Alesis HD24 - Still a decent option?

[winky dinglehoffer]

As far as hard drive compatibility with the HD24: There is a SATA drive caddy (as opposed to the original IDE) that opens up hard drive options a great deal. A quick internet search showed that some people have had drive compatibility issues with these, but I personally haven't.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Great bands sound great on playback.

This neatly sums up everything I have learned in 20+ years of making records!

[emrr]

As far as hard drive compatibility with the HD24: There is a SATA drive caddy (as opposed to the original IDE) that opens up hard drive options a great deal. A quick internet search showed that some people have had drive compatibility issues with these, but I personally haven't.

Cool, good to know.

[New Orleans Steve]

I found this thread searching for options to replace or supplement my Alesis HD24.

I am thinking about the UTrack 24 as a real time back up and usb interface for transfers.

Currently, we are using HD 24 tools and a usb hack for the transfers. Good Stuff!

https://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/hd24tools/

[kslight]

I fired up my previously mentioned rig just a couple weeks ago on some sessions. My business partners vintage PT7 HD3 rig had been dismantled and discombobulated for some reason (after I had carefully reinstalled it just a few months ago too!) and was...not complete or able to boot up. Luckily I had brought my laptop, HD24XR, and m Audio lightbridge with me as a fail safe (studio is 5 hours from my house so i try to come prepared) and this we could spend 4 days in the studio as planned. In this instance I just used it as converters, and record into pro tools.

I’ve thought about ditching the HD24XR many times but it’s also paid for itself on several occasions and is worth having around for cheap insurance.

[alexdingley]

As far as hard drive compatibility with the HD24: There is a SATA drive caddy (as opposed to the original IDE) that opens up hard drive options a great deal. A quick internet search showed that some people have had drive compatibility issues with these, but I personally haven't.

Found [url"http://community.alesis.com/alesis/topi ... mpatibilty"]This Thread[/url] over on the Alesis form, in which people are going round and round about the specific SATA drives that work well / don't work and how those SATA caddy things are supposed to make your life easier. I'd also recommend looking into the newer SCSI2SD systems — they were designed to fake-out samplers so that you could have an SD card masquerade as a SCSI drive in your EMU / Kurzweil Sampler, etc... but they also make a PATA compatible one... and for remote recording, I'd want to avoid moving parts if possible... so swapping to something that has an SSD or Memory Card system would be pretty great. Not sure if an SD card is gonna have the throughput to push 16-24 tracks live, but it's possible.

Also to the OP — I record a lot of stand-up comedy and am starting to get into live podcasts too... I'd have no qualms about using an HD24 for this — seems like a solid bet (if you can ensure you've got a reliable drive solution going on. Until then, I'm just hauling out my Macbook Pro w/ Focusrite Claret 8 i/o for most of the gigs I do. If I needed to do more than 8 ins... I'd tack on my Presonus D8 for the extra ins.

Would love to bump heads some day on best-practices for comedy album recordings — I've been doing them a while for the local Philadelphia comedy scene, and am about to finally tackle my first Comedy album for a bigger name act.