Equipment for Live Recording

[dmbpettit]

I couldn't find a good place for this thread so I think I will put it here.

My friend and where thinking about getting some equipment to do some live recordings of local bands when they play at small clubs and bars. Obviously we would need a laptop and I'm already set interms of software. But kind of mics and processors would we need to get a good live recording?

Unless you guess have a better idea, I was thinking of recording directly from the house mixer and blend that with microphones used to catch the sound in the room.

 

[hasbeen]

Josephson C42MP are great for catching live performances from the mix position.

 

[ssscientist]

Obviously we would need a laptop

I would need to think long and hard before committing myself to any project that involved subjecting a laptop to a drunken smokey environment. Night after night. Computers are quite fragile, and even the smallest bump can wreak havoc with a hard drive in full record mode.

If you're going to do it anyway you will need a sound card with at least four inputs - two from the board and two from the mics - because it will be impossible to get anything even close to a balance between the mics and the board on the fly.

The Josephson mics suggested would be a good choice, but there are many others in the same price bracket that would do just as good a job.

 

[Bandman]

How about

How clean does the recording need to be? would it be more cost effective to go with a portable Cd burner like the Marantz CDR300? or even a cheaper minidisk recorder. Then you could take these recordings and transfer them onto a computer. The quality of the recording wouldn't be as good as going directly into the computer. But you wouldn't have to buy a new computer quite so often.....