New Studio for Church

  • Thread starter Thread starter pkmusic
  • Start date Start date
P

pkmusic

New member
Need help. Could someone give me an idea of a good setup for recording live at church? I was thinking a budget of $10,000 but we could spend more if we have to. If someone could recommend some models such as mixer speakers, ADAT, everything that would take to make a good recording.
I am a computer freak so if any one has a idea for a setup using a pc more than actual physical equipment then that would be great too.
Let me know if you need more info from me to actually make a better suggestion. Thanks!
 
What genre? Straight choir and organ will get you a wildly different answer than praise band with chorus...

Daf
 
At the moment, drums, keyboard, congas, bongos, timbals, electric guitar, bass gt, acoustic guitar, trombone/trumpets, flute, sax. We would also like to have a setup for a choir also.
 
i would look into a hard disk recorder such as the alesis HD24. this will run you about $2000. it has an ethernet port for connection to a computer for editing and mixing of your tracks. as far as a mixer, i would go with an allan & heath or a soundcraft. if budget doesnt provide, a mackie 8 bus series may suffice. i have a 32-8 and i am fairly happy with it.
 
One thing that will be important for recording in this situation is Isolation. The mixer and recorder, and especially the monitoring need to be away from the live room, so that you can hear whats actually coming thru the mics without coloration from the actual live sound in the room.
Hopefully you will be isolated enough that when the faders are down you hear little to no bleed from the live room.

Will this be for recording weekly, or for a specific CD Project?

For weekly, the same setup would be ideal, although you may want to consider mixing live to 2 Track (stereo) instead of multitrack, because mixing down a multitrack recording every week could eat up many hours each week.

Are you a musician in the band, or just running the sound, or something else?

I have been working on a recording that was done at our church, and at my house, for over a year. I used a Delta1010 into PC.

pkmusic, where are you located?

Have you ever built a studio?
 
I met a guy who does P&W concerts with an AW4416. Everyone's on a separate channel, but levels are set before concert. Only minor tweaking, 3-5 hours, to get it to disk.

It's worth clarifying, though - do you mean a "studio"? Or just a recording setup for your sanctuary? Or something in-between?

Daf
 
We are planning to record weekly, but also wanting to do a cd project. I am the music director at our church. Our church is pretty new in the whole sound engineering. We are growing rapidly and the musican's are great. We are wanting to build a studio for recording primarily live performances. No one in our church is experienced in this except for the little that I have done at home. More than likely I will be running the sound. I am located in Central Texas (Killeen).

Maestro_DMC, what is your church setup like.

For isolation, do you recommend having the sound/rec room in a separate room but visible to the live room?

Our goal is to be able to record weekly and also have CD quality recordings that can be sold for fund-raising (local and retail stores). At the moment the church sits 440. Well that's the legal amount. Usually there are more.
 
I'd echo the Alesis HD24 and a decent mixer. If you're recording music performed at services, you're going to want a mixer anyway. A Soundcraft Ghost would be a great choice but a Mackie eight buss analog board would work very well. You can still transfer tracks recorded in the HD24 in and out of a computer for editing and even mixing if you like (I personally prefere the sound of mixes through an analog board vs software but that's neither here nor thewre). Near field monitors are a subjective subject. I use Yorkville YSM-1's at around $200 a pair. If you alreay have mics and cableing for the stage side of things, you could Easily do it under $10000 and have a killer setup.
 
What about compressor/limiter, RNC? Effect? ect? Any recommendations?

TrackRat, I also have the Yorkville's ysm1p (Powered). They are great.

The Mic's we have are shure sm58 and sm57 for vocals. What should we upgrade to?
For bass, should we go direct with di box or mic the amp?
For electric guitar/acoutics?
For brass instruments?
Sax/flute?
 
RNCs are great little compressors for the money (I have two). Believe it or not (I know I don't sometimes) Behringer makes some decent budget compressors (again, I have a Composer Pro and it ain't half bad). If you're recording live performances, I'd stick with 57's/58's for vocals. If not a large diaphram condensor of some kind (a VERY subjective subject and there's no shortage of choice there). Bass either a D.I. or direct (very subjective and a matter of opinion). Electric guitars, again 57's. Drum overheads and acoustic guitars, condensors (MXL-603's Octava MC-012's, at the low end of the food chain). Brass, if you have money for such things maybe a few ribbon mics or possibly a SM-7, if not, 57's would work there.
 
MC012s make good choir mics. 58s are fine for lead, as long as you stick to live work. If you start to do true studio stuff, you'll want to upgrade. And an SM-7 might be a good one up front. They're magic on some voices.

DIs are fine, but it's even better if you can get some amp sims in the chain. Behringers are cheap and good.

Dunno about miking horns and strings. I'll defer to my colleagues on that one.

Sounds like fun. Good luck.

Daf
 
believe it or not i've gotten a good sound from a violin using an sm-58 :D
 
pkmusic said:
We are wanting to build a studio for recording primarily live performances. No one in our church is experienced in this except for the little that I have done at home. More than likely I will be running the sound. I am located in Central Texas (Killeen).
Click to expand...

This concerns me a bit as a CD quality recording with the large ensemble you describe is going to be difficult. If you need the CD cut sooner rather than later, I'd give serious consideration to hiring a pro. Plus the time involved in mixing is going to be immense.

If you aren't in a hurry, then yeah, start recording weekly with the Alesis live in stereo, then add a few more tracks and mix them until you're comfortable with the whole shebang. I'd concentrate on spending on mics and mixer upfront since you'll use those no matter what happens with recording.

The tough part of the CD quality recording isn't going to be tracking; once you have good mics and know how to use them, you'll get good tracks, but then you have to mix it which is a major effort with that many instruments.
 
first off you need to see what God wants because first music director and sound engineer at the same time is more than a little difficult having to direct a music ministry is a job by itself but having to try to get a live sound well recorded in a church that probaly was buitl for sound as an after thought is a large task to say the least my suggestion is to seek help from someone who can come in and help during service . and remember to seperate the house mix from what you want tracked . you can send me an em because i've been there and help is nessasary
 
undaddog, God just told me he wants you to start using proper sentence and paragraph structure.

Ed
 
Whoa that was quite some time for me. I don't think Dave Thomas had a second grade teacher; or maybe he did. I don't know for sure!?!?! Maybe his second grade teacher was Wendy, or is that his daughter?!?! Who cares when you have the best spicy chicken sandwich in the world!!! $$$$$$
 
The hardest things for recording in this situation, in my experience:

Micing and Recording the drums properly. If you are looking for Commercial CD quality, with live drums, then you must do this right! Believe me, this is the main thing holding me up with the stuff I've done. That and working with the tracks afterward to try and get a good sound mixed.

What Undadogg said about wearing two hats is right on. If you are going to be a singer/musician on the recording as well as engineer. . . good luck. Oh it can be done, but you said your goal is commercial quality? It's very hard to give the attention to detail of proper micing and gain staging, and avoiding peaks, and all the other things when you are also trying to perform with excellence!

I don't care how much you spend on equipment the important thing here is knowhow. If you have the budget for a lot of great equipment by all means don't skimp! But that alone will not be enough. If you want to do it all on your own then I hope you don't have a day job, because you will need to eat drink and sleep recording for a fairly long time to get in the trial and error experience that you need to get what you are after. Even then, by the time you get done with your last song on the project you'll want to start over and re-do all the stuff you now know you did wrong!

My church is set up great for live sound (if I do say so myself) but not so great for recording. Recording our services is not a high priority at this point for us, as long as we can make decent tapes of the Sunday messages, that's all we need. I had brought in my set-up from home to record when we tracked there. We are in the middle of relocating our mixing to the floor where it should be:rolleyes: (thanks to me as well:D) .

You will probably want 2 mixers and a signal splitter, because you will need to mix the live room as normal, while still recording in your isolated location. If you want quality this is critical, especially going live to 2 tracks, you don't get a second chance. Here also is where it is important that the singers especially can hear themselves well. This is the biggest ongoing issue with our group, when we play back the service tapes of the music, people are always off key, and or not enunciating well. In fact when you finnaly do your live multi track, you may only want to record the lead voices, making sure they can hear really well, and just go back later for all back-ups choir etc.

all I have timew for ahorita!
 
Meastro hit a lot of the points iwas going to em you back about pk . to add to that the multi recording rig it has to be seperated from the live area , hence the need for even more help . tring to do a multi recording and a live mix in the same area is difficult to say the least . and the care in micing situations steps up a notch and sometimes has to be compensated in the live mix to get better quality in the recording . as so far as singers /chorus/choir get them excited about the project most of us in this genre are not deal with pro's so we need to peak their interest and show them what wwe need and want from them .

ps sonusman what is it with you man ? i've checked some of your posting and you can't seem to make up your mind if you want to help or hate i appreciate the grammar lesson but i thought the focus was on recording music and learning from each other . I can take a joke with the best of them but man if everyone else is so beneathe you maybe it would be better to be a mentor instead of a tormentor . excuse the grammqr spelling and anything else my mother would frown at
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top