Thank you all in advance for the help. I taped my first show off the sound board at a local club. It doesn't sound good, it was mixed mono panned left, the vocals were far to high, the kick drum distorts. I was using a D8 level was down to 4 , read hear not to go below that because it adds its own distortion, plugged into the tape out. Now I don't recall the show sounding as bad as the recording (levels like they are) Did I screw something up, or is it totaly the sound board mix. Also Is there a DB reducer for knocking the levels down, how about a mono spliter type thing or is it better to just convert the one track stereo to two track mono on my computer. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Matt
SBDs in a club usualy suck arse ... To iprove your tapes the obveous step is to get some mics ;D but if the club has a regular sound guy and he is realy realy nice ... you may be able to get him to mix you a seperate mix / get acces to make a seperate mix ... this would involve either using a Aux Channel on the main mixer (which the sound guy would probibly do himself) OR letting you plug into the individual channel outs (note: not all boards have these) then you would be doing the mix yourself and would need ~$100 worth of equipment (cheapo beringer mixer and patch cables)
Yeah, small club mixes often aren't great for recording. If you're receiving a mono feed, I don't think it matters whether you split the signal to both channels pre-D8, or if you do it in post on your PC. Either way, it's still a mono recording.
Were you recording mic-in or line-in on your D8? I believe brickwalling (http://www.oade.com/Tapers_Section/micdistortion.html) is only an issue when running mic-in, but I could be wrong.
Ran it line in. Please excuse my ignorance, mics will have no problem with a very loud show? This was a metal show.
Any decent mic can handle a metal show ... crappy sony mics cant though. If your looking at mic stats, the stat your looking for is called "max SPL" (SPL = Sound Pressure Level) ... parhaps someone could chime in with what kind of SPL would be expected at a LOUD show ? My guess is between 110-125, but i could be wwwaaaayyyy off.
and when i spoke of "crappy sony mics" i spoke of the ECM-MS907, which has a max SPL of 110.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/product/150434/SOECMMS907/REG/1458