Rob,
Had to join to debunk that theory. Computer hard drives are plenty fast enough for basic audio tracking. Audio bit rates are far lower than video bit rates and computers nowadays don’t have any trouble transferring DV footage in real time.
To explain… Most USB mics have built in A/D converters running at 16 bit 44.1KHz audio. This calculates as 16*44100= 705600 bits per second or 689.0625 Kbps per channel. (1024 bits per Kilobit)
I have no trouble tracking multi channel audio into my two year old laptop to record our Sunday services with each channel at 24 bit 48KHz. At that rate, I can comfortably track 10-12 channels (haven’t actually needed to try more than that yet). That is approximately 1.1 Mbps per channel.
BTW, you may want to note that these figures are all Mbps and not MBps. To get the MegaByte per second rate, divide each Megabit rate by 8. (eight bits make one Byte )
Hope this helps clear up some confusion about digital audio.
Thanks,
Jeff Foster
Technical Director
Northside Baptist Church
Carrollton, Texas
http://www.nsbcc.org
