Topic: Low end completely distorted : where did I go wrong?

[XAVeRY]

Hello, fellow tapers.
I went to a concert today with the perspective of taping it, obviously. My gear is Church Audio CAFS connected to a Tascam DR-07.
I've been to a concert of a local band before and taped it very successfully, with the gain of the microphones set to "mid" at the recorder and plug-in power turned off. I've adjusted the input level so that the recording levels were around -6dB and the recording came out wonderful. It was a relatively small venue, actually a pub/club, around 100 people.
Today, things were very different. The venue was a bit larger, but not too large, around 500 people. I couldn't get any reasonable levels with the gain set to "mid", so I set it to "high", and even then they seemed quite low. So I decided to turn on the plug-in power and got levels around -6dB after fiddling with the input level a bit. I checked them for some time and just let the device record after I was sure they stayed around -6dB during the louder parts.
Unfortunately, after leaving the concert and listening to the recording, I realized that the low end is completely distorted. Here's a one-minute snippet of it, I think it shows what I mean quite well : click.

Any help would be appreciated, since there's another concert tomorrow and I would like to get it just right this time. The microphones are mounted on the frames of my glasses, and I'm pretty tall (6ft4), in case that makes any difference. Level control was turned off, obviously.

Thanks in advance,
D.K.

[bryonsos]

Something is missing here. If pip was turned off before, how were you powering the mics?

[F.O.Bean]

Something is missing here. If pip was turned off before, how were you powering the mics?

Thats what I was wondering

[XAVeRY]

Well, I don't have any other external power source for the mics, so I guess they weren't powered at all. (?) Again, it worked well, as weird as it sounds.

[acidjack]

You need a battery box for those mics.  Chris can sell you a CA-UBB for $39.

IME the CAFS also don't handle high SPL as well as some of Chris' other models...

[F.O.Bean]

You need a battery box for those mics.  Chris can sell you a CA-UBB for $39.

IME the CAFS also don't handle high SPL as well as some of Chris' other models...

Agreed! Get a 9v battery box for cheap and keep plug-in-power OFF

[TimeBandit]

Didn't someone mentioned here the CAFS run fine with low sens mod and pip (but it was a pcm-m10).

Maybe your mics doesn't have this mod, so you'll have to workaround with battery box.

[Church-Audio]

You must use a battery box for loud shows. PIP is not enough voltage. And dont aim for -6 aim for -10 its easy to get 10 db in post via software but not easy to remove distortion.

[F.O.Bean]

You must use a battery box for loud shows. PIP is not enough voltage. And dont aim for -6 aim for -10 its easy to get 10 db in post via software but not easy to remove distortion.

100% agreed!

[bonghitwillie]

my guess is that you ran the mics into a mic level input on the recorder.  this will provide some power to make the mics work.  but if the music is amplified, you will get distortion because to signal is too hot.  you need to get a power supply and go in line level.