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FAQ: Record L&R and Use Aux 6 for the PA

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RoadRanger:
So, who's been doing this and what luck have you been having with getting a decent demo recording? I was planning on never doing a board recording but one of my regular bands can't afford me bringing in my multitrack capable board and really needs audio that they can mate up with video they are having someone shoot at an upcoming gig.

I plan on doing a "set and forget" PA mix during the first few songs and using my high isolation headphones to mix the recording on-the-fly. The DL1608 will be sidestage but I do have some 25 foot headphone extensions I can use so can set up out front - or maybe in another room so I can concentrate on the recording? The problem with high isolation headphones is that they don't isolate bass frequencies very well  I suppose I can EQ the bass later if needed?

I'm really hoping some of you have become proficient at this and can give me some of your hard-won wisdom :) .

WK154:
I'd spend my time on getting a good FOH sound and recording it in stereo (2 mics out front and to either side not in the FOH Mix) than to try to mix on the fly for a demo CD. I used to drag a Yamaha AW1600 around to collect stems and post mix but looking back it really wasn't worth it. Of course if they need a lot of help then you may not have a choice if you know what I mean. Timing tracks of some sort are quite useful. A lot will depend on the room and the equipment your willing to bring. Do you have Auria? Do you just want to use the DL and iPad? What's the setup (# of mics etc)? Will aux 6 be enough for balance or do you want to separate  tops from bases with some control?

Jerrylee:
I have done this and it worked pretty darn good. As you know recording the mains only has a big set of problems in getting the sound right. Stage volume makes the live mix almost nothing like what we would want for a recording. I was the first person to come up with the aux as mains idea way back when the old forums existed. Beno even thanked me for that.

Of course to get this to work great you need everything mic'd up, or plugged in direct, which I am sure you are aware of. Another good idea to try is a pair of wireless in ears, or headphones, and get away from the band. I did a mix for a band a while ago at the four seasons in south Florida. I had a room to sit in while they were playing to get away from the private party. I still had full working control of the band. If I had plugged in my wireless IEMs then I could have ait and mixed the recording without noise issues.

I did sound at a halooween party for a band. They wanted me to record and luckily I had them all mic'd. The room was big enough for this. Because I had no idea at first they wanted a recording I didn't use the aux setup. It was brought up a few minutes before they had to play. The recording sounded good. I knew it would. I did say if I knew this was going to happen I would have set the recording up separately. The drummer asked me what I needed to do. So during a break I rewired, and reset so everything was mains from auxs, and a separate recording mix. I also added an overhead to the drums. I was not able to monitor the signal at this point but using the level meters I was able to create a seperate mix. When we listened back to the recodings it was a lot better the second time using a seperate mix. Imagine if I actually could hear it how much better I could have made it.

So as far as my experience goes it works very well.

WK154:
Let me go into a little more detail for some of you that may be new to this. Given that RR wants to walk away with recordings of 2 channels worth and TIME= $ in this case otherwise he would have brought more equipment that he has. I take that to mean that the mix-down will be done live. To make this manageable and to have something other than a dual mono from the existing mics possibly artificially contrived (panned) stereo let the two mics I mentioned give you the real thing a true stereo image without any effort on your part other than a good mic placement. These are the only inputs on L&R and that's what you will hear in your earphones and record. You can adjust the FOH mix in aux 6 to suite the recordings and your audience will most likely appreciate it as well. You could also use the new stereo link on aux 5 and 6 and balance the speakers beyond the DL at setup time. Room acoustics and other factors will have tremendous influence on the overall sound. Yes you also don't need to have everything individually mic'd this way. RR knows this I'm sure but JL keep reading it's in chapter 2 of recording 101. :) For post if you even want to spend the time you can deal with stereo width, compression, dynamics etc. things that can't be done in real time that are typically done in mastering a CD or DVD. A timing track will help the Video mix guy to sync audio with his video. You won't get SMTE out of a DL but it can be added post to the original in an editor. I've done it both ways not with a DL (early on) and settled on this as a good compromise solution given the time constraints and equipment limitations. I think you can swing two SD condensers mics and mic stands on this. Eyes sometimes help from a FOH position in dealing with the mix as well. This all requires 2 iPad's that I know you have. If that's too far away then you'll have to use you Galaxy IEM for the earphones. I know more gear to shlepp. Dave Rat has a unique method for mixing that I like even better but unfortunately it requires feature not on this mixer.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMMmR1u0CFk
Even small venues can benefit from this.

RoadRanger:
Well, tonight was the night and it worked pretty good IMO :) .

A snippet: http://www.aspinock.com/foo.aac

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