You are almost all correct. Vegas originally came as an audio only version, and a video version which was the complete deal.

Vegas is an excellent multi-track audio recorder. It is however, not a sequencer. It does not do MIDI or "soft" instruments. As Dion mentioned SONAR would be a good choice if you needed MIDI functions as well. I also use SONAR.

Good Luck. Let us know how it works out for you.

Will

Thanks guys.

I don't think we are looking for a sequencer or midi recording device for this application.

The intended use is to record a small band's live performance or a band's performance in the studio...

So I would guess we would be placing Mic's in front of amp speakers and on the drummer... unless we decided to go direct in from some low-level output on an amp or from an audio splitter/distribution unit... right?

Is this not the way it is done now days?

(As I said I've been out of the loop for a long time :-)

Thanks again for the help.

Yes, that's the basic idea. Recording magazine has a great website with tons of info and links to other sites with even more info on recording. One of the best places to go online is Harmony Central. Just type it into google and go learn what you need to ...

Have Fun ...

Will

I used a Presonus FP-10 firewire to record a performance, 8 tracks into a Celeron laptop using Vegas 8 back in 2008. I installed ASIO4ALL because at the time, there were reports of possible lag in the standard ASIO drivers. No hiccups at all with that setup.

I believe if I had two FP-10s I would connect one to the other one then route 16 tracks into the single firewire, though not sure if Vegas could handle that many from a single firewire input.

I used to and can still use an old Phonix 16 channel Firewire mixer. The mixer section was useless to me, as i was used to mixing within Vegas and preferred that. All I needed was the inputs and it had 8 XLR/TRS inputs with trim and 8 line TRS inputs. I never recorded more than 10 tracks at a time, but could have. If I plug headphones into the Phonix, there is no lag time. It somehow syncs everything up, when adding new tracks. ($379. when bought) It is a cheaply made mixer and don't know if they're for sale anymore, except used. But the inputs are super quiet and I get good recordings from it. After 6 years, I do have one XLR input channel that is problematic, but the rest seems to be good. I would record to a Dell latitude D630, dual-core laptop for remote recording. Just be sure to shut off extra junk, like the Internet search. I never see anybody raving about Phonix, so I wouldn't recommend the them unless you were super poor, but it works with Vegas, just fine. But almost any other brand is very expensive compared to the Phonix. If you have the money, it's probably worth investing in a more respectable, reliable brand. Firewire is the only way I'd advise multi-track audio recording.

I have used Vegas for multitrack mixing, occasionally, works pretty well, really, but since I purchased a license for Reaper (60 bucks) I've been using that almost exclusively, it is really an excellent program AND it has several of the features that I love about Vegas (mostly the mouse wheel zooming in and out). It has features that Sony Acid has, in that it can incorporate loops and alter the pitch and tempo, etc, if you use that sort of thing, as well as being just a complete audio package, very configurable with all the different hardware iterations out there. You can use it for free, it gives you a 10 second nag upon opening it, but after that it is fully functional. I bought the license, allows you to use it on multiple machines, Mac and PC. Really a good group of people and a huge user forum.

Certainly Reaper has taken a slice of the Vegas market over the years however Vegas can do one thing that it cannot. Vegas can play out sound and vision from a number of tracks while recording sound in sync.

That's a feature I've used a couple of times to do ADR with great success. Once you get your head around how to use busses and route audio you can create a very workable setup. I was easily able to get the headphone feed to the talent to have the original location sound, his mic and my 'control room mic' plus of course in my own 'control' room monitors I could hear him.

With Vegas you can also punch in recordings or just leave it to loop and makes each loop record as a take. I found that a great help for the talent as he didn't feel each take was a big drama so he just kept going until he felt he'd nailed it then we could go back and review all the takes and maybe decide one a few takes earlier was better.

Bob.

i do live recording with Vegas in my off-hours.

Each recording has 16 channels: 8 ADAT lightpiped to an RME Fireface (another 8) firewired to my laptop. Each session is between 3-5 hours and the red light stays on until the board is turned off at the end of the night. Songs are reviewed next day, Region/Markered, and the desired sections rendered as individual tracks which the band can then edit/mixdown.

I've started using Reaper... it's great so far, but I've only skimmed it. I'm comfortable using Vegas and it's never locked up when recording (...so far, don't wanna jinx anything) but if I had to switch for audio, Reaper looks like the one I'd go with.

I am another happy Reaper user.

I only use it for sound recordings.

What does Reaper offer for multi-track recording that Vegas Pro doesn't offer?

Just wondering.

thanks.

What does Reaper offer for multi-track recording that Vegas Pro doesn't offer? - Will_3

MIDI

Also, extensive support for loops (pitch and tempo etc)

If Vegas does everything you want and does it in a convenient way, then nothing.

The two programs have many options that differ, and it is up to you and your requirements as to which is better.

Does Vegas support ASIO drivers? My Zoom R16 requires it. In addition, Reaper is one of the few programs that allows me to change the sample rate.

[I]" Does Vegas support ASIO drivers?"[/I]

Yes, since the dawn of time.

Bob.

Prior to Sony's acquisition of Sonic Foundry's audio/video products, Vegas 1.0 was audio only, I don't recall if it was ver. 2 or 3 which first offered video as an option.
There's no reason why you can't use Vegas for music recording, except if you need the aforementioned MIDI capability.
IMO Vegas is more intuitive and faster to work with then either Audition, Sonar or Slo-Tools.
Reaper was loosely designed after Vegas by Jason and his team which brought us the WinAmp players.
I have no experience with your model sound card

1 - Yes
2 - Yes, moi.
3 - My audio recording is usually for CD or DVD, but track 24bit WAV
4 - Reaper was inspired by the simple straightforward intuitive layout and workflow of Vegas, but seems to have got 'pretty' and overly complex.
5 - Yes, I think. Possibly depends on the MOTU driver, if it can span multiple physical units in one instance - the PCI324/424 hosted devices can).

geoff

Interesting that in this thread there's been no mention of Acid Pro.

This is SCS's own multi track/MIDI/Loop audio program. It hasn't been updated for a while, but does most things pretty well.

For me its main shortcomings are that it still doesn't have some functions that Vegas has had for a while, including Elastique for stretching/shortening events and + and - , particularly with Ctrl, for minute pitch shifting.

Acid throws in a lot of stuff I don't need when recording pure audio - effectively 'cliutter' for me . But I use Acid for MIDI and loopy stuff. And it lacks some of the nice little event-alignment things V has.

geoff

Have to agree with Geoff here. When i'm recording pure audio (which is the only type of recording i ever do), i can't imagine any benefit of ACID over Vegas. Vegas does this job so well that there's no reason to look elsewhere.

I'm not thrilled as thrilled as I used to be with using Vegas for "big" audio projects. I haven't been able to get the audio performance of the old days from the newer versions. Not very pleased with ASIO or vst implementation either.

That said, I still have a XP system running on an older quad-core with Vegas 4, Layla audio cards and all DX plugins that I have never been able to max out. I still love using that system for music mixes and radio work. The documentary I finished last winter was mixed on that system. 51 tracks.

" I haven't been able to get the audio performance "[/i]

'Audio performance" in what way ? Track count ?

Do your VST plugs somehow not work right, and your ASIO not working, seem inefficient, or what ?

Just curious....

geoff

Probably because I used Vegas as an audio solution for years before I started using it for video, I was aware early on that as more video capabilities were added, the audio performance would suffer dramatically, i.e. max track counts, amount of plugins used in real time. This was much more apparent with the less powerful computers of the early and mid 2000's. Because so many of us have beefed up our systems with each update to maximize the video performance, it's not as obvious now.

If you have the ability through dual boot or whatever, try using an older version (pre 6) on a fast computer. To me the difference in audio performance is astounding. For example, even with VP10 I had no trouble doing a complex 12 track audio mix (lots of automation and heavy-lifting plugins such as Waves C-4 on every track) on an unrendered AVCHD timeline. Video of course couldn't maintain real time but audio would. (Only one of these audio tracks were coming from an AVCHD source - the remainder were V.O., music, ambience, SFX, etc.) Except for camera audio, all audio and video are always on separate, fast, non-system drives.

In VP11 I had problems with this. Some tracks would drop out, audio would stutter, etc. Rendering the video to an intermediate solved it, but showed me that it still is the case that new video enhancements are creating bottlenecks in audio performance that weren't there before.

I have never been happy with ASIO performance in Vegas (although Nuendo flies on my system). I see stuttering in audio playback, very slow drawing of waveforms during recording, and an inability to record more than a few tracks at a time. My input device is a Tascam DM-32 with 32 i/o via Firewire. My other audio software (Nuendo, Reason) loves it and chews it up.

On all my setups I'm using either Sound Mapper or Classic Wave Driver to get decent performance. And the only time I ever see an audio-induced crash/lockup is when I'm using VST plugins. If I have DX equivalents, I can use them with no problem.

With all that said, on the systems I video edit on, I haven't taken nearly the time to tweak audio performance (getting decent video performance wore me out) since I have an audio suite where I do mixing solely. I could probably get better audio performance than I currently do, but I can't imagine it will ever perform like V4 does on XP.