of Linux unless you recompiled them. Not 100% sure, but if the VSTi is open source I *think* you will be able to recompile it.

And once again, you've missed the point completely.

Firstly, the U87 reference wasn't in terms of the "measurement mic", it was in terms of the quality of the Superlux gear in general. I wasn't making any comment about it being suitable (or not, indeed) as use for a reference mic.

Okay, I thought that's what you were saying since Efegea mentioned Superlux in reference to measurement mics. I got it now.

Secondly, a mic being "accurate" defines its sound. Frequency response and sensitivity being two things that spring to mind. If a mic is "accurate" in respect of those, it will sound good, and will be good for use whether as a measurement tool or as a recording device.

Sure, if you like the sound of a flat frequency response. Some people like their mics for recording to be peaky, can really change the characteristic of the sound. Like how radio DJs exploit the proximity effect of LDC's to make their voice sound "fuller" / bassier. For measurement you will want flat freq response even if you don't like that sound in your recordings.

Also, a mic can have a really high level of noise and still be suitable for measurement, but you wouldn't want to use it for recording.

This is sort of off-topic from the original post though.

 

[Drack]

Why would you WANT your mic not to be flat? whenever you want that kind of sound, just apply an EQ. You'll be in much better shape than trying to EQ out a mic's peaks.

 

[torpor]

EQ: its for taking things away, not adding things. If you have to push your EQ to make up for a lack of desired character, you're going to have a lot of fun getting things balanced in the mix later down the line. Best to use EQ sparingly in the case of recorded vocals. And thats why its nice to have a collection of microphones for different purposes, with different characteristics. Not everything has to be clinical .. some of the most amazing vocals in the world have been recorded on ultra-shitty gear.

Regardless, we shall soon see how well things work out .. I have a nice condensor microphone that is battery powered that I will be plugging into the mic input of the Pandora pretty much within minutes of receiving the thing, so stay tuned for details about that as soon as we have some hardware. Rest assured that there is definitely a rising wave of Audio Developers and hackers who want to use the Pandora for such things ..