Topic: Recording from the soundboard

[yltfan]

(I stand to be corrected on this)

Worth noting that these are desks out there with no 'standard' audio outputs.

e.g. this was in use in a small local venue earlier this month:
http://uk.yamaha.com/en/products/proaudio/mixers/digital_mixers/ls9_16/?mode=overview

I'd arranged permission to desk-record. Got an email from the tour manager at 5pm on the night of the show to say that the only output was USB. Took a 4GB USB flash drive with me, which turned out to to be way over the top, as the best available output was 192k mp3. Recording turned out fine but I'd have been stuck without the USB drive.

I've seen this before. I'm not sure if the standard outs were all taken, or if it was some weird all digital board, but the only outs available were spdif and usb. I had neither

[indietaperwloo]

Yeah, these days as digital consoles become more popular, always be prepared to use S/PDIF or AES/EBU connections or in some cases USB.  Also keep in mind that most digital desks (particularly the Yamaha LS9 and M7CL) have what are called Omni Outputs which basically means that the outputs can be assigned to anything and not just the main mix.  Great for sound engineers, not as great for tapers because let's say the club is using a Yamaha LS9-32 which has 16 omni outputs - all XLR.  Assuming it's a stereo PA, 1 and 2 are the stereo main bus and 3-6 are monitor mixes.  Basically this would mean, the FOH guy would have to either assign a stereo pair of inputs to the main bus (which is easy enough) or you would have to create a separate mix bus for the recording gear, and that basically means another mix that the FOH guy would have to set up and setting up mixes for tapers isn't what they are paid to do.  Being a FOH guy as well as a taper, I can see both sides of the table as I have had to accommodate tapers and video people on a few occasions and with digital consoles this means extra time programming the console.  Just something to think about.