#13

Man, this would be PERFECT if it was stereo. I just spent 20 mins looking at demos and nearly pulling a quick trigger on it. Thanks!

Then I realized I pretty much have this same functionality with a Tascam handheld field recorder. Less immediate than an always-on, footpedal-operated one like the Riff Recorder, but stereo and smart card-based. Just put it in my signal path between main out and recorder. Always a pretty good feeling to realize you have the gear you need already in the home.

Thanks for the suggestion with Riff Recorder. Still liking it immensely, might end up getting one.

5 Likes
Norns: ideas
#14

I would be super into this.

I’ve posted about something like this before: always on, a big massive loop, that your can choose to save parts of when you want. Nothing like this seems to exist.

#15

I’ve been discussing this lately as a device prospect. Would a lot of people be interested im such a device?

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#16

Why not just use a DAW? Typically when I’m working I just leave a recorder running on my master channel in case anything good happens.

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#17

Not a bad idea, but curious about how much disc space that takes up. Uncompressed would be 600MG an hour? (or is it MP3, Mono?)

#18

It’d be the same as any other device discussed here, but you’d have many gigs available. Delete if nothing interesting happened that day, or bounce to a compressed file to save space if you’re not sure.

1 Like
#19

Sure, I’m aware of the math, hard disk space is the trickiest thing for me, recording-wise. I prefer use a dedicated disk recorder, personally. But I don’t DAW at all, really, so was mostly curious if DAW recording compressed size in any way. (lots of laptops are now SSD and the HD is much less robust in terms of available space) - pardon the tangent.

#20

The 1010 Music Blue Box is a eurorack mixer/FX unit, but it also has a record feature that just records to the micro sd card.

It’s not a DAW per se, but you can record 6 stereo or 12 mono channels and can apply insert and master effects like you would in a DAW mixer. Oh, and it’s designed for modular so there is no need to worry about line level signals distorting.

#21

I don’t have my DAW set up to compress recordings, but it can do so and I think you could set up preferences in a way to have a full time recorder running at lower quality rates if you wanted. I just keep a pretty close watch on how much space my recorded junk is taking up. If I record a long session I’ll try and listen through the whole thing within a few weeks to salvage whatever’s usable and delete the rest. And then a couple times a year I’ll go through all the build up and get rid of anything I know I won’t use. Most of the time I just delete the entire session after it’s over because nothing interesting happened, but it’s a good habit to keep the recorder going just in case.

I don’t have a crazy storage set up either, just a 1TB HDD and I’d say between 100-300 GB is regularly filled with DAW recordings.

2 Likes
#22

Well the military-industrial complex has produced this, PRISM being one of the most well known products and Facebook another. The problem is that none of us have access to the 1/4 out jack, and we don’t know who does.</tinfoil>

While there is a lesson for all us about the dangers of GAS spiraling seriously out of hands, it will eventually be a fantastic sample archive for future synthheads, soundscape sculptors and people working with found sound. Let’s celebrate it :slight_smile: Imagine the folks with access to these archival processes, I am absolutely sure they are also doing creative work in there for their own fun and amusement (human nature, we here know it).

6 Likes
#23

Might be overkill or not what you had in mind, but I saw this did what you wanted: 2 hours recording

#24

I’d buy this if it existed:

The Black Box (Or, the Hermbot box)

  • Stereo In - put it at the output of your mixer or end of signal chain
  • Stereo Out - passthrough
  • Circular or Ring buffer with four hours of storage
  • No controls - when it’s powered on, the FIFO buffer is constantly cycling or recording in some increment (five minutes)?
  • :+1: Something good happens? At the end of your session pull the card and save the buffer somewhere
  • :-1: Nothing noteworthy happens? Got distracted by the cat or just faffed about for a while? No actions needed. The ring buffer just gets overwritten the next time you’re playing

I feel like this could probably be accomplished with a Raspberry Pi. I’ve thought about tinkering with such a concept, but life doesn’t afford me much tinkering time at the moment unfortunately. (Arduino probably makes more sense, but I’m not aware of a quality stereo in/out shield for that platform.)

4 Likes
#25

This is is a bit offtopic, a literal take on doing audio recording in the background. There is a Gibson Memory Cable, it’s a 1/4 (mono) cable with integrated audio recorder: http://es.gibson.com/Memory-Cable.aspx .

Personally I prefer a regular audio recorder for that purpose. My exact device is a Zoom H1n, which I like because it’s very portable and relatively cheap. Note, this one doesn’t have 1/4 inputs and outputs.

#26
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#27

I agree that a device like this would be amazing! I think the ability to hit a button to “mark” a part of the recording when things go well is essential.

I have been neglecting my Norns for the last few months but I am wonder how easy it is to plug in a cheap external hard drive and record directly to the hard drive with “marking” functionality.

3 Likes
#28

Does an “always recording” device exist?

my very first thought in response to this question was… :sweat_smile:
…the brain of a newborn baby :see_no_evil:
(trick will be to get it to recognize OSC from your grid controller :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)

#29

I was thinking about this – there generally isn’t a way to “mark” an audio file that I know of, but there could have an accompanying same-named txt file with timestamps…? Then you could have at least some reference when/if you import it.

I think the hardest thing from there is that the loop is continuous, so we’d need a way to use timestamps/markers that account for a shifting timebase? Maybe SMPTE timecode…?

#30

There are ways to mark an audio file! The Morphagene uses these Cues in their reels to demarcate different chunks of audio. They exist and are generally underutilized.

You can check out the Morphagene manual for more, wav files can definitely be marked.

3 Likes
#31

20 chars of total gamechanger.

1 Like
#32

Recording to a ring buffer and a way to dump to external storage would be handy and I’ve thought about it often. It also turns out that storage is very cheap so if you don’t mind some work every now and again you can just record constantly to a larger piece of storage.

I’m not sure if all the zoom recorders do this but the H6 (and I think H5) can mark spots in audio files that get recorded (it’s a text file in the same directory). Put a 128Gb card in and you have about 400 hours of storage. It won’t let the files go over 4Gb each (iirc) meaning you’d have multiple files rather than one (inconveniently large) 128Gb one.

Assuming it records 24/7 that’s over 2 weeks of audio, so once every 2 weeks (if it’s recording a mere 4 hours a day you have 3 months worth) you have to clear the card and save anything you marked. This isn’t ideal, but as it’s quite infrequent it’s not too bad. You could also likely script it meaning no real “thought”, just plug it in, have it grab your snippets, then clear.

1 Like