Recording Distortion- What's wrong?

[SN115]

I am trying to record directly from my Mackie CFX-20 mixer onto a cassette deck (also tried an MD player)..I'M using the Main outs to the recording unit....playing around with all kinds of mixes, recording levels, etc...but keep getting massive distortion.......Any thoughts?

Is a basic consumer cassette deck/MD player just not powerful enough to accept a signal from the mixer?

I even tried disconnecting speakers in case this output was bleeding through the microphones.....?Still no luck

All I have set up for now is vocal, drum machine, guitar, bass....the mix sounds good out of the mains, but it just wont record clearly at all?

[Blue Bear Sound]

Well, the CFX20 puts out a pro-level, +4dbu signal, whereas your poor little cassette deck is expecting a nice and low -10 line-level signal (or less!). You need to step down the mixer's output before hitting the cassette decks input. You could try an Ebtech LLS (line-level shifter) to make the conversion. Or maybe the board already has a -10 output somewhere to interface with semi-pro and consumer gear....

Bruce

[SN115]

Originally posted by Blue Bear Sound
Well, the CFX20 puts out a pro-level, +4dbu signal, whereas your poor little cassette deck is expecting a nice and low -10 line-level signal (or less!). You need to step down the mixer's output before hitting the cassette decks input. You could try an Ebtech LLS (line-level shifter) to make the conversion. Or maybe the board already has a -10 output somewhere to interface with semi-pro and consumer gear....

Bruce....

Thx for confirming my suspicions on this.....I will go out and purchase the right recording machine to match the mixer.....

I have been reading several "old" articles on the difficulties of getting a good recordings out of a live mix's.....One article suggests adding additional guitar and bass tracks on top of the overall mix....

Are there some general tricks of the trade to best multitrack record in the live setting?

[Blue Bear Sound]

Hmmm... Frank Zappa used to do it all the time (turning out production songs using one or more live tracks... I wish I could advise, but it's not something I've had much experience with (I'm not a live sound tech...) Someone else better field this one... (To bad Ed's - sonusman - not posting for the time being, this would be right up his alley!)

Bruce

[Shailat]

I to am no expert on live recordings but I know quite a few people that overdub the vocals due to massive leakage in a live show.

[TeyshaBlue]

Pretty regular practice. Thin Lizzy did this quite a bit and recalling a conversation I had with Marty McCann several years ago, I am a little suspicious of some of the Doobies live cuts from years ago.