Honest Live Sound Reproduction

[bryanzera]

This is a little off topic, but I bet I can get the best answer here.

I need a recording to prove to my band that we're WAY too loud and poorly mixed in a certain live situation that we play currently. I keep trying to tell my bandmates that we're so loud that the musicality of what we're playing is getting lost, but they disagree.

I was thinking a stereo pair of condensers X-Y'd up would be the way to go. I have ECM8000s but I could beg/borrow/steal a pair of other mics if they would get the job done.

As far as the loudness, what could I do outside of rending a decibel meter to prove the loudness factor? Maybe just convincing them that we're poorly mixed would be enough.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Good help will recieve brownies

 

[mshilarious]

This is a little off topic, but I bet I can get the best answer here.

I need a recording to prove to my band that we're WAY too loud and poorly mixed in a certain live situation that we play currently. I keep trying to tell my bandmates that we're so loud that the musicality of what we're playing is getting lost, but they disagree.

I was thinking a stereo pair of condensers X-Y'd up would be the way to go. I have ECM8000s but I could beg/borrow/steal a pair of other mics if they would get the job done.

As far as the loudness, what could I do outside of rending a decibel meter to prove the loudness factor? Maybe just convincing them that we're poorly mixed would be enough.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Good help will recieve brownies

Who is doing the mixing? Hire a neutral pro to critique the sound. I dunno what else will do. If you make a tape with an XY pair they can claim it was a bad recording. If you make a board tape, and it's bad, well then you might have bad mixing, or you might have brilliant mixing that balances the band & FOH sound but sounds bad on tape (no bass, drums, etc). But a good board tape doesn't mean the FOH sounds good.

If the stage volume is too loud, that's a different issue. It means you need to find a new band, because they don't even recognize the problem, and probably can't learn differently in any reasonable amount of time.

 

[lpdeluxe]

I used to carry a Radio Shack SPL meter with me to rehearsals with one group to "prove" we were too loud.


...instead, it turned into a contest to see how far up they could peg the meter.

The trouble with recording is that so many bad things can happen that don't depend on the sound level.

 

[bryanzera]

Hire a neutral pro to critique the sound. I dunno what else will do.

You know what? I can't believe I was so blind that I didn't see that. Sometimes the most brilliant advice is the most simple. Gracias.