recording options

fraserhutch

fraserhutch

Flypaper for freaks
Hey guys, did a search, came up empty.

A band has requested that I record them live off of their board. Any suggestions as to equiptment? This would be an ongoing deal.

What would you use as a recorder?

Thanks,

fraserhutch
 
Ideally you would want a distribution box or splitter of some sort to get the signals (mics, etc) before they are processed by the board. This normally calls for isolation transformers for each channel. It can get very expensive quick. If not that then how many aux outs or buss outs does their board have? Keep in mind that any signal you get from the board will be processed (EQ, FX, etc) for the right live sound in that particular room. Might sound strange when recorded. Disclaimer: I haven't recorded our band live yet but have read up on it so don't take this as the voice of experience.

DD
 
If your asking what to record on you must be a little new to this so I say walk a little before you run. Get a pair of room mics and work them first, figure out what your doing to make them sound decent. Work the room figure out where the optimal placement is to capture a balanced image, ie cymbals too harsh and take over.
As you get a good handle on that, then start working in channels from the board. Straight out of the board sounds neat but there's alot of gear and such involved in making it work.
From my experience, if your playing a club with a nice big PA and the drums are all mic'd you might want to start with runing a line from the vocal and guitar track in case the original presence needs to be saved or reinforced. These "rock" sound techs are prone to making the kit sound fantastic and overpowering everything else onstage. they (the tech) think it makes them look good.
As far as what to record on it depends what you want to spend or get stuck with. It all depends how portable you gotta be. Now a days you can get a used ibook cheap, an m-audio 6ch firewire interface, a couple mics, a decent pair of headphones and your laughing. But do yourself a favour if your doing something like this, decide what kinda interface you want use and plan ahead, make sure everything is compatable and will work the way you plan to.

What you should tell us is what kinda of room are we talkin? A club, a club where the band plays every weekend or a jam room?
 
bileshake said:
If your asking what to record on you must be a little new to this so I say walk a little before you run. Get a pair of room mics and work them first, figure out what your doing to make them sound decent. Work the room figure out where the optimal placement is to capture a balanced image, ie cymbals too harsh and take over.
As you get a good handle on that, then start working in channels from the board. Straight out of the board sounds neat but there's alot of gear and such involved in making it work.
From my experience, if your playing a club with a nice big PA and the drums are all mic'd you might want to start with runing a line from the vocal and guitar track in case the original presence needs to be saved or reinforced. These "rock" sound techs are prone to making the kit sound fantastic and overpowering everything else onstage. they (the tech) think it makes them look good.
As far as what to record on it depends what you want to spend or get stuck with. It all depends how portable you gotta be. Now a days you can get a used ibook cheap, an m-audio 6ch firewire interface, a couple mics, a decent pair of headphones and your laughing. But do yourself a favour if your doing something like this, decide what kinda interface you want use and plan ahead, make sure everything is compatable and will work the way you plan to.

What you should tell us is what kinda of room are we talkin? A club, a club where the band plays every weekend or a jam room?
Click to expand...

Actually, I what am I am curious about is the specific RECORDER. Maybe I needed to be more specific, so here goes: what recording device do you guys recommend recording a live show to? ADAT? A laptop with an mbox or maudio? I don't generally do live sound, so I don't know what solutions exist.

I shoud add here that I am not doing the actual sound, just capturing the performance. There is a sound person.

Thanks in advance,

Fraser
 
I use a MOTU 24 I/O for live recording. i have a PC racked up and in a case. it's a little more bulky than a laptop, but i don't really mind, and 24 inputs on one interface is really handy.


I do see a pretty big problem with what you are trying to do. most live consoles have their direct out post EQ and Post fader. Any changes the soundman makes on the board will affect your recording. this is not good. If you're trying to do something that will be released to the public, you're going to have trouble.

the best case is to have a mic splitter, and be able to independantly control your input levels. otherwise you'll have to tell the soundman when you have too much/too little level, and this is going to be a problem for both the live sound and the recording.
 
Cave Dweller said:
I use a MOTU 24 I/O for live recording. i have a PC racked up and in a case. it's a little more bulky than a laptop, but i don't really mind, and 24 inputs on one interface is really handy.


I do see a pretty big problem with what you are trying to do. most live consoles have their direct out post EQ and Post fader. Any changes the soundman makes on the board will affect your recording. this is not good. If you're trying to do something that will be released to the public, you're going to have trouble.

the best case is to have a mic splitter, and be able to independantly control your input levels. otherwise you'll have to tell the soundman when you have too much/too little level, and this is going to be a problem for both the live sound and the recording.
Click to expand...


So you either tap off of the 1/4" Line in, or You can Half-insert a 1/4" jack in the TRS/Patch point to receive a PRE line out that comes directly off of the gain knob. Technically, if you used this technique with an extra mixer and a digital 8 track, you could have the second mixer feeding the 8 track, that way you could run some "open mics" to capture audience and room, and have a stereo drum mix, along with individual bass, guitar, and vocal tracks.

For the Thread Starter:​
There are tons of ways to do this, the real question is - what kind of recording are we talking about here?
Cassette deck recordings to see how the band sounded each night, or are they trying to record a live CD? Multi-track, or Live to Stereo?


Live to stereo, I would Definitely suggest an extra mixer (Mackie 1604, or a Crest rackmount, or a MixWiz 1602) with a few Compressors and Gates to clean up the drums a little, and some kind of effects unit....so that you could have a differnt mix than what the house is getting. Just because you're recording Live, doesn't mean you have to accept whatever kind of mix is needed for the house system.

Or you could just get a DAT machine and record directly off of the board's stereo output.

I'd go HD myself, but that is just me. I have a DAT machine and I hate the damn thing - I paid $1,600 for it, and I've used it probably a grand total of 5 hours. (It got used to make one CD, which the label freaking shelved after my brother evidently threatened the label owner in a drunken rage .:D )




Tim
 
the reason why i didn't mention using the inserts is because often times a FOH engineer in going to be using them. As a FOH tech i'd be pretty pissed if someone came in telling me i couldn't use any comps or gates because of a recording. I would be much more satisfied if someone came in and said "here's my mic splitter, can you patch it in?".

the big question, as Tim said, is what is the purpose of the recording? is it to see how the band is performing, or is it for release? if it's only for the band, then probably the board mix, with some room mics will probably be sufficient. If it's for public release you should really consider "going big or going home". live recordings can be really easy to do, or really easy to botch. a great band on a great night can create a fantastic recording, that will make a listener at home want to come see them. however, if it's not well done you'd might as well not do it, because it could easily hurt the band's reputation.
 
I have been getting reasonable results running 8 outs from the inserts to mu Yamaha AW4416. There are a limited number of hardwired channels (this is at a church, all vocals are wireless), so I have to use an onstage mixer for the drum mics and track them mono. There is an expansion board that would allow me to add another 8 tracks, but I can't afford it now. I used to used a subgroup for the backing vocals, but the soundman kept absentmindedly changing the fader or screwing it up in other ways. The insert points are out of his control. He doesnt use any insert effects.
 
Cave Dweller said:
I use a MOTU 24 I/O for live recording. i have a PC racked up and in a case. it's a little more bulky than a laptop, but i don't really mind, and 24 inputs on one interface is really handy.


I do see a pretty big problem with what you are trying to do. most live consoles have their direct out post EQ and Post fader. Any changes the soundman makes on the board will affect your recording. this is not good. If you're trying to do something that will be released to the public, you're going to have trouble.

the best case is to have a mic splitter, and be able to independantly control your input levels. otherwise you'll have to tell the soundman when you have too much/too little level, and this is going to be a problem for both the live sound and the recording.
Click to expand...


Hey Cave Dweller,

how do you like the MOTU 24 I/O?

That's the route I'm going to be going, and just wondered. It seems like the best method on the market for getting a large number of channels into a PC. I don't necessarily want to be stuck using MOTU's Mic Pre's, so I'd like the ability to use anything available....plus, it's hard to beat that price! :p


I agree with you about the Mic Splitter....but a lot of guys wouldn't want the hassle of going through that, and most people wouldn't want to kick out the money to buy a splitter.

I built a 16 channel splitter several years ago, and it was a big pain in the butt to make...my last big soldering job, actually, but there have been a few times when I was really glad to have it.

My entire front end is all rackmounted in an Odyssey rack, and I'm building a patching station to go in it, which will allow me to have extra sends and patch points on each channel.
I'm trying to work it so that I can wire my recorders inline, and be able to push a button on each channel to route my dynamics processors either before or after the recorders - that way I don't have to keep "repatching"... sort of like an active patch bay.

This all serves as both my lifve and recording rig. Then I have 2 other racks - one is all power amps (Carvins FET 1000's - blech! :rolleyes: Not bad really- my girlfriend bought them for me in 1994, so I can't complain too much. But I'd sure like to have some Crest CA9's and a CA18 :p ), and the recording rack has a pair of DA-38's, with a DA302 DAT machine, a 6-channel headphone, and a CD burner in it.


I like the convenience of "Plug and play".... I hate patching a ton of things in, so my entire system is "pre-wired", all I do is hook up a Snake to the FOH Rack and I've got 16 channels with Compressors and gates already patched in (Behringer 4X units, and a couple of dbx 166a's), and the effects are all wired to the submixes, which allows me to use the actual effects sends for either individual headphone mixes if I'm recording, or for 4 individual monitor mixes from the FOH position.

It took me months of planning before i actually plopped down the money for it, but it seems to work well for me....but I'm dying to get a Crest rackmount mixer....Jesus I hate that Mackie EQ....the EQ bell is just wide enough and deep enough to screw up a lot of frequencies at once. :D



Tim
 
Hi all,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to this.

I think what is wanted is to grab live recordings meant to be distributed via the band's website.

Other than that, I am open to suggestions. I wasn't thinking direct to stereo, I was actually thinking of recording each track seperately. However, Ihave never recorded live in this fashion, so I am looking for advice.

I'll need little time to digest what has been suggested here.

Thanks!
 
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