We initially looked at the discontinued Tascam X-48 (standalone hybrid hard disk workstation) but it only has 48 inputs. Then we looked at the Tascam DA-6400 (digital multitrack recorder/player) for the capture, as it has 64 inputs and removable SDD drives that could capture over 14 hours per drive at 48 kHz/24-bit. After talking with Eric Larsen and Jeff Laity at Tascam, we settled on the DA-6400 as our capture unit and needed to sort out our front end. The DA-6400 uses MADI, AES/EBU, or Dante for inputs. After talking with our resident Gear Geek/reviews editor, Andy Hong, we felt that Dante made the most sense as it used Cat6 Ethernet cabling, making interfacing affordable, easy to run, and space efficient. Our next call was with Matt Pliskin at Focusrite, who helped us sort out the details and options of using their RedNet system. The great thing about the RedNet gear for our application was that the digital I/O for each unit was Dante on a single Cat6 connector.
Focusrite ended up supplying us with six RedNet 4 units, their 8-channel mic pres, and one RedNet 2 unit which has 16 analog line inputs and outputs. By now we had our rig, but we were missing one last piece of the puzzle; a redundant backup of the recording. As this was live we only had one shot at capturing all the performances, and we wanted to make sure we had two copies running in case of a drive issue or anything of that nature. Matt at Focusrite suggested we run a DAW in parallel off the Dante network. I'm most comfortable using Pro Tools, but unless we had an HDX rig – which we didn't have the budget for – we could only do 32 inputs in Pro Tools. Matt Suggested we look into Reaper [Tape Op #80] using Dante Virtual Soundcard as the audio engine, as there is no limit on the track count.
It was three days prior to the festival when all the equipment was in front of me. I had never used Dante or Reaper, and I had a bit of work and learning to do! The first step was to set up my Dante network with Dante Controller a free software application that senses all the devices on a Dante network and lets you route inputs and outputs between devices.
