I'm staying with my family over the holidays, and brought a small rig (SP-BMC3 > SP-SBSB1 > UA-5 > JB3) with me in case I managed to take in any recordable shows. As it turns out, there's one tomorrow night, and the promoter (whom I know) says he has a pair of AT3031s and an Edirol R-4 (along with stands and cables and such) that I can use. The thing is that I've never used an R-4 before, so I'm tempted to just run the 3031s into the UA-5 and then into the JB3 (which, aside from the model of mic, is what I usually use), to reduce the chances of screwing things up. Is there any advantage to using the R-4, given that I won't have been at the controls of one before? I suppose that if I could get a board feed as well that I could record both the mics and the board, but that'll make it even more complicated, and would also mean that I wouldn't have a copy for myself, unless I patched the JB3 out of the R-4, but if I were running aud+sbd, I don't think I'd want a straight stereo mix, due to phasing issues; if I were running four tracks into the R-4, can I just take an output feed of two of them? If I couldn't get a board feed, is there any advantage in using the R-4 instead of (or in front of) the JB3? (I guess I consider myself a conservative/safe taper, and given that I'll likely be the only one recording, I wonder if any extra quality I could get using the R-4 is worth the risk of me screwing things up due to not having used one before.)
Any help/advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
Aloha,
Brad