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Gear / Technical Help => Recording Gear => Topic started by: 6079 on October 18, 2008, 10:47:31 PM
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I want to start capturing sound board feeds at shows I tape.
In order to get a full sound of all instruments, I'll need a recorder that can simultaneously record and store individual tracks, rather than simply taking the house mix, as you know.
I've seen recorders ranging from 4 inputs to 24. I'm open to whatever works best. For instance, if a 4 track recorder results in a pretty good range for a standard pop/rock band with singer, guitarist, bassist, drummer, then that's cool. But when you're mixing the show in post, if you need 8 or more different tracks to make it sound way better, than that's what I'd like to get.
At that point, you'd need to run many cables from your recorder to the soundboard. I have to wonder if this is a nuisance to the soundboard guy. Even using a snake cable, is there a way to hook up a dozen or more cables to the soundboard's bus outputs without disturbing him? Obviously, you'd ask permission, but is this too much to ask, as opposed to a standard soundboard patch into the house mix?
I'd also like the ability to "set it and forget it", meaning go to another area of the venue, while the mixer recorded. The 4 track device isn't so big, but the larger ones can be. The only thing I can think of is to cover it with some material and use some gaffer's tape to tape it to the side of the wall where the soundboard is.
This is all new to me and I have a lot of questions that I have to throw out there without a lot of understanding of. But for now, I'm trying to ascertain how practical this idea is with a band that you're not friends with.
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I have a friends band who uses one of these with a fair deal of success (almost always used in conjunction with a AUD recording just for variety):
http://www.amazon.com/ZOOM-Multi-Track-Portable-Recording-Studio/dp/B000RCU6TQ/ref=sr_1_20?ie=UTF8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1224388479&sr=8-20
But they also play small bars still and can hook every instrument up to that as well as the speakers. In a week or so I should finally have a copy of a show recorded with this I can post, let me know if that may help. I don't know if it can take a SBD feed but most soundboard outputs are 2 channel stereo (dual RCA, dual XLR or 1/8 stereo seem to be most common in that order). Are you able to get direct out from the board for every instrument into a mixer? To answer another part of your question most sound guys I've run into are bugged enough when asked to do one stereo patch. I doubt any unless directly affiliated with the band they would even consider running that many cables out. Also the "set it and forget" factor isn't that big a deal, if you use a multi track recorder you can upload each track into a audio editing program as separate tracks, edit accordingly and mix those individual tracks together in post.
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Yeah, I'd like to hear any recordings using this method. I was wondering why there isn't more information or tapings with it, but maybe that's due to the hassle it causes?
I was thinking of devices more like those featured here:
http://www.fullcompass.com/category/Recorder-Mixer-Combinations.html
If you're running a dozen or more cables, but they're all together and not creating a mess, I would've hoped that would be acceptable, but I don't know exactly where these bus outputs are usually located and if they'd get in the way or not. I'd like to hope that a taper-friendly band that has allowed patches before wouldn't be turned off by this, but that's why I'm here asking.