Vegas for *Real-Time* multitrack audio recording & mixdown?

[Wayne Grauel]

Multiple incoming signals ( like more than two tracks of audio )

Nope.. not to the best of my knowledge.. unless someone knows of a hardware solution ( capture card) that will interface.

I would take this to the pro audio forum if i were you,.

vegas is great with audio.. but its not a multi track recorder to the best of my knowledge.

Youre gonna need some hardware ( and a lot more money) to do what you want unless i totally mis-read your post. So.. unless you are talking about 2 channels of audio ( at a time).. you are going to need some more cash my friend!…

if two channels ( at a time ) will work.. then vegas and sound forge together will do everything you want to do…
sound forge is good for tweaking audio..compression, master effect bundle.. etc but sound forge will not multi track.. so you would open the track in question right from vegas to create a copy in soundforge.. work on it and it puts it right back there for you (keeping your original track untouched)

you can have as many audio tracks as you want.. its just a matter of how many you can record at once!

This ain’t a live mixer!…. other than that.. its hard to beat.

[Adam Rose esq.]

am sure I’ve read of peeps recording MANY tracks at once in Vegas, live……..

will dig around, but prob someone with the experience will beat me to it

🙂

[Danny Hays]

Vegas can record many tracks at once. I do what your saying with Cakewalk Sonar and a Presonus firepod. Using the ASIO drivers, I can set the latency as low as 2 miliseconds but the more tracks you do live the more processing it takes and you will eventually have to raise the latency to keep it from glitching, drop outs ect. I’m only using two live chanels but I use alot of pluggins in each track and a compressor and reverb in the master channel. If you can get away with just a few precessor frendly effects, I could use mare channels. I have never used Vegas in this way but I’ll look into it when I get home and post my findings for you. FYI, 2 miliseconds is what some of the new digital consoles have and is almost un-noticable. there are some “Real time” audio interfaces that have effects but your limited to the hardware based effects in the interface.FYI, if your looking to mix a full band or more than 4 channels with effects live then you will probably need a hardware based DSP card. Hope this helps, Danny Hays

[Danny Hays]

OK, I have tested Vegas Pro 8 with a Presonus Firepod. Vegas by default puts a gate, EQ and compressor on every audio channel. I armed 8 tracks, deleted all effects from the 8 tracks and got the latency at 3ms without glitching. I added a Sony compressor to all 8 channels and had to set the latency to 5ms to get clean audio. So you can see where this is going. I tested this on a HP zd8000 3.4 dual core with the wifi disabled. The more tracks you monitor live, effects you add, the speed of your computer and the interface and drivers all have a bearing on the performance you recieve.
By the way, I have searched for other people using a computer for live processing and your the second person I’ve found trying this. It’s about time. I’d love to see how someone does with a 8 core machine and a good interface. Hope this helps, Danny Hays

[Tom Burgess]

Danny ==

Thanks a LOT for the details, and especially for RUNNING A TEST to help me figure this out. I really appreciate it.

I was hoping Vegas’ multi-track capabilities would work for me (and save me $$$). But based on your test results, I think I may have to just save up for RML SAWStudio. I don’t need to record a band. I’m looking to record one, two or three sources simultaneously – most of the time. But I do expect pretty heavy track usage when mixing down.

To get full real-time use out of SAWStudio, I’d have to run it through an RME Hammerfall DSP card (HDSP 9632 is 32 channels, 24 bit, 192 kHz) and a Behringer ADA8000 AD/DA converter for eight mic preamps.

As far as I can tell:
Mic preamp + Hammerfall Card + SAWStudio = Basic Project STUDIO

Based on your comments, I visited the Cakewalk site and tried to get familiar with SONAR 8. Man, I really need to learn more about what’s available… Gotta be a less expensive way to do high-quality multi-track recording and combine it with some MIDI content.

Thanks, Danny.

[Davd Keator]

For all you sound guys out there. I have noticed that Sony Vegas Pro renders audio much slower than a stand alone audio program like Adobe Sound Booth. I just scrub, compress, EQ my videos and drop it back onto the time line.

My question is: Does Sony Vegas Pro utilize a sound card for it’s DSP? I have always used the built in Audio card from the mother board. I’d love anything thats faster.

I just got a USB Audio Presonus box, nada on speed increase….

Thanks,
Hope you audio guys are still around…