Mixing a live band at a bar

[Boongoon]

Hello,

I am new to all of this. I am the drummer in a band and have taken on the responsibility of recording our shows. I have an Alesis multimix16 USB2.0 and i am using Acoustica Mixcraft on a Dell Laptop.

The other night i had everything set up and we had 8 tracks. The problem was we were afraid that our PA could not handle all the input without clipping. We had to reduce all the levels except the vocals.

My question is this; is there a way to record all the channels with levels set accordingly through the mixer into the software but only have select channels actually come out of the PA?

Thanks,
Evan

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Boongoon

I am the drummer in a band and have taken on the responsibility of recording our shows.

My condolences.

Originally Posted by Boongoon

My question is this; is there a way to record all the channels with levels set accordingly through the mixer into the software but only have select channels actually come out of the PA?

It's next to impossible in most circumstances to create a single mix pattern that will work well both for the PA and for recording.

If you're not using the mixer's Aux send bus to feed stage monitors, you can use that to feed the PA, allowing you to use the aux send levels to mix the PA mix.

Otherwise I'd run the direct outs from your input channels either to a submixer or to a multitrack interface for your laptop.

G.

[oretez]

on the mic channels set gain with trim pot and fader all the way down
signal routed to computer not to main mix

alternatively you could assign alt 3/4 as you FOH mix continue to use faders on all the channels merely not route the channel you don't want in FOH to the alt 3/4 bus

[Boongoon]

I had the faders and gain all the way down and nothing routed to the computer from those channels.

[Boongoon]

As i said i am new to all of this, what does FOH mean?

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Boongoon

As i said i am new to all of this, what does FOH mean?

FOH= "Front Of House". It simply refers to the live mixing for the PA - as opposed to the recording mix. The needs of each are quite different.

G.