Mobile recording rig

[digdrum1]

Hey all. Anyone have a mobile recording rig out there? What are you using and how do you like it? Let's keep it in the digital world for now just for grins.

[lvjazzman]

G4 laptop, Digidesign 002 Rack, PreSonus Digimax 96 (8 more pres via optical for the 002R) OWC Mercury Firewire 400/800 drive. I love it. The only weak link is the G4 laptop. It is only a 400 mHz Titanium. It has a gig of ram and a 7200 RPM internal drive, but 400 mHz is not much power. I am curently tracking a bands drums with this setup. The drums are in a large room in one of the band members houses. I am tracking a huge kit with 12 mics and that is about the limit for the computer without choking. Boy am I looking forward to the Bass, Elec. GT. and vocal overdubs. Those I will be using the desktop (dual 1.25 gHz, FW800, with 1.25 gig of ram) at my place.

[StrykeBack]

I was using a yamaha aw2816. Amazing sound for the little machine and very easy to work with. I still have it but i plan to sell it when i finally find a buyer. I needed more midi and nonlinear editing features for my film scoring...Haven't had to load my PC rig around yet to record a band but i'm dreading it...

[LTA]

I've got a powerbook g4-based system built around an RME digiface. One rack has the digiface and the A/D in it, complete with a 1/4" patchbay on the back. I have 2 more racks, with 8 and 4 channels of pre.

Looking back, 3 octopres would have given me 24 channels of input, but that wouldn't have fit in to my goal with this rig.

I can bring the RME and a laptop (2 racks spaces and a backpack) to a session in any studio, and just tie into the patchbay.

In a weird way, i consider my rig to be more a mobile studio in a box, as compared to a purpose-built remote recording rig. I have a few different preamps for different sounds, but rarely will use every input at the same time.

Now, with any laptop-based system, it would be a good idea to turn off frivilous eye candy such as drawing the waveform while recording and ultra-fast meter response. Make sure the screen saver is completely turned off. And try to use an external drive. Any of the above can cause a system to hiccup, especially with higher track counts.

[digdrum1]

Anyone use their rigs to actually record live gigs?

[LTA]

To clarify it more:

Yes, my "brain" rack interfaces very nicely with the FoH direct outputs (or subgroups). Sometimes i need to trim the a/d to fit the board, but having 0 VU on the board = -20 dbfs rms usually is good enough to get by anything other than gross user error. I have done this with the powerbook w/ 16 tracks that managed to keep going without glitching for 2+ hours. Never had a show go much longer as of yet, but i figure the rig would keep going till it ran out of disk space.

I can't deal with a mic split in this configuration, given I have a limited number of pre's.

3 octopres in a rack with an rme digiface gives you a 24 input 4-space rig that can interface with anything. I personally don't own it, but can tell you from experience it works quite effectively in the field. There are other I/O boxes you can use too, but my personal RME has never let me down (yet, knock on wood).

Now, my most used device to record live gigs is my old and trusty tascam DA-P1. I've got a set of condenser mics that don't crap out the preamp, and all is good. This thing has never let me down. I don't think it is capable of letting me down. Even when i'm running a multi-track daw session, the da-p1 is there recording a stereo mix. Not quite worthy of "remote" status, but it plays very nicely outside of a controlled environment. Live to 2 track, mix to 2 track, it doesn't care. It just records. Works nicely with outboard a/d converters too. 16 bit is nothing to mock :D