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.