Before we can suggest the ideal rig, you need to tell us a bit more about your method. You're usually filming video with the bands consent, ie open. And you're usually recording the sound separately, to sync in post.
If you want to improve your sound, the main issue here is mic placement. From what you told us, I understand that the videomic is mounted to the camera, but the signal is routed to your R-09?! Is your camera in a tripod, or are you moving around throughout the gig?
Sorry I should have given more detailed description of how I tape concerts.
As I said, I mostly tape loud shows, and at first I deal with sound recording rig. I'm finding a place where I can put my videomic+edirol (or videomic+st20+edirol). Sometimes it's very exotic mount (for example, hanging from the ceiling attached to some wires, or at the soundboard - quite annoying for sound engineer
) as most venues don't have any free spot where I can just put my stuff on. I need to be sure that the crowd (which can get really crazy) won't slam anything of it. After that, I turn on both mic and edirol, and leave it completely until the end of the show (so I am unable to monitor levels or anything else, or watch for exhausted batteries). I set edirol gain (line-in) to 25-30 depending on the supposed spl. In most cases, I get no clipping but I have to add a significant gain in post-processing.
After that I only deal with the camera - looking for a best shooting position and seting up all other video settings. The camera gives poor quality sound which I then replace with the sound from videomic and (if available) from soundboard (mixing, cleaning and amplifying them).
I find the results to be satisfactory in most cases, but not every time...
If you can please check some recent example of videomic+edirol recording
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1KV1uzQdB0Perhaps it's slightly inferior to most other bootlegs discussed here but at least it sounds better than most native camera mics.
Either way, a single point stereo (SPS) is far from ideal if you want to capture live music.
If you're already tripod mounted, I see no reason why you can't run a pair of individual mics. You're already stuck to the stand.
A "regular" tripod will be destroyed in seconds after beginning of death metal concert so I'm not even thinking about placing my precious mic in the pool of the slamming teenagers
I'm using very small tripod for mic and place it in some really secure place. Yeah I know that I cannot obtain hi-fi quality but I just do what I can...
And if you're moving around, a camera mounted mic would give you lots of phasing issues.
This should worry you a lot more than pondering about whether the gain is clean enough.
Separate mics instead of a SPS will give you way more than the 10% sound improvement that you're after, in terms of stereo separation and flexibility.
I have once mounted a videomic on a camera instead of a "stationary" edirol and the result was horrible. However placing the videomic separately made a major improvement on the result.
Read this thread:
http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=122459
Everyone pretty much agree that if you tape open and move around with your video camera, the only sensible thing is to get a stand/clamp and leave the rig running.
Thanks, it looks interesting, there's even mentioned one recording with SVM - rode stereo videomic
Another thing I don't get is that you're on a tight (zero?) budget, but at the same time considering upgrading to a new recorder, which will set you back $260 or so. Makes no sense at all to me.
Ah that's just more like a theoretical considerations. However, if an upgraded recorder will be so much better than R-09, and I'll not need to purchase a preamp - then it will be a worthy investment in the future (when I maybe have more money, and sell R-09)
Did you run the Videomic>ST-20>R-09 yet? Could you tell exactly which aspects of the sound that you're not satisfied with?
Noisy gain? Then a CA-9100 is your next logical step, not a new recorder. Always improve the signal at the earliest part of the chain.
Tinny sound, phasing and bad separation? CA-11 (cards + omni caps) is the answer here. Or a pair of open mics and a stand/clamp.
R-09 is my recent purchase so I haven't had the possibility to test it on a quiet concert yet.
Videomic>ST-20>Iriver H340 gave me decent result (here's some example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPRJJDUjkcY ) but there was a feeling that a preamp made it sound a bit unnatural, added some "digital" feeling to the music. I cannot say for sure as both the mic and the post-processing could have lead to such result too, but +30 db of gain on a relatively cheap device (I mean ST-20) in my opinion could be the bottleneck in my chain.
Could you please tell me if the preamp change the sound? I mean not just the level and noise, but other aspects such as tonal balance or stereo separation?