Recording concert audio to go with video.

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nofromofo

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Hello. I'm taping a rock concert soon and using Canon 5D DSLRs which don't capture very good audio. I have very little budget but was hoping to learn some ways to capture good audio that I can sync with video later. I've read a some forums and it sounds like a cardioid mics are best and many suggest getting a line from the soundboard via a decent USB interface to laptop? Or is investing in a inexpensive digital audio recorder better? Does anyone have advice on what a cost effective setup for a newbie would be. I hope to do more live video tapings in the future so your advice involves buying some low cost gear thats cool. Right now all I have is a laptop and maybe access to some cardioid mics but not sure.

Any help would be appreciated.

-Robert Castilla
FivePennFilms
 
Either way is fine.

I have recorded separately to my computer and I have used a small mixer to hook up better mics to the line-in of my pro-level camcorder)

Just make sure you record at 48k to sync with the video.
(NTSC video drops frames regularly and 44.1khz will not sync up after a while)

Final file for video is 16bit/48k.
 
The zoom and samson recorders are actually very good, but they just pick up the sound in the room.

A feed from the board will be thin and not very well balanced, unless they are playing a very large venue. This is because most PA systems are set up will much more power in the low end, so the sound coming off the board will lack the low end that the PA is making up for. Also, in small to medium venues, the sound coming off the stage is a big part of what is heard in the audience. If the guitar is really loud coming off the stage, there won't be much of it in the PA. That means there won't be much of it in your board recording.

The right way to do it is not budget friendly. It involves getting a split snake and enough mic preamps to feed enough converters to capture all the mics. then you can mix it later. If the venue is using a monitor board, you can usually get direct line outs from that, then you won't need the split snake.
 
Thanks for reply Farvie
The venue is small and all future venues will be small to medium. I'm really a newbie so is the monitor board (where the engineer is during show) different from the sound board? I've also read in a forum about mic placement and many suggest putting a mic above the monitor board is during show. I'm not sure I can afford it but I looked up the H4n zoom recorder and it can serve as a four track recorder? Where I can use the two speakers on the device and could also record a line from the moitor board via xlr feed if I placed the device above where the sound engineer is?
 
nofromofo said:
Thanks for reply Farvie
The venue is small and all future venues will be small to medium. I'm really a newbie so is the monitor board (where the engineer is during show) different from the sound board?
Click to expand...
The mixer out in the audience where the sound guy stands is the front of house mixer. He mixes for the audience. A monitor board is normally on the side of the stage and is used to mix the stage monitors that the band hears. Most small clubs just run the monitors off of a couple aux sends from the front of house board.

nofromofo said:
I've also read in a forum about mic placement and many suggest putting a mic above the monitor board is during show. I'm not sure I can afford it but I looked up the H4n zoom recorder and it can serve as a four track recorder? Where I can use the two speakers on the device and could also record a line from the moitor board via xlr feed if I placed the device above where the sound engineer is?
Click to expand...
All of this would be a fine idea, except you want to be out where the house sound guy is. That's not the monitor board.
 
If the live sound is good:

Option 1a: If you have four tracks I would suggest setting up the mic dead center between the speakers to get the room sound and capturing the board mix on the other two tracks. The board mix will overemphasize the vocals and anything else that doesn't make its own sound from stage. The room mic will tend to be a bit too live, with lots of room reverberations, but is a good overall representation. Between the two you can often get a great sound. You do have to slip the board feed tracks in post to time align them with the room mics.

Option 1b: Set up a mic at the front of the audience to capture stage wash and mix it with the board feed on location to 2-track.

If you can't trust the live sound:

Option 2: Do a split to a mixer and mix it yourself on location without the benefit of all the processing and effects the live mixer has.

Option 3: Split to multi-track and mix it later.
 
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Ok Jay,
Again I don't know much so this might be stupid question, but this house mixer in the front for the audience: does that board have a line out I can tap into and would the mix coming out of that sound ok?
 
Thanks boulder,
What do you mean by slip the board feed tracks in post to time align them with room mics? I'll be using Final Cut.
 
nofromofo said:
Again I don't know much so this might be stupid question, but this house mixer in the front for the audience: does that board have a line out I can tap into and would the mix coming out of that sound ok?
Click to expand...

It almost certainly has some sort of line output not being used, but some sound guys can be touchy about people patching into their system. A common live sound guy gripe about video guys is that they often introduce ground loops that cause hum when they feed audio to a camera on a different circuit from the PA. If your recorder is on batteries or plugged into the same power as the mixer and it's not connected to any other gear it should be safe to connect.

The other problem is that the board mix will not adequately represent loud instruments. Drums and amps make their own sound and so often need little or no reinforcement by the PA system. What comes out of the board feed will have lots of vocals and anything not already loud enough. Drums and amps will be low or off.
 
nofromofo said:
Thanks boulder,
What do you mean by slip the board feed tracks in post to time align them with room mics? I'll be using Final Cut.
Click to expand...

It takes some time for the sound to get from stage and the mains to the room mics, approximately 1ms per foot. There is no delay on the mixer feed, so you have to manually delay it (slip it to the right in the timeline) to line it up with the mic tracks. This is one reason to have the mic absolutely centered between the mains. You want the left and right speakers' sound to arrive at the mic at the same time so it's easier to match the board mix to it. It's pretty much the same as syncing up different camera angles by eye, but you use eyes and ears.

Definitely record in 48kHz. I don't think 44.1 would cause a sync problem over a song or three (unless you use a recorder with known issues at 44.1, like the HD24), but 48 is the standard for film and video so there's no reason to start lower.
 
nofromofo said:
Ok Jay,
Again I don't know much so this might be stupid question, but this house mixer in the front for the audience: does that board have a line out I can tap into and would the mix coming out of that sound ok?
Click to expand...
Yes, you could tap into it, if the sound guy lets you. But like was said in an earlier post (two of them actually) What comes out of the board isn't what you hear in the room. What you hear in the room is the combination of the sound coming off the stage and the sound coming out of the PA. If the guitars are loud coming off the stage, the sound guy isn't going to add much guitar in the PA. That means that you won't get much guitar in the line you tapped into from the board.
 
Thanks Farview. It takes a couple of times to sink in. Based on the info I'm going to try and get a feed off the board that I can mix with a digital mike recorded in the audience and try and mix the two. I'm curious Farview have you ever used the H4n and did you like it?
 
nofromofo said:
Thanks Farview. It takes a couple of times to sink in. Based on the info I'm going to try and get a feed off the board that I can mix with a digital mike recorded in the audience and try and mix the two.
Click to expand...

Be sure to place the mic absolutely dead center between the speakers. An off center position will mean that the sound from the far speaker arrives a little after the sound from the near speaker causing phase interactions. Since there's essentially a double image of the sound you can't time align the board feed precisely to the mic tracks. All you can do is pick one or the other or split the difference, and the result is a washy sound.
 
nofromofo said:
Thanks Farview. It takes a couple of times to sink in. Based on the info I'm going to try and get a feed off the board that I can mix with a digital mike recorded in the audience and try and mix the two. I'm curious Farview have you ever used the H4n and did you like it?
Click to expand...
I've handled audio that was recorded on them. They really sound good for what they are.
 
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