Ive only begun to get my toes wet with recording, MP3's , Audacity, Kristal, and probably soon a home recording setup. my question comes from the clutter of files on my computer screen. it appears that each piece of music I upload has three files with it. I need to know what I can do with these files. I need to clear my monitor of this horde of file icons. Plus, I think it is a good idea to have a storage or file backup plan.
what do you do?
I have a seperate directory for my music, and inside that I have a seperate subdirectory for each song. Inside those I have a seperate directory for the finished parts too, the main directory is where all the roughs, tests, and guitarpro tinkerings etc go. The main directory for each song gets a bit cluttered, but the subdirectory for the finished parts is the important one and that's always neat :)
Yah for Audacity at least, for each song there's the .aup file, the .aup backup file, and then the folder with all the components of the tracks. That folder can get pretty huge because it contains the actual stuff that's being recorded, broken up into pretty big chunks. You need all those to continue working on the song or to play it again - the mp3 is the only thing you really upload - but at some point you might consider getting an external firewire drive to keep all those files and folders in; something maybe along the lines of a 300-500 gb unit. That way you can also keep your internal drive clean and ready for more. I think a firewire drive might be fast enough to access the older songs directly (if stored there), but if not, and you want to redo something on an older piece, you can just drag the related files back to your desktop and run it from there.
Demoetc: Those files are raw data and so highly compressible - winzip squishes them almost as much as converting each part to an MP3 would, so you don't even need to go for a big external drive if you can live with a little zipping and unzipping.
Oh thanks! I didn't know that; I thought they were like wavs. Might still be good for Dogbite to get an external though - maybe 80-120 gb USB - just to backup.
It's a good idea to save "project folders" on a disc as back up just in case something happens. Project folders contain all the individual tracks so you can re-construct your project should something happen. This is not an MP3 or .wav file.
For normal everyday saving, I have all sorts of folders.
Just throw a Music folder in the C: drive and drop and drag them all in.
Oh thanks! I didn't know that; I thought they were like wavs. Might still be good for Dogbite to get an external though - maybe 80-120 gb USB - just to backup.
Yeah, external backups are always good :wink:
I use an external USB drive with Adobe Audition or Live Lite 4, and I have no problems with it not being fast enough. And this is also with my toneport running on a USB port as well. Assuming you have USB 2.0 on your computer, otherwise it might be too slow with 1.1. IMHO, you don't need to go to firewire.
--vink
"Life is either an adventure or nothing" -- Helen Keller
I have an older computer (also a PC) that is just sitting around. I can hook both computers together and drag from one screen to the next. I assume the flies could go there for storgae only. and or disc.
thanks for the replies.
