| Home recording and general music post from the archived Yabb Recording Website Message Board. Some of the info here may be outdated but many of the audio recording and home studio tips are still good. Note: The only tags I made and attempt to convert are italics, bold, center and underline. So if you see some gibberish surrounded by brackets, just ignore it.
Recording Website Archived Yabb board Post
Febuary 2001 Yabb Message Board Archive
Subject: Recording Live shows
by Chris McDonald | 02/20/01 at 16:17:10
Last weekend my friends asked me to record their band at a local battle of the bands. So I got brought my laptop and a little radio shack line mixer down and recorded the show.
The mix sounded really good in the building listening to it but when I got home and played it back the vocals sounded like they were right on top of you and the drums were off in the distance and the bass and gutiars were somewhere in outer space.
There is a big battel of the bands coming up in june and all the bands that were there last weekend want me to record their sets again and this time I want it to sound good.
So this time I think I'm going to rent a 12 channel or so mixer that has 4 busses(l,r,montior 1, montor 2?). This will let me record vocals on one track, gutiars on another, bass on a 3rd and drums on a 4th. I will plug 12 cables in 1/2 way into the inserts on main show mixer which should be the same as direct outs on most mixers and these 12 cables will hook into the line in's on the mixer that I rent. I currently have 2 soundcards in my computer and i'm thinking of buying a 4 channel pro quality soundcard if the bands are willing to pay to have there cd's done up.
Any one ever try a similar setup?
How do you record live shows?
How do the big guys do it?(MTV, Much music, etc...)
Subject: Re: Recording Live shows
by CGibson | 02/21/01 at 08:28:29
Hi Chris
I've done it a couple different ways that work well.
Here's a list of what I used
(open mic)
Place two recording mics out in front of the group.
Run them into a good mic preamp and then into a
stereo compressor.
(direct)
Have a splitter snake built that will give you and
the house board the same signal from stage.
run your end to a 4 or 8 buss board and do your own
mix without conflict with the house sound.
Hope this helps
C~
Subject: Re: Recording Live shows
by Chris McDonald | 02/21/01 at 09:02:27
[quote author=CGibson link=board=rec1&num=982711030&start=0#1 date=02/21/01 at 08:28:29]
Hi Chris
I've done it a couple different ways that work well.
Here's a list of what I used
(open mic)
Place two recording mics out in front of the group.
Run them into a good mic preamp and then into a
stereo compressor.
(direct)
Have a splitter snake built that will give you and
the house board the same signal from stage.
run your end to a 4 or 8 buss board and do your own
mix without conflict with the house sound.
Hope this helps
C~
Your direct setup is almost the same as what I had in mind. Just that I'm taking the signal past the preamps but pre eq from the insert. I would rather do it this way because unbal cabels are cheeper and easyer to borrow, the mic's are often phantom powered, and I might be able to get a cheeper board that has bad preamps or dosn't have preamps on all channels like the Behringer eurorack 2004a.
I would rather stay direct because I don't have good mic's or preamps to use and they might be hard to find around here to rent.
Subject: Re: Recording Live shows
by oesmghroth | 03/13/01 at 12:11:30
whatever you do dont take any signal out of the headphone jack lol try to get yr own mix separated from the FOH console
try finding a good sounding spot in the room and put up a mid side stereo mic
Subject: Re: Recording Live shows
by db | 03/14/01 at 06:21:21
8) I like the sound of live recordings. Your idea will work OK, but try to keep the trims on the mic pre's of the FOH mixer more on the conservative side. The problem is if one gets adjusted durring recording, then it will effect your mix. So giving a little extra headroom will help to give you a cleaner signal at the recording end. Also, like CGibson, and oesmghroth, mentioned earlier, try to get a stereo mic, or setup, out, up, and in front, of the whole stage to add ambience, DO NOT USE THE WIDE SETTING, it will add too much phase distortion, especially in mono. The most important thing, try to monitor away from the stage area, in a closet, out to a van, anwhere you can hear better. If critical balance adjustments are made based on guesswork, then you may not be able to fix it later. You may have to slip a mic here and there, because the FOH system does not cover everything.
Just a suggestion, and babbling.
--db