Does anyone have any "cheap" suggestions of an external mic to use for really loud sources so I can avoid this on future occasions?
I don't know how cheap this would be but I have a cheap Sony DVD92 Handicam. 400 bucks new but that's been many years ago. Look on ebay.The audio I get from this camera is amazing. We were playing a show outside at a bike rally and really had it cranked up. My somewhat tipsy, wife had the camera within 1 foot of out mains cranking at arounds 1700 to 2000 watts and it came out crystal clear, great bass response, mids, highs across the board.
Since I can only get 15 minutes to a disk, I had my brother bring his Sony HDD1 hi Def Hard drive cam to our show last weekend. Sitting about 30ft away from the stage and we had our lecvels pulled way down because of the room acoustics. Keep in mind his camera is Dobly 7.1 SS and cost him a whopping 1600 buck. It all came out sounding like crap. It's pretty good until the bass comes in and then it goes to hell.
Evidently my cheap little cam has some built in compression to keep sound levels down. We practice in a room that's 16 x 28 and it's loud in there. We play at local show levels when we practice. I can take my camera in there, hook it into my computer mixing program and record just the audio and it comes out great. A little EQing and it's good to go.
It's easy to bring a weak signal up. Pulling the distortion out so it usable. It can probably be done at some high end recording studio but "IF" they can do it, it'll cost you. Count on that.
My video from the last show is unusable because of the audio, so we're gonna record new tracks for the songs and replace the distorted tracks on the video.
Jerry
Faded Ember
