Live Recording??

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Capt Hair

Jeff
I have a few of my friends in bands mention to me they would be interested in getting some live demos done.

In most of the venues around my area, everything is mic'd up, drums, amps, and vocals and then run to a in house mixing board, then outed to the PA system and the monitors on stage.

Now my question is. Is there some way to run a line out of the mixing board to my laptop or into another interface and then into my computer? So I would then be able to mix and edit the tracks in my DAW?

Really feel like I might be over thinking this and it's just simply connecting the board to my computer via a USB/firewire, if compatible, but I'll take some other people's thoughts to make sure.
 
Are you able to have a 16 channel interface at the shows?

I would just break out the Zoom H4n and put up a few room mics and be done with it.
For it is what it is a live recording.
I've done many a live show this way and they sound real good!
If you want and most important if the house sound guy will let you (space is usually at a premium) take an AUX stereo feed into the zoom as well then you can have fun back at the shop mixing away.
 
Technically, it is easily achievable.

1 You can simply take a line out from the mixing desk and plug it into a line-in on a laptop. A better result is possible if you take the line from the desk into an interface, then into your laptop.

2 Some mixing desks have a USB out. This is easy as well: USB out of the desk to a USB slot on your lap top.

3 More complicated methods involve taking the individual channels from the desk and recording them separately onto your laptop. Again there are a number of ways of doing this. You can take a cable from each channel's 'direct out' and feed that to a multichannel interface. Or some desks have firewire which will give you all channels via a firewire cable.

So technically it can be done. Will it sound any good?

Well . . . probably not.

Here are the reasons.

1 Whoever is doing the mixing is doing so for the live, not recorded, sound. This consists of whatever is happening on stage with instruments and their amps plus whatever adjustments he is making on the desk. In addition he is taking the influences of the room into account. If there is, for example, a very loud drummer, then the kit will most likely be under-represented in the mix.

2 As the night progresses, the person mixing will be making adjustments on the fly (for example, to cope with someone having shifted a mike that results in feedback). These may be momentary changes in level that, in a live situation, go unnoticed. But they will be noticeable on a recording.

3 A mix straight from the desk misses a lot of the natural room ambience.

There are ways of dealing with all of these problems (for example, you could put up an extra pair of mikes to capture room ambience). However, to get a good quality recording under these circumstances requires considerable skill.

But . . . for quick demos, any or all of these options may be ok.
 
Right as always Gecko zzed!
Don't get fooled into believing that if you take a direct out of every channel of the live mix console that this will produce a great recording.
 
Many bigger/pro bands these days do take the direct outs from the board and record them - along with a couple of room mics for ambiance. Others take the PA feed (with or without some ambiance mics). Either way the whole thing has to be remixed. Find out what the bands want!
 
I have a few of my friends in bands mention to me they would be interested in getting some live demos done.

In most of the venues around my area, everything is mic'd up, drums, amps, and vocals and then run to a in house mixing board, then outed to the PA system and the monitors on stage.

Now my question is. Is there some way to run a line out of the mixing board to my laptop or into another interface and then into my computer? So I would then be able to mix and edit the tracks in my DAW?

Really feel like I might be over thinking this and it's just simply connecting the board to my computer via a USB/firewire, if compatible, but I'll take some other people's thoughts to make sure.

The JoeCo Black Box was designed to do this.

Plug in to the sends and returns of the mixer and mix in your DAW.

images
 
If you have a digital mixer like the Presonus 24.4.2 PreSonus
,you can just plug in a usb and it sets itself up in your laptop channel per channel for recording. It's pretty neat and easy.
 
In increasing order of complexity:

A. Record a stereo mic in the room. No need to interface with any other gear. May be good if the live mix is good and the room sounds good. Often too much room sound in the recording.

B. Record the mixing board output. Cleaner sound, but in smaller venues suffers from inverse stage volume syndrome (as gecko described). The audience may sound unnatural.

C. Record four tracks, two from the board and two from a stereo mic. Pretty versatile as long as the mix is good in the room and nobody kicks your mic stand or tries to use it to talk over the PA or stands under it and sings along the whole time.

D. Record the whole thing as separate tracks, including audience mics. This is the ultimate in having options for mixdown. It's also the ultimate in time and disk space consumption.
 
Thanks for the input guys, appreciate it.

Ok, this is where I'm at now, so I found out exactly what board the venue is using, its a behringer x2442usb mixer. I didn't have a chance to actually talk to the sound guy, wasn't there at the time. So IDEALY I should be able to just run a usb out from the mixer straight into my laptop and then into my DAW, setup individual tracks in the DAW and then hit record???

I realize these aren't going to be amazing or anything, I just want to get the best sound I can with what I have to work with. As awesome as the Black box would be, i don't have $2500 to dish out on it lol.
 
So IDEALY I should be able to just run a usb out from the mixer straight into my laptop and then into my DAW, setup individual tracks in the DAW and then hit record???

Yes, that would be ideal, but that mixer only puts out a stereo mix on the USB.
 
Since this will be your first foray into the world of live demos, there are two rules to remember:

1. Keep it simple.

2. Refer to Rule #1.

I'll add my "yessir" to all of the suggestions so far, especially GZ who nailed it. Here's how I would approach the task.


I'd plan on recording perhaps three tracks. The first should be either a utility out from the FOH board carrying the mains signal, or preferably pull signal from an unused aux send and ask the sound engineer to give you some signal from every channel into that aux. This will not be accurate or "reliable" sound, but it will carry detail that may be useful to you later.

The second track should incorporate a large diaphragm condenser mic set fairly close to the band but in front enough to pick up the main cabs as well as stage signal.

The third track should be set up as the second, except pointed to the audience. This will sound much like the second mic's signal but you will get more of the crowd noise, which you really want to have in a live recording.

Watch your levels as they can easily get too hot, but otherwise set and forget.

One other thing - sound travels at about a thousand feet per second. That means if your mic is 30 feet from the source, you will be tracking with a 30 millisecond delay. That can have quite an effect on the recording; it will show up as unwanted reverb, slapback or other delay, or muddy mid range signals and poor articulation. The effect will sound exaggerated if you try to mix the signal with anything from the FOH board, as the direct line will have no delay at all. Try to place your mics reasonably close to the source.

Just go for it and experiment. You can capture some great moments and all kinds of energy this way.
 
I've gotten many a good recording from a Zoom H4 on a tripod on top of my effect rack case, at the FOH, just using the the stereo mics on the Zoom.
It also gives the guys in the band an idea of what my mixes sound like.

Here's a couple examples of what they sound like, from 2 different locations, last weekend.
Just added some light comperssion and a low pass filter afterwards:

In a casino ballroom:
She Said She Said

In a hotel convention hall:
Paperback Writer
 
One other thing - sound travels at about a thousand feet per second. That means if your mic is 30 feet from the source, you will be tracking with a 30 millisecond delay. That can have quite an effect on the recording; it will show up as unwanted reverb, slapback or other delay, or muddy mid range signals and poor articulation. The effect will sound exaggerated if you try to mix the signal with anything from the FOH board, as the direct line will have no delay at all. Try to place your mics reasonably close to the source.

Or record the FOH mix on one track and the mic(s) to a different track, then in a DAW slip the FOH track later in the time line to match. My favorite balance of simple and versatile is recording 4 tracks, two from the board and two from a stereo mic on a stand in from of the board.
 
I'd go with a stereo pair of mics, and forego the board mix. I've never got a good mix off of a board. Useful for supplementing the mics, but sterile and strange sounding on their own.
 
I've received spectacular results with taking my Tascam 564 to gigs, and runnin' the stereo outs of the sound board to 2 channels on the 564, and 2 condensers in the air close to the mids & subs on the other 2 tracks. (564 only records 4 tracks simultaneously)
Blending / Mixing what I got straight from the board, and the condensers...
Then mixdown on my Alesis Masterlink from the digital output on the back of the 564.
My 564 NEVER let me down on a "live" recording yet.
That's just my 2 cents.
 
Zoom R24.

8 tracks. Straight into Cubase or Pro Tools 9 or what have you.

Assuming you have 2 guitars and only 1 singer,it would be like this:


4 drum mics: 2 overheads, 1 snare, 1 kick
2 guitar mics of your choice
1 vocal mic of your choice
1 bass mic of your choice

Record audience separately and dump into whatever program you're using later on with the tracks you already recorded.


Also, if you have two R24s, you can bridge them for 16 simultaneous tracks of recording.


In that case:
8 Drums mics
2 guitar mics
1 bass mic
2 vocal mics
2 audience mics
OR
1 audience mic and 2 alternate mics for guitars or bass
 
Zoom R24.

8 tracks. Straight into Cubase or Pro Tools 9 or what have you.

Assuming you have 2 guitars and only 1 singer,it would be like this:


4 drum mics: 2 overheads, 1 snare, 1 kick
2 guitar mics of your choice
1 vocal mic of your choice
1 bass mic of your choice

Record audience separately and dump into whatever program you're using later on with the tracks you already recorded.


Also, if you have two R24s, you can bridge them for 16 simultaneous tracks of recording.


In that case:
8 Drums mics
2 guitar mics
1 bass mic
2 vocal mics
2 audience mics
OR
1 audience mic and 2 alternate mics for guitars or bass

Yep . . . that's fine . . . if it's your gig. In the case of the OP, he is talking about getting a live recording from a venue where someone else is operating the PA. You don't necessarily have any say in what mikes get used where . . . you have to make use of what he has set up for the venue, and what he is prepared to feed to you.
 
How to record live gigs without getting in the PA operators way (I have been on both sides of this fence).

You take a XLR splitter, take a split of every single channel coming from the stage, ensure that the PA side of things is not screwed up in any way (to avoid the 6'4" FOH person having words with you, and let him / her know first before touching anything). Run the XLR coming to you into the pre amps that you have. In my case we take a 24 channel console with direct outs feeding a Tascam MX2424 with 24 analog in's, but it can be anything that has mic pres, the new range of consoles that have usb / firewire multi channel outs look good for this. Or a rack of usb / firewire pres feeding a computer.

The reason I like using a console is that I can monitor each signal using headphones using the PFL very easily, just my personal choice. If we get the chance we run a multi core to a room away from the stage and set up a couple of monitors.

Anyway at the end you get individual channels from stage that you can mix later back at the studio, I also record a couple of audience mics to mix in later.

We have got some great live recording this way.

Cheers
Alan.
 
Yep, that's what I do, with an HD24. I have a 16 channel split snake with ground lifts on each channel. But a decent splitter is a little pricey and dealing with the complexity can be a challenge. I'd suggest working up to that by first doing a stereo or four track setup for a few dozen gigs to get the feel of things and get known to the local sound guys.
 
Just to add to the discussion a bit more, a while back my own band wanted to make a film clip showing the band live for festivals to view when we apply, as I was playing I wanted to keep the recording simple but I wanted better than the video camera sound. I took a presonus Firebox along with my lap top, plugged 2 mics (sennheiser ME 80) direct into the Presonus, these were positioned above the FOH guys position, I also took a left and right out from the FOH console into the line ins (3 and 4) of the firebox.

Recorded the 4 tracks, took them back to the studio, time aligned the audio, mics to direct as it was a bit out due to distance to FOH. Using different EQ, compression added some room verb to the direct which was a little dry and all sounded great, good enough for a demo.

Here is a link to the video so far, it's just a highlight pack and we have not edited in the other camera shots yet this is only the fixed camera with the sound track I recorded.

Cheers

Alan
 
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