Alesis iO Mix Reference Manual - Page 49

Getting In Deeper: Recording 8 3. Archiving: If you're capturing a special recording that may have some historical value in the future, it makes sense to capture it with the highest level of technical accuracy. Alesis has designed your IO14/26 to sound excellent at all sample rates. Decide for yourself if the benefits and tradeoffs are worth it for a particular session. The Downsides of High Definition Recording 1. Disk Usage - Recording at high sample rates consumes hard disk space much more quickly than standard rates. The following table describes sampling rate vs. disk usage for a 60-second snippet of monophonic (1 track) audio: Length 60 Seconds 60 Seconds 60 Seconds 60 Seconds 60 Seconds 60 Seconds Bit Depth 24 bit 24 bit 24 bit 24 bit 24 bit 24 bit Sampling Rate 44.1k 48k 88.2k 96k 176.4k 192k Disk Usage 7.9 MB 8.6 MB 15.9 MB 17.3 MB 31.8 MB 34.6 MB You can see how this may become a problem on large musical projects. For example, whereas a 5-minute song with 16 channels of 24-bit audio would require up to 635MB to record at 44.1k, the same song would need approximately 2.54 gigabytes of storage if you're recording at 176.4k! We recommend that you take a look at your available hard disk resources when deciding which sampling rate to use. You can use the following formula to estimate the total disk space required for a song: Song length (in seconds) X Number of Channels X Sampling Rate X 3 So... Our hypothetical 5-minute song would be calculated in the following way: 300 sec x 16 channels x 44,100 x 3 = 635,040,000 byes (about 635 MB) That same song recorded at 176.4k would be: 300 sec x 16 channels x 176,400 x 3 = 2,540,160,000 bytes (or 2.54 GB) Please note: At quad sample rates (176.4k and 192k), only inputs 1-4 of the IO|26 are operational. 47