Topic: Onstage questions...

[acidjack]

Probably a wide variety of answers here, but having finally gotten my first taste of really doing onstage at a show, I'm hooked.

At this show, I ran mics onstage + SBD of mostly vocals.  In this case the tiny portable SBD was also upfront, so I sat upfront with the mics.

When you're doing this and running SBD (where the SBD is in the back)+onstage mics, do you generally try to sit close to the mics and then run longer cables back to the SBD?  That seems most logical to me.

Also, what is a reasonably long XLR cable length to handle *most* onstage needs?  I'm thinking 50ft usually does it, but how long of XLRs do people usually get who do this regularly?

[kcmule]

When I run "on stage", I'll use the house snake, ie my XLR to
the box on stage and then patch the sbd end of the snake to
my R4.

[yltfan]

Now, I mostly go for the snake as well, but when I first started running mics on stage, I just used a pair of self powered mics into a recorder tucked away somewhere on the side of the stage. I think the logistics of running your own cables back to the board is going to be too difficult in too many situations.

[Patrick]

Now, I mostly go for the snake as well, but when I first started running mics on stage, I just used a pair of self powered mics into a recorder tucked away somewhere on the side of the stage. I think the logistics of running your own cables back to the board is going to be too difficult in too many situations.

Nah, it's way easy and keeps everything clean and out of the way.  As long as you have cooperation from the band's engineer and/or stagehands, this is for sure the way to go for onstage taping.

I'd say 50 ft cables are fine...ask the engineer which channels in the snake aren't being used and take those.  Leave a little bit of extra cable neatly coiled underneath your onstage stand so they can be moved if necessary, but keep the majority of extra length coiled up by the snake, out of the way.   

[yltfan]

Nah, it's way easy and keeps everything clean and out of the way.  As long as you have cooperation from the band's engineer and/or stagehands, this is for sure the way to go for onstage taping.

I'd say 50 ft cables are fine...ask the engineer which channels in the snake aren't being used and take those.  Leave a little bit of extra cable neatly coiled underneath your onstage stand so they can be moved if necessary, but keep the majority of extra length coiled up by the snake, out of the way.

Huh?

If I'm reading things right, the OP is asking about running cables to the board, NOT thru the snake. I was saying that doing it that way probably would not work in most cases.

[dean]

That said, I too would rather run my mics into the snake and take a pair of Sub channels out of the board.

QFT.  And I've witnessed U~Ca^ do this repeatedly with great results.

[12milluz]

If you are taking an unbalanced signal out for the SBD feed, then 50 feet is too much. If you must run via unbalanced from the soundboard, I would stick my recorder by the soundboard and run balanced mics from the snake to there. If both are unbalanced, I would then run the longer distance from the soundboard as the feed from the board will be a stronger signal than from the mics and should "withstand" more interference due to the signal to noise ratio.

[Patrick]

Huh?

If I'm reading things right, the OP is asking about running cables to the board, NOT thru the snake. I was saying that doing it that way probably would not work in most cases.

The easiest way to get mic signals from onstage to the SBD area is to run them through the house snake.  Running 100+ feet of cable for your record feed is unecessary and will end up getting in the way of the band's/venues stage crew.  As long as you have the permission to record onstage, asking the engineer to patch your mics into two open channels in the snake is not that big of a favor and keeps things a little more simple.

If you're in a situation or a venue that this is not feasible, you're probably not going to be allowed taping onstage anyways.   

EDIT:  It's worth noting that you should never run your mics into the house console unless you're doing a multitrack or blending signals to be recorded on a matrix out from the console.  Just pull the two correct cables from the console's inputs and run them to your preamp just like normal. 

[dean]

EDIT:  It's worth noting that you should never run your mics into the house console unless you're doing a multitrack or blending signals to be recorded on a matrix out from the console.  Just pull the two correct cables from the console's inputs and run them to your preamp just like normal.

How come, Patrick?

[bugg100]

My 50 feet of cable is split up into 2 pair so you get to the box onstage and pick up tails wherever the fanout is....

What was your first onstage tape? 

Glad you made it!

[acidjack]

^^ Mine were sort of not really even "onstage" but at a backyard with the mics directly in front of the band (as if onstage) running to a tiny board next to the band with the other 2 channels.  So it was pretty easy - I just sat right by the stand. 

http://www.nyctaper.com/?p=3757  - show is here (there were some other bands, whose recordings are also on the site.  If you look at the photo at bottom you can see where I was with the mics.  It looks more off center in the pic than it actually was.  For the other bands that placement made more sense.  Still sounds gooood though, especially considering the humble setup. 

[Patrick]

EDIT:  It's worth noting that you should never run your mics into the house console unless you're doing a multitrack or blending signals to be recorded on a matrix out from the console.  Just pull the two correct cables from the console's inputs and run them to your preamp just like normal.

How come, Patrick?

Unless you have FULL cooperation with the FOH engineer, it's easier to use the house snake as a big, long extension cable for your mics.  You can use the console's preamps, but you'd have to set gains on the console and take line outputs of each channel into your gear.  Also keeping the two systems (FOH/recording) separate reduces the chance for potential ground loops that might be in the console.

If you just pull the respective channels and run them into your gear as you normally do, it keeps the two systems discreet and makes things so much simpler.

[dean]

EDIT:  It's worth noting that you should never run your mics into the house console unless you're doing a multitrack or blending signals to be recorded on a matrix out from the console.  Just pull the two correct cables from the console's inputs and run them to your preamp just like normal.

How come, Patrick?

Unless you have FULL cooperation with the FOH engineer, it's easier to use the house snake as a big, long extension cable for your mics.  You can use the console's preamps, but you'd have to set gains on the console and take line outputs of each channel into your gear.  Also keeping the two systems (FOH/recording) separate reduces the chance for potential ground loops that might be in the console.

If you just pull the respective channels and run them into your gear as you normally do, it keeps the two systems discreet and makes things so much simpler.

Makes perfect sense.  In the venue/situation U~Ca^ and I are referencing we do have full cooperation with the engineer (and in fact sometimes U~Ca^ is the engineer by default!) and there's no issue with console access, etc.  However, I'd not considered the ground loop possibility, and having now considered it I think I'd likely do as you describe so as not run that risk!  Thanks for the explanation!  (I didn't hook you up with an Indiana alum/contact for nothing, you know).   

[Patrick]

(I didn't hook you up with an Indiana alum/contact for nothing, you know).   

Glad it all makes sense.  It's so much easier if you have a cool engineer and a band that will let this happen.  Onstage + SBD is easily my favorite way to tape.

And I still appreciate that hookup.  Trying to get my networking group as large as possible, and this certainly helped tremendously.  Thanks again! 

[SmokinJoe]

In the past when I ran onstage + SBD I used 2 recorders... one near the stage and one at the SBD.  Then do the "pain in the ass mix 2 unclocked sources" thing.

A couple of nights ago I ran my mics through the house snake, and had my R4 at the SBD, and we hooked all this up about 1 minute before the music started.  As soon as the music started I realized I had only one channel of the onstage mics.  It was a bad channel in the snake.  It was mildly awkward for me to tell the sound guy, "dude, I think we have a bad channel in the snake", and he tried another channel in the snake.  That worked.  At this point, we are about 3 minutes into the show, so I have a tape with an awkward SBD + 1 mic mix for the first 3 minutes.

Lessons learned:
- if they aren't using a particular channel in the snake, maybe there is a REASON they aren't using that channel.
- I had gotten set up in time, but didn't dare to just plug into the snake without asking.  I waited until the sound guy came back from break, and at that point it was 1 minute before the music started, so I didn't get a chance to test.  From now on, If I don't have time to test the setup, I'll probably just use 2 recorders, unclocked sources again.