Mr.Grumpy

I'm 'engineering' a home recording project for a friend of mine. We're using an ART firetube interface and recording on Sonar 7, but our PC is kind of low-end by today's standards: a 2 GHz Celeron () with 512 MB of RAM. Even so, we haven't had any substantial trouble or issues. I started out the recording projects at 88.2 kHz sample rate (16 bits), mostly as a "stress test" to make sure it wouldn't overload the bandwidth of the harddrive.... Things are working well so far, but we have only recorded 4 tracks at a time. I'm starting to think that the 88.2 sample rate is overkill. I do have a large-diaphragm condenser mic (don't ask what kind ) and some other decent stuff, but it's prosumer level at best. No sound treatment in the room either. And I had to buy an outboard audio interface just to mix the 88.2 stuff at home - most soundcards don't support the 88.2 samplerate. Of course, it also makes the sound files TWICE as large, which takes up more room on the HD, takes longer to load or transfer, and I'm sure it's more work for plugins to process on mixdown. Please share your thoughts on whether I should keep recording at 88.2 kHz or go to 44.2/16 bit for future projects. These recordings are intended to be released on LP, if that makes a difference. Thanks in advance...

Sheeple = sheep + people. In other words, people that blindly follow others and don't think for themselves. In a way, mr. obnoxious sound engineer is right. You're not likely to see a Roland self-contained multitrack in a stand-alone studio. But that does not mean you can't get professional results with your Roland. Look at it this way, your Roland unit records at (at least) "CD quality" which in electronic-speak means 44.1 KHz sample rate @ 16-bit resolution. Modern digital recording is so clean that SIGNAL you feed to it (mics and preamps) matters much more than the device to record it. I wouldn't waste another ounce of energy worrying about mr. professional sound engineer's opinion of your equipment. It sounds like you are using the right tools for what you want to do. Having access to ProTools or any other "magic" hardware or software doesn't guarantee a professional recording by any means.