Thanks for checkin' it out Tim. On my first recording I used a Mackie mixer (1202 -VLZ PRO) into a USB external two channel sound card into my laptop. This time I took my tower computer with a Presonus Firebox firewire audio interface. I got it because it said it could "record six channels simultaneously", but it only has two pre-amps in it, so I had to take the mixer anyway. Two of the channels are midi, so even with the mixer I only got four channels going in.
On the first recording I had two dynamic mics (cheapos) in an xy config in front of the middle of the stage, an SM57 on the kick, and a KSM27 on my table for a room mic. I set the table up right under a PA speaker and aimed the KSM27 up to catch the vocals.
The second recording was set up pretty much the same, except I put the two cheap dynamics each on a separate stand about 15' apart, aimed at each side of the stage (pointed slightly outward). Plus each mic had it's own channel. I was concerned that I might have phase problems with the mics like that, but it didn't seem to be a problem.
It's hard to come up with a versitile config for the mics. Ideally, there would be a bass player and guitarist on one side of the stage, and another guitar and keyboard or harp player on the other. But with these jams there are usually a few amps set up on each side of the drums and there might be two guitarists on the same side. More often than I would like is two guitars and the bass player on the right side, and a harp player all by himself on the left, then he'll be playing and singing over the PA.
'course if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.
