how would i go about this.

[johnb73]

On december 6th i will be recording a pop punk band, a rock band and a Metal band at this venue.
http://www.designshare.com/Awards/2003/projects/file.asp?ID=485

I believe it is a 750-800 seat auditorium.

I might have 16 tracks available but it is begging to look like i will only have 8 due to a friend of mine not being home and having a piece of crucial gear...

im curious How i should go about this.

mics that i KNOW i will have on that day include...

3X SM57
2X KSM137
1X shure boundary mic(i cant remember which one at the moment)
1X KSM44
3X MD421(MAYBE)

and of course i think i will only have one DI

i will be using a 003 with fully upgraded macbook pro.
the sound does not need to be perfect just good enough so the bands have an idea how they sound live.
considering my circumstances, what would you suggest i do to record.

Pop punk band:
2X guitars(one rhythm one lead)
1X bassist
1X drummer with 4 piece kit
1X singer

Rock band:
2X guitars(one sometimes only sings)
1X bassist
1X drummer with 5 piece kit
1X singer

Metal band:
2X guitarists
1Xbassist
1X drummer 8ish piece kit(depends on the day)
1X singer


Thanks for the help

orry, image tags wont work for some reason

[Smithcok]

Are you running the live sound as well?

It would be a lot cooler if you could get 16 tracks. Hmmm...
Personally I would go rent an 8-channel pre with ADAT so you can get 16 channels. Then you could just run direct outs from the board, and that would probably cover all your channels.

One option of many (8-channels):
Put a good stereo pair at the mix position. Then grab stems (or just output from your busses, depending on how you mix) of drums, guitars, vocal, bass. There are some options there too. 1 channel for both vocal and bass, likely one for each guitar. That will leave you with four, so maybe snag kick drum, stereo overheads, and bus toms and snare together (?). In the end, you may not even need the stereo pair out front.

[Tarktones]

This is how I would work it if I had that but only 8 channels.

1. Vox
2. Bass (DI)
3. Guitar 1
4. Guitar 2
5. Kick
6. Snare
7/8. OH

[johnb73]

i was thinking fo doing it the way tarktones stated, but i might combine your ideas considering they are very similar

[Tarktones]

Absolute worst case scenario, you could always spend the $240 on a Behringer ADA8000 and then just return it after the gig. It's unethical, but it'll get the job done. It's actually not a bad piece of gear to keep around. It's on my list of really decent stuff Behringer makes.

[Smithcok]

Yeah, somehow get another 8 channels....

It would be nice to do what Tarktones suggested, maybe have a few extra channels for things, and then throw either a stereo pair the mix, or maybe some mics in the audience for the "live" factor.

[johnb73]

im trying to convince my boss to lend me a mackie tt24 for the event. It is not amazing but it has light pipe out and i know the thing has only gone on one gig in its life due to the stupid way it is set up.

I might buy the behringer ADA8000 if i like it i suppose i could keep it around. i try to avoid behringer tho.

[howlingwolf487]

1X shure boundary mic(i cant remember which one at the moment)


Pretty sure that would be a Shure Beta 91. We use on in our kick for shows all the time.

[johnb73]

Pretty sure that would be a Shure Beta 91. We use on in our kick for shows all the time.

its actually a Shure MX393/C i was just too lazy too think about it.
its one of the microflex series or w/e the line is called.

[Electric Blu Studio]

What did you end up doing/ how did it sound?
Just Curious...

JM
ElectricBluStudio
Asheville, NC

[johnb73]

event was rescheduled to January 4th.
Gives me more time.

SO...

its looking like i will be borrowing my old boss's TT24 and using that to make 16 channels of recording.

Im going to just wing it with the mics, have not decided whats going on and i don't know what the PA will look like yet so i don't know what i can take from that. I hope my old boss will also lend me some 421's for the drums that would make life a bit more fun/easy

When it is all finished, i will surely post an update with more info about what i did. Then maybe some pictures, if the bad doesn't have a problem with it an audio clip or two.

EDIT:
Does anyone know if the TT24 can be used as a control surface for protools?

[slicraider]

You are missing a very critical element to any decent live recording. You have to rent an active splitter for your stage mics. This will eliminate loading down your mics and a ton of grounding issues.

[johnb73]

why? im not using the PA mics at all everything will just be double miced

[slicraider]

I didn't realize that fact. My bad.

[johnb73]

my fault for not being more clear. I appreciate you attempting to help none the less

[jpleong]

Johnb73,

To answer your question from a-ways back: no, the TT24 cannot control Pro-Tools (at least, not any way that I know of).

A few suggestions, since you're now in the home stretch:
1) Make sure the TT24 is setup for 44.1kHz sample rate (or 48k if you prefer) and not 88.2k or 96k as these upper two will halve your Lightpipe track count (to twelve).
2) Make sure you have wordclock connectors and have thoroughly familiarized yourself with the connections and operations of the TT24 -nothing's worse than going to a gig and realizing you don't know how to do... "x." If you're used to a Yamaha digital console, this is even more important as they are very different OS approaches.
3) The Lightpipe outputs of the TT24 are completely pre-fade, pre-eq, pre-dynamics so if you feel like tweaking, go right ahead without fear of ruining the direct feed.
4) If you have more than 16+ mics, it would be worth the money to rent a 24-track MDM like the Alesis HD24 or TASACM MX2424. This is both a flexibility and security issue. I never, never, never trust a computer to record multi-track audio live -especially that many channels.
5) Related to the issue above, always record with a backup -even if it's a 128kbps-mp3 two-track. The TT24 has a coax S/PDIF output perfect for capturing a rough mix to, say, an M-Audio Microtrack or Sony D50 or external TASCAM or HHB CD burner.*
6) Always record with a backup.
7) Always record with a backup.

*Recently, I went to a big (well, big for my town) festival gig where there were two main stages and one "small act" stage. Each was assigned its own sound team and I was supposed to record one of the main stages. As it turned out, each of the main stage live sound people had already brought their own laptops to record with (one guy had a Dell with Audacity, one gal brought a Mac and her Pro-tools/mBox setup) so I setup my rig for the "small act" stage and showed the live sound guy what buttons to push if he had to turn it off, etc... This was a charity gig, so I went over to the organizer and offered to help them videotape (the videographer was absent for some reason).

About three-quarters of the way through the night, the Pro-Tools user came running up to me and told me to bring my gear to her stage before a certain act came on. It turns out they were paying her big bucks to record their performance that night and she was having massive problems with Pro-Tools and hadn't brought a backup. Since my gear was already in use, all I could offer was the videocamera I was using (the annoying part was that she talked to me as if it were my problem). So, I recorded her act with a videocamera, gave her the tape, and she took the money (she didn't even bother to get my name!).

A few weeks later, I got together with the organizer for coffee and learned that the other guy's recording had 60-cycle hum throughout and he, also, didn't use a backup recorder. So, in the end, the only recording that actually worked was the "small act" stage. Aside from my self-justifying (sorry!) indulgence here, the lesson to be learned is always record live events with a backup. I don't care how stable the software or hardware claims to be or how stable it was in your living room the night before, always bring a back-up.

JP

[johnb73]

i dont have much time to post this so i will mostly be asking for questions....

"the exact email from my boss when asked how it went...
What exactly would you like to know about the use of the TT24?
I used it as both the house board, monitor board and as a signal router for my recording rack.
Aux 1 was the front stage monitors, aux 2 was the drum monitor while we used the monitor out as the main system.
I ended up sending channels 1-8 to aux sends 3-10 because i could not figure out how to get the line outs to work without a return and i simply did not have enough cable to do that.
The internal EQ and compression/gate is a god send. it was a bit tricky to isolate feedback quickly but it could be done without a rack so it made me happy.
16 channels were used, 14 were recorded(2 mics were not used during the performance) i used an 8 channel TRS snake to go from the mixer to my rack and then the next 8 were sent using ADAT light pipe
To record i used a macbook pro, digidesign 003 and protools LE

unfortunately the band that was due to sound check showed up one min. before they were to play so we could not make a usable mix for the first band resulting in both sub par sound and no recording.
Band two would not co-operate so we gave them the "you pissed off the sound guy so you no longer get extra effort" attitude due to them being jerks about having their guitar amps going through the PA...
Band 3 was not my taste, but they were very co-operative and let us sound check resulting in a good sound and a decent usable recording that i am in the process of mixing.
All in all the board started out as a beast but was tamed halfway throguh the night. While band two was playing i decided to trouble shoot everythign that was initially giving us problems (the light pipe was not co-operating)'

i was vaguly familiar with the TT24, had the band sound checked the entire gig would have been just fine. unfortunately i had to use the damn thing to do the FOH as well as record so it didn't exactly go as planned but i managed to get a GOOD recording from the 3rd and last band
The problem i had with the ADAT was not knowing how to get to the menue to change the protocol, they simply didn't match up and i had to do some reading to find out how to change it. unfortunately something happed to the kick track and it is just HISS but lucky for me the snare, overheads, and tom mics picked it up PLENTY. If i finish the mix i wil be sure to post at least one song in this thread for pointers on how to better my mix.

ask any questions you might have..