Hard Disk Recording, Reliability and cost to customer Options

[Anthony]

I am considering, in the future, changing from digital tape recording(DA-88) to digital hard disk recording(Mackie HDR24, Ensoniq Paris, or ProTools).With these products being new, I am curious if anyone has worked with any of them as the core system in a 24 or 32 track professional environment. The main questions of reliability are in the hard drives (losses from a crash at start up or shut down) and the cost of back up. Other issues are in just overallperformance and efficiency.

Also, how do customers who used to buy video cartridges for adats and da88s feel about the cost of hard drives and back-up hard drives that come with a hard disk system? any insight on this?

[Francois Déchery]

Assuming, that the PT is well installed, and that there aren't successive ingeneers/assistants changing the systeme setting and adding tons of cracked plugs, protools is really reliable in professional environment.

It should never crach, and if so, you often even keep the latest recorded take. You only have to put it back on the playlist, and continue to work.

[WSpeckmann]

Hello Anthony,

as Francois already said ProTools works very reliable if properly installed.
Mackie HDR seems to work fine - but it's just a recorder w. basic editing features unless you add a d8b desk - which can cause a lot of trouble.
I tried the (early) Paris and didn't like it at all.
And you gotta have a good backup concept - lots of extra hard disks plus streamer p l u s a lot of time.

Kind regards
Walter

[stebhend]

Dear Walter, what do you mean with problems with a D8b from Mackie?

[WSpeckmann]

Hi stebhend,

the d8b desk is still not quite reliable.(It sounds great, though).
The percentage of faulty desks and problems within the first months (this is my personal experience), the 'suck factor' is beyond 80% !!!
We sold a lot of 02R's, quite some d8b's, some tascam 4000's, ramsa da-7's, roland 7200's ...
only o n e 02R came back - (the owner dropped an ashtray on the jog wheel ...) there was a problem with one of the few tascam's, but nearly every d8b causes some trouble sooner or later.

Kind regards
Walter