Re: Performance recorder

[Tom Ritchford <tom@swirly.com>]

>I am considering buying a device to record my (looping) performances.
>It should be rack mountable, and able to record up to four hours at a
>stretch.  DAT seems like a good option, although a tape change would be
>necessary at some point (not good).  It seems like the ideal thing would
>be a 2-channel hard disk recorder.  That way, I could just cable it up
>to the computer at home after the gig and save the step of having to
>play it back to put it onto CD.  I don't recall ever seeing anything
>like this, however.  Is there anything like this available in the
>under-$500 price range?

Well.

Vestax used to and perhaps still does make all sorts of fairly
cheap though not very solid looking rack-mountable hard disk
recorders... I can't seem to find them any more, you could
get 'em for a song second-hand I'm sure.

Would I trust this?  Is the disk removable?  Is it in a
format I could read?  Can you get four hours on them?

I don't know but I am sure that there's at least one
"no" there.

My best solution for you requires you to bend on the rack mounting.

Get a slightly old PC laptop on eBay with USB, ethernet
and at least a 5 gig drive.

Get a cheap USB interface.  $200.

I'm not a PC guy but if you know someone who knows PC laptops I'll bet
that you could get one that would record two channels of
audio for $300.  It doesn't really need anything else, not
much memory or a fast disk or anything.

Wipe the disk.  Install a clean operating system.  Install a single
music program of your choice and the drivers for the interface.

Voilą.  (Eudora's spell checker is VERY clever -- it marks voilą
as misspelled unless you put the acute accent on it...)

        /t



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