Members Phantasm Posted March 12, 2006 Members Share Posted March 12, 2006 I'm looking for something to record our live shows and store it digitally, i.e. something I can put on my PC and either compress the audio to mp3 or it already records MP3. I know some MP3 players can do this. Does anyone know of one that's fairly inexpensive? I don't need 40GB of space, enough room to record one show and then copy it to the PC is fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Thunderbroom Posted March 12, 2006 Members Share Posted March 12, 2006 I've thought about this as well. My guess is that any stand-alone MP3 player that has a built-in mic would likely have poor recording capability. You'd likley need a good mic (and a power source for the mic as well). Far from inexpensive, but does what you want it to do. $1850 You could pick up a really small mixer, a condenser mic, and run it into a laptop for less than the above gadget. That's what I do at band rehearsals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rikshaw Posted March 12, 2006 Members Share Posted March 12, 2006 my band tried that a while back. it was very hard to find a good place to put it. you'd either get too much of the crowd, or too much bass, or too much whatever. i'd love to find a better way to do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Phantasm Posted March 12, 2006 Author Members Share Posted March 12, 2006 I looked at that in a mailer that I got in recently... and boy, it does look nice! Very pricey though. I don't mind using an external mic and some sort of a box to go from low-z to hi-z to go into the device to record... I have mics and DI boxes already. I could potentially strap the mp3 gizmo to a stand with a mic and the DI attached, and just place that wherever in the room sounds good. You are right about the laptop, and we've got one already. It's just an expensive item to leave out in the open for 45 mins while the show goes on. I figured if there's a 512MB-1GB MP3 player that was under $100 that happened to have a line in, that wouldn't be as tragic a loss if someone would walk away with it while nobody was looking. I suppose if i really wanted to also, I could put a 1GB memory stick in my digital camera and then let it video the whole set. We'd have audio and some crappy video (unless the lighting is good.) I could always strip the audio off the video and mp3 it. However, that would keep us from having pictures from the show unless we had a second camera. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Phantasm Posted March 12, 2006 Author Members Share Posted March 12, 2006 Originally posted by rikshaw my band tried that a while back. it was very hard to find a good place to put it. you'd either get too much of the crowd, or too much bass, or too much whatever. i'd love to find a better way to do it. Yeah it's going to sound like a bootleg. The trick is to walk around and see where the sound is best while another band is playing, and try to put the mic in that area. Usually the "good spot" is the soundboard, which is often a reasonably well protected area! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rikshaw Posted March 12, 2006 Members Share Posted March 12, 2006 Originally posted by Phantasm Yeah it's going to sound like a bootleg. The trick is to walk around and see where the sound is best while another band is playing, and try to put the mic in that area. Usually the "good spot" is the soundboard, which is often a reasonably well protected area! yeah and if you're the only band or the first band you cant set it up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Thunderbroom Posted March 12, 2006 Members Share Posted March 12, 2006 Here's the solution that I'm going for: It's the new Peavey FX mixer. It's got an MP3 dump on the board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members moody Posted March 12, 2006 Members Share Posted March 12, 2006 Minidisks are good, and with a net md you should be able to copy to computer afterwards. From my personal experience I've yet to find an mp3 recorder with what I would call decent quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Oddsock Posted March 12, 2006 Members Share Posted March 12, 2006 The creative nomad jukebox 3 has a line in on it. You just need to provide a line level (i think) signal to it to record. You can get one for like $60 on ebay, since they are somewhat obsolete as mp3 players go, with the new ipods and all. I've heard of a few people recording live stuff with them. Just run whatever you have into it, stereo from board would be best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members One Bad Monkey Posted March 12, 2006 Members Share Posted March 12, 2006 Originally posted by moody Minidisks are good, and with a net md you should be able to copy to computer afterwards.From my personal experience I've yet to find an mp3 recorder with what I would call decent quality. Unfortunately, you can't dump your recorded tunes straight from your minidisc to the computer. You're gotta actually record them via another program (which isn't bad, because it IS digital). For some reason, Sony has been horrible in that department, which was the only thing that minidiscs HAD over any sort of mp3 device. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Phantasm Posted March 13, 2006 Author Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 Alrighty, I went the minidisc route. Someone had a kit for about $100 on ebay so I figured what the hell. If anyone's interested, I can post the results when it comes in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bassplayinguy Posted March 13, 2006 Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 have you tried pulling a line straight off the mixing board into a recording source? if they have an extra line out on it then can mix the whole band and dump it straight to the board. weve recorded a couple shows like this the only problem is when they dont have an extra line out and htey just use of the existing ones... the vocals are always way to high compared to the rest of the signals Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members y-o-y Posted March 13, 2006 Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 Originally posted by Phantasm I bet you are especially excited about trying out those used ear bud headphones Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members xXSOURCEXx Posted March 13, 2006 Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 We just began to record our shows.... We used the laptop idea but we ran it through a mackie onyx mixer with to condenser mics one far left and right at about 6 1/2-7 feet up and also used two direct outs from the board so we picked up every thing the main board was.. This seemed to work well for us.. IT helped recording 4 tracks instead of 2.....Jst my $.02 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members moody Posted March 13, 2006 Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 Originally posted by Phantasm Alrighty, I went the minidisc route. Someone had a kit for about $100 on ebay so I figured what the hell. If anyone's interested, I can post the results when it comes in. You'll be very happy with minidisk. Probably the easiest quality recording method that you will find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members groutt Posted March 13, 2006 Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 Minidisc has been good to me. Don't do what I did and set it on a speaker for a live show. The vibration caused dropouts in the recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members HandsomePete Posted March 13, 2006 Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 I know this might be too late but...I use an iriver H320 mp3 player. 20gigs, $300 new but that was a year ago and i don't think they make them anymore but i'm sure you could find one. It has a built in mic or a line in/mic input. It records directly to mp3 with no copy protection. I haven't recorded any live shows but i do use it to record practice for when we work on new songs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Phantasm Posted March 13, 2006 Author Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 Originally posted by y-o-y I bet you are especially excited about trying out those used ear bud headphones My cat is dreaming about playing with them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rikshaw Posted March 13, 2006 Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 Originally posted by moody You'll be very happy with minidisk. Probably the easiest quality recording method that you will find. so you just go soundboard to minidisk? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members lug Posted March 13, 2006 Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 My iriver will record at 44.1 Khz in mp3 format. Haven't tried it yet but I'm cerain setting levels, etc is gonna be a nightmare. Just need to buy the correct stereo mic first. http://www.iriveramerica.com/prod/ultra/700/ifp_795.aspx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Phantasm Posted March 13, 2006 Author Members Share Posted March 13, 2006 Originally posted by rikshaw so you just go soundboard to minidisk? If I had a lot of time to work on it, I'd do that. Possibly mono through an unused auxiliary. I'm just planning on bringing it to the show, pressing record, and putting it by the sound board (where it should sound best anyway.) It will be hit and miss and some will sound better than others, but for $100 I could record every show, dump the audio along with the digital camera pictures, and mp3 the wav file. This would be a way to document a bunch in the hopes that some are listenable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members moody Posted March 14, 2006 Members Share Posted March 14, 2006 Originally posted by Phantasm If I had a lot of time to work on it, I'd do that. Possibly mono through an unused auxiliary.I'm just planning on bringing it to the show, pressing record, and putting it by the sound board (where it should sound best anyway.) It will be hit and miss and some will sound better than others, but for $100 I could record every show, dump the audio along with the digital camera pictures, and mp3 the wav file. This would be a way to document a bunch in the hopes that some are listenable. That's what I've done before - unless your board has absolutely everything going into it and a really specific mix then you won't get as good a result. You may try using a mono mic and a mono line from the mixing desk - record both at once as a stereo channel. Then choose whichever is best or mix the two to a mono mix (live mix with a bit of extra clarity from the board mix?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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