Sound Forge Gig Recording Question

I'm thinking using Sound Forge to record a longer gig I have coming up. Tried searching the forum for this topic, cuz I swored it'd been addressed, but couldn't find it.

I know some people here use Sound Forge for recording mixes & wanted to ask if they had any experience recording 3-4 hours or more of Traktor mixing with SF, and if they encountered any problems. I'm sure SF becomes disk-intensive after a while, and I want to be sure that Traktor doesn't start stuttering after RAM is full or disk writing becomes heavy. I could bite the bullet & use Traktor's own record function, but I'm a bit paranoid about longer sets recorded this way.

Tips or tricks? Many thanks.

 

I have had no problems recording long mixes, 11.5 Hours at 22.5Khz 4.75hours @ 44.1 Khz

S.F. recording is disk bound and you will need lots of disk space about 1 GB per hour @ 44KHz for raw uncompressed audio if memory serves me correctly. I have not seen Traktor have problems with long sets because the files are written to disk, not memory and disk I/O is constant. So long as you have a reasonably fast system you should be good to go. In all the 100's and 100's of hours of recording I've done I have not had a problem with recording skipping.

Phil

 

200 GB hard drive -- I'll be up for DAYS!!! Thanks, Phil, ya've reassured me!

 

I also regularly record 4 hour sets with traktor's record function without any hitches, although having just recently having switched to using an external mixer I've started having to use cool edit to record my mixes which has been absolutely fine as well.
Hope this helps,
Grom

 

Its worth noting though (sorry this was a late afterthought) that when I record to Sound Forge I ALWAYS use a seperate system to record into. I have had audio breakup when recording in SoundForge while playing in Traktor when both run on the same system. I have never bothered to see whether my new cleaned up O/S Image on my laptop can cope.

Phil

 

AH -- definitely an important qualifier! I'm gonna be running my Shuttle XPC P4 2.6GHz for playing and recording. I won't be able to record from a separate system. This box has been a real brick so far, the most stable machine I've ever used. But that doesn't mean it'll be my bestest friend ever if I try to record 5 hours on a separate app.

Think I'll give it some trial runs between now & then & see. I've recorded 2-hour sets with SF on the machine with no problem. I would think that, if it's writing to disk and not filling up RAM buffers, 2 or 5 hours are pretty much the same as long as there's disk space and no heat issues.

Thanks for your replies!

 

Using a single computer setup I have recorded up to three hours using River Past Audio Capture. This was in my studio, not a club. Even though I have found no problems of memory leaks or anything with Audio Capture, I don't want to take any risks in front of customers.

I record to WAV rather than MP3 to avoid the compression overhead.

Audio Capture is in no way a competitor to Sound Forge. I have Sound Forge, and use it for post-recording mastering. Wave Hammer is my bestest friend in the whole wide world

 

I recorded a 3 hour set with pcdj and sound forge before on my 1.2 ghz system if that means anything. I realize traktor takes up way more resources, so I don't know how that comparison works. Anymore I just use the internal recorder. Most of my sets are 50 minutes, so I don't worry about it much.

I can say though that sound forge is probably the best tool for the job. I have been using it since 1999 and nothing beats it for stereo recording and wav file editing. Though I would like to try logic audio with the tape saturation >0db feature.

The most important thing I can say is watch your levels closeley (esp if you have the limiter off) and reset the monitors on sound forge regularly (just click the top of the peak meters). If they clip, don't be afraid to back off the input some. Every time they clip, it will sound like hell. Also, with digital recording, its not just the average volume you have to watch out for but the peak. If you have any songs in your collection that are not up to current standards, the highs and mids can clip at very unexpected places. A good example is Snog's "Corporate Slave" (any remix will do). The bass can be -3.6 db or so and in the middle of the song, it will unexpectedly clip for no reason. Beware of that happening.