I taped a show last night with the exact same setup that I've had success with many, many times over the last decade or so. It was a hip hop show, and after the first act, I did something i'd never done before, and set my recorder to roll off below 40hz. When i got home and listened to both the opener (no low-cut) and the headliner, the recordings were awful. Any time the bass came on strong, the sound suffers a horrible distortion, which at first i thought was phasing, but it's on each track. And the distortion is not limited to the low end. I put in a shelf at 140hz (which is unacceptably high, but i just wanted to hear it) and the distortion was still very clear.
I was taping at a venue that i tape at frequently, with the same gear and arrangement I am accustomed to. A pair of Church audio CA-11 omnis straight into a Tascam DR-05. 24 bit wav, 48k sample. I'll not elaborate on the mic placement except to say they were on me where they have functioned flawlessly countless times, standing at the apex of an equilateral triangle formed by the stacks. As always, on the opening track i set the input high enough to barely clip, then gave myself enough headroom that they never clipped again, checking at least a few times for each track.
The bass was really forward, but not what i'd call exceptional. I've definitely gotten fine tapes in similar circumstances. I've uploaded a small sample to dropbox
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x4n3zzg8e1w23lq/Cut%2040hz1.mp3?dl=0, hoping someone can listen and give me some idea what went wrong. It sounds like horrific clipping, but i can say with total certainty that this track didn't clip while i was recording; i watched it pretty closely, and taken straight from the recorder, i was able to add 2db of amplification to it in Audacity with the "allow clipping" box un-ticked.
Is it possible that my 10+ year old DR-05, which has seen a lot of service, could be finally dying? About six months ago the headphone-out jack quit functioning properly (to where recordings I play from it to headphones sound like crap, but play just fine from elsewhere after the file is transferred to a laptop).
Any advice here is greatly appreciated.
Chris