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Gear / Technical Help => Microphones & Setup => Topic started by: HarpNinjaMike on November 10, 2010, 03:37:30 PM
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I am new to this whole thing and am getting a Zoom H4n tomorrow. I realize it will take time to master, but I would like to try and record my full band at a gig tomorrow night. I was thinking of using the Zoom to record with the internal mics in stereo and run an XLR in from the direct out of a powered speaker. I was thinking of also running an overhead on stage and using that as the 4th track.
The gig is in a small venue and the only thing going through the mains will be vocals. I am upgrading my mixer in the near future and realize that running out of that in different arrangements is probably a better idea.
All my audio is either live with my old group, or professionally recorded in studio. I need a coverband type demo ASAP and am hoping this rig may net me 10-20s from 10-20 songs to put together for a sampler.
In December, I will be able to get several recordings taking a signal from a full PA and room mics, but need something short term.
My understanding is as long as the inputs aren't clipping, I can mix the 4 tracks together on the H4n after recording, output them on to a computer as WAV and then edit them to the snippets and combine them. Correct? What can I use for the editing? I have Garage Band on a MacBook...
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I went to a show a while ago, and the FOH sound guy had one running, with the built in mics + his stereo soundboard mix. I asked him how he liked it, he said it was amazing for the size/price. On the previous tour they had been multitracking everything with the idea of putting out a live album. Sure enough the best show the band played was the one where the multitrack was corrupt, and they went with the recording he had made with the H4n. I can't remember exactly who it was, but it was a national touring act. So that says they can be used to obtain high quality.
My gut feeling is that you can run the internal mics + 1 SBD feed or 1 external mic, but not both. The reason I say this is because (a) if the overhead needs phantom power you don't want to feed that into your board on the other channel, and you probably don't have control over phantom power to individual channels. The other thing is (b) the SBD feed will likely be much hotter than the mic feed, and I think between the "Mic in" versus "Line in" and the amount of gain you need... I think it's just not going to work out as slick as you had hoped. Hopefully I'm wrong.
As far as editing on the H4n... I doubt you will find many people here who advocate for that. Copy it to your computer, use a sound editor, and mix them to taste. I don't know anything about Garageband, but it's probably fine. Audacity is a another decent program that a lot of us use, and it's free.
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Thanks for the input! With the mic inputs, both would be from XLR cables...the line out from my QSC K10 can be set for mic or line level.
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I don't think GarageBand is what you want for this purpose at all. I'd recommend the free program Audacity - it is easy to use and for the purpose you describe, will do the trick.
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Is it true that you can only run at 16/44.1 in 4-track on the Zoom H4n?
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Is it true that you can only run at 16/44.1 in 4-track on the Zoom H4n?
No, it will do 24/48 in 4-channel mode.
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Is it true that you can only run at 16/44.1 in 4-track on the Zoom H4n?
No, it will do 24/48 in 4-channel mode.
Thanks.