New From So-Cal

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sickchevy06

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Hello everyone my name is George and I'm from Orange California I'm 21 years old and love music:D..but i have a question and hopefully someone can help me I'm going to try to give as much info as possible so someone can route me in the correct direction ...My cousins just started a band its a Regional Mexican band...and consist of 4 group members.. It has 2 vocals, one electric bass, one bajo sexto "12 string guitar", accordion and drums...... I'm trying to record live gigs and practices...I've tried once to record but have been scared to do it again since the last time I did it the sound quality was horrible.. This is the way I did it the first time...software I used to record was Adobe Auditions...I connected a Mini-to-RCA to my laptop and a mixer and from there just recorded...I plugged the RCA's to the mixer's output and the mini to my laptops mic in...but like I stated before the sound was not great..Now my question is, how can I improve the quality of the sound (CD Quality)? I've heard of sound cards like sound blaster,M-Audio etc but don't really know what I have to look for. I wanted to be portable to record live, practices, gigs since studio is a lot of money and the band is just starting...I hope someone can help me and point me on the right direction.
 
Hey George. Nice to see another member from SoCal.
First of all, don't be discouraged because your first recording sucked. Don't be afraid to make many more terrible recordings, as long as you are learning what is terrible and how to avoid/prevent/remedy that in the future. Obviously, that's why you're here.
You will get consistently bad results using the mic input on your laptop. You need to get a USB interface - that will drastically improve your sound quality. Others will chime in with some specific suggestions.
You may or may not want to continue using your mixer to record.
What mics are you using and where are they placed? To start, I would recommend just trying a stereo pair and try to get some good captures of the overall sound. Then you can continue from there.
Don't be discouraged. Get an interface.
Maybe I can see this norteño band perform and help you out a little in person.
 
Hello neighbour! We're practically next door except for a little thing called the Pacific Ocean since I'm on the east coast of Australia.

To start with the simplest of your questions, a new interface will make a big difference to your recordings. The mic inputs on laptops really are rubbish, designed mainly for a headset mic to do Skype calls. They're very noisy and the levels coming out of a mixer would be way too high for them. What interface? Other than saying don't buy Soundblaster (they're for gamers, not serious recording) I'm going to have to say "see below" because there are lots of things to think about in the choice.

I've "been there" trying to get good sounding mixes at a live gig with a feed from the board and it rarely sounds very nice. Ignoring the sound card issue, the biggest problem tends to be that the mix you're getting is designed for the live audience, not recording. Unless you're doing a stadium size gig, most of the audience is getting a combination of live sound from the stage and what's coming through the PA mixer. This means that instruments that are loud by themselves are low in the mix and things that need lots of amplification are cranked way up for balance.

In this case, sometimes a small handheld recorder in a "sweet spot" for the live mix can sound better than a feed from the board.

The "proper" way to do what you're asking with a computer is to get a big splitter box and a big multichannel interface and record every source separately for later mixing. However, I'm going to guess the cost of the stuff you'd need to do this is prohibitive, at least for now.

If you're locked into a real time "as live" recording into one or two channels, one way I've done this is to beg the FOH sound guy for a pre-fade aux feed of your own--even better, two but that's being greedy. This lets you use the "aux send" knobs on each mixer channel to do your own custom mix, balanced for what you hear in the pair of nice "closed cup" headphones you're going to need, independent of what's going to the PA. It'll take a bit of time to dial in the mix (and a few beers for the sound guy to apologise for getting in his way) but results can be okay.

....which brings me to why I didn't specify a sound interface for you. To do the Aux send trick you only need a basic one with one or two line inputs. To go whole hog and multitrack the whole band would take something much more sophisticated but, once you develop the skills, yield much better results. You pays your money and all that cliche.

Finally, just a suggestion the the FAQs at the top of this forum give a really good starting point about what's involved in recording. It's worth making a pot of coffee and settling down for a bit of reading.

Hope some of this helps,

Bob
 
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