Topic: Soft sounding recordings

[tneumann]

Hey everyone
I am new here, but not new to taping. So far I have recorded 5 shows. I record onto mini disc from a Sony, with sound pros mics and battery box with level control. Early on I was told to record through the "line in" rather than the mic plug. When i play back the shows I am happy of the quality, but they are always fairly quiet. I love that I can hear everything, but i would love it to be louder. Also whenever I record I do it on LP4 so that I can get the entire show on one disc. Is that bad? I am not upset about the quality of the sound, just the volume. I have adjusted the recording volume to be at the highest as well. Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks,
Travis

[goose]

You might want to try the mic-in and see if it works better - trial and error is how we learn best.  It may not work, or be an even worse recording*, you never know until you try.

I give this vague (sage) advice only because I do not have any experience with your setup or similar.

Good luck - maybe others will see this and provide more on-point suggestions.

* In theory, mic-in will provide gain and enable you to record at a higher volume.  The preamp providing the gain in your minidisc may not be good and get overloaded easily, providing a worse recording, but it may do well in your situation.

[Sean Gallemore]

all depends on the sensitivity of the mics, the loudness of the music you were recording, the distance you are away from the sound source.

What mic(s) and MD are you using?

[olyrc]

Hey everyone
I am new here, but not new to taping. So far I have recorded 5 shows. I record onto mini disc from a Sony, with sound pros mics and battery box with level control. Early on I was told to record through the "line in" rather than the mic plug. When i play back the shows I am happy of the quality, but they are always fairly quiet. I love that I can hear everything, but i would love it to be louder. Also whenever I record I do it on LP4 so that I can get the entire show on one disc. Is that bad? I am not upset about the quality of the sound, just the volume. I have adjusted the recording volume to be at the highest as well. Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks,
Travis

Hey Travis-

Trial & error is definitely the key to good recordings.

I'd suggest recording the show in SP mode and learning to do a quick switch on the discs - with MD you're already recording in compressed audio and the LP mode compresses it further.  Compression in SP mode isn't really noticeable, but you can hear a difference in LP (but if your ears like it, more power to you).

For the softness, you can boost the volume on the computer side of things (if you're converting your recordings to CD anyway).  Just remember if you boost the volume that you're boosting everything - music and room noise.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your setup looked like the Sound Pros AT831 mics > batt box > Sony MD, right?  I used a very similar rig for several months before upgrading (and upgrading, and upgrading, and upgrading) and got a bunch of great sounding tapes.

+t (you'll figure this out as you go along) and welcome!

Cheers,
Ryan
digginaditch@hotmail.com