Recording Shows

Hughesie

Well-Known Member
hey guys i really want to record some of the shows i mix, but i have no way to do it

here is what i want to do

take a feed from the desk (easily done)
and record it onto some type of player

i saw one tech using his ipod with an attachement any ideas about this
my budget is somewhat under $100 but i have an ipod if that add on can be remembered by anyone
 
Belkin makes an adapter as well as many other companys. You will not get good audio out of the ipod line ins, they are at a very low bit rate. For under a hundred, your not going to get that good of quality. If you want a good recorder thats portable, go with an marantz
 
I have used the ikey, which is plugged into my ipod. It is pretty good, but I hear that the second generation one is much better. It is well within your budget and very easy to use. Best of all, it is already in digital format. You can easily edit and burn to CD.
 
Look for any of the old Roland workstations, such as the VS-880. You can get them used for under $100, and you get at least four channels of record, with 1/4" jacks or RCA.
 
I think that you would be far better off with as mentioned above a 4 channel minimum recording system. Basically is you attempt to just use a feed from the board, you are not going to get good results, the mix that works for FOH pa is not going to work for a recording. At a minimum I would look at 4 channels, two from front of house and to from mics placed in the house, this will allow you to alter the balance after the fact and get a respectable recording.

Sharyn
 
What I do when I record shows on a four channel system is take one channel for a room mike, and make mixes for the other three. I'll send out an aux send mix, and group similar things together. For instance, in recording a chorus, I'll give one record channel to the boundary mics that are amplifying the group. Another will usually be the DI from the stage piano, and the fourth might be the soloist microphone(s). That way, when it cones time to mix, you have greater control of what you are doing. If something goes totally wrong, you have the room mike to fall back on. When it is time for a new act, just make a new aux mix.
 
i saw one tech using his ipod with an attachement any ideas about this
my budget is somewhat under $100 but i have an ipod if that add on can be remembered by anyone

That's an ikey. http://www.ikey-audio.com/ikey.htm It's about $80, and it takes your input, and adapts it somehow so that it can be recorded onto an ipod. No idea if you can control sampling rates, etc., but I'm told it does work.

Or you could try to find an old minidisc player. Ebay should have them for under $100.
 
The multiple mixes can work, especially if you can be isolated from the room where the performance is going on, problem is most of the time you are not and it gets to be very difficult to create a proper balance in the individual mixes.

In general, and this is just an opinion, with the sort of recording you are attempting to do it is mainly a matter of getting a balance between the reinforced audio and the live audio, and usually the issue is that you need to bring up the live audio to compliment the reinforced. Even though your live mic will pick up the reinforced audio, having the already mixed feed from the foh mixer will do the trick

Obviously the best is to get a system where you can split off all the inputs from the mics, and have house mics and record them all on individual tracks and be isolated from the sound.

At a minimum if you have a good foh mix position and you set up a decent pair of mics there, you can get a recording of what you probably heard at that position, but of course you will loose any after the fact correction

Sharyn
 
What did the attachment look like?

it connected to the top and looked like the note taker thing except it had a 3.5 jack im not looking for high quality sound files

how much does a cheap dat recorder cost?

the more portable the better

also i currently have a ipod 20gb (which doesn't work)
but i am upgrading to a 30gb video
 
I want to be able to take a feed from the sound desk might be two aux's (left & right) from the desk or something
 
That's an ikey....No idea if you can control sampling rates, etc.
From their own description:
Records audio to uncompressed WAV format or MP3 format (w/ selectable bit rate, up to 256kbps)

So, it would appear that you can control bitrate.

As others have said, it really depends on what you want to do with the recording that determines how you should record it... if you just want something "quick and dirty" (parhaps just for personal use) then a direct board feed will work. If you actually want to "produce" something that sounds good, then look at recording more channels, so that you can re-mix it later.
 
yeah that might be it

here is the situation
normally i would be mixing a show from behind stage via a mackie 1604vlz
how would be the best way to run outputs from that

also our major shows normally run on a Crest X8
 
oh yeah looks good
i might have a serious look at it

but first,
how do you run it
how do you run the audio from the desk to it
just through the line in?

and what program do you then record it with, i needs to be the easiest thing to do like a set and forget style thing so that i can start it and do the show and then listen to it later
 
I just worked sound for a music festival and had a little extra time between sound check and the show, so I hooked my laptop (MacBook Pro) to the board. I used the 1/8" mic input on the mac and the RCA "tape out" from the board. I opened Garage Band and recorded the show. I had never done this before, and I had no idea how it would sound. After the show, I played it back and found that it actually sounded pretty good, with one problem. In addition to the 1/8" input, the laptop also recorded via the built-in microphone. Evertyhing that I, the light board op, and the monitor engineer (who had to be in the FOH position due to no room backstage) said. This would have been good to know, because several little comments were made about the bands that shouldn't be repeated (they were REALLY bad).

The sound was clear, crisp, and much better than I expected for such a cheap way to record. In the future, I think I will pick up a usb device so I can plug in xlr inputs and try it again.
 
Yes, the line in on this device is stereo so you can record two channels from your board with a $5 dual 1/4inch to stereo 1/8th inch cable.

This sound card, (and most other USB sound cards) just shows up as a sound card on your computer so you can use any recording program to record using it. The drivers for it come bundled with a media player and recording program that I have used, or you can just use a program like Audacity (free). The only thing is it doesnt seem to work with Cubease or other profesional audio editing programs because it is not fully compatible with the slightly different format these programs use. However, you still can (and I routinely do) take the files recorded to WAV using some other program, and bring them into Cubease without any problem at all.

Really, this is quite similar to the above post about recording onto a Macbook, however the quality from an external card such as this will be leaps and bounds better then any internal laptop sound card.

Finally, this isnt the only USB sound card on the market... there are lots of others, I liked this one also b/c I wanted something with 7.1 and optical outputs too. It may be worth a look around the internet to see what you can find. Have fun!
 

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