Hi
Lets say I want to record a concert recording each microphone on stage (plus having a pair of ambient mics by the mixing console.) The day before the gig, I call the club-owner and find out that I need 12 tracks of simultaneous recording to capture the whole band, and my harddisk-recorder only has eight! Therefore I call a friend and loan his 4-track recorder. Now I have 12 tracks. But how am I going to syncronize them? Maybe its possible to get an external syncronizor, but I dont have time to find this out. Any suggestions? I can transfer all the files to a PC.
If I were to do this manually, I would: try to locate a point at the beginning of the recording where the 2 HD-recorders are in sync.
Two ways to do this:
1. Some minutes before the gig, I would press the rec-button on both machines. Then I would plug out the cable of 1 track of each recorder, and connect it to one microphone (using a split cable.) The best would be a non-phantompowered, non-vocal mic. I would place a microphone close to my mouth, and say the letter P loud. This will probably overload the mic, which is excactly what I'm after. On a computer, this P will be a reference-mark which I could use to syncronize the recorders.
2. I plug an output of each recorder into a small, portable MD, so that HD-recorder 1 goes to the left channel on the MD, and HD 2 to the other channel. Some minutes before the concert, I press "rec" on the MD. Now the MD records nothing. When the concert starts, I press "rec" on both HD-recorders. After the concert I transfer the MD-file to a computer, and then I see how much time-difference there are between the 2 recorders. Then I insert that amount of time as "silence" on all the tracks on one of the recorders. (Is this clear?)
Now the recorders should be in sync at the beginning of the concert. But I have heard that recorders can record at different speeds, so after some recording- time the recorders will not be in sync anymore. To find the speed- difference between the recorders, I need to locate a reference-point at the end of the concert. After all the clapping has finished, I dont stop recording. I repeat procedure 1 with saying "p" into the microphone. When I see the files on my computer, I can see the time-difference between the 2 "p". Then, somehow, I can edit the tracks on the "slowest" HD-recorder, or put silence into the fastest tracks, so that the time-difference is levelled out smoothly. This operation can be compared to what the pope did when he decided to create february 29th, which keeps the year in sync with the sun.
Do you understand my plan, and do you think it will work? Or are there other things that I havent considered, which will make this a bad solution? I guess there are, and that synctronizing is not that straightforward. I appreciate any advice.
Best, Sniixer (from Norway)
Lets say I want to record a concert recording each microphone on stage (plus having a pair of ambient mics by the mixing console.) The day before the gig, I call the club-owner and find out that I need 12 tracks of simultaneous recording to capture the whole band, and my harddisk-recorder only has eight! Therefore I call a friend and loan his 4-track recorder. Now I have 12 tracks. But how am I going to syncronize them? Maybe its possible to get an external syncronizor, but I dont have time to find this out. Any suggestions? I can transfer all the files to a PC.
If I were to do this manually, I would: try to locate a point at the beginning of the recording where the 2 HD-recorders are in sync.
Two ways to do this:
1. Some minutes before the gig, I would press the rec-button on both machines. Then I would plug out the cable of 1 track of each recorder, and connect it to one microphone (using a split cable.) The best would be a non-phantompowered, non-vocal mic. I would place a microphone close to my mouth, and say the letter P loud. This will probably overload the mic, which is excactly what I'm after. On a computer, this P will be a reference-mark which I could use to syncronize the recorders.
2. I plug an output of each recorder into a small, portable MD, so that HD-recorder 1 goes to the left channel on the MD, and HD 2 to the other channel. Some minutes before the concert, I press "rec" on the MD. Now the MD records nothing. When the concert starts, I press "rec" on both HD-recorders. After the concert I transfer the MD-file to a computer, and then I see how much time-difference there are between the 2 recorders. Then I insert that amount of time as "silence" on all the tracks on one of the recorders. (Is this clear?)
Now the recorders should be in sync at the beginning of the concert. But I have heard that recorders can record at different speeds, so after some recording- time the recorders will not be in sync anymore. To find the speed- difference between the recorders, I need to locate a reference-point at the end of the concert. After all the clapping has finished, I dont stop recording. I repeat procedure 1 with saying "p" into the microphone. When I see the files on my computer, I can see the time-difference between the 2 "p". Then, somehow, I can edit the tracks on the "slowest" HD-recorder, or put silence into the fastest tracks, so that the time-difference is levelled out smoothly. This operation can be compared to what the pope did when he decided to create february 29th, which keeps the year in sync with the sun.
Do you understand my plan, and do you think it will work? Or are there other things that I havent considered, which will make this a bad solution? I guess there are, and that synctronizing is not that straightforward. I appreciate any advice.
Best, Sniixer (from Norway)
