#1662320 - 03/18/04 06:23 PM
First Attempt at recording live band?
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mound
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Registered: 01/12/04
Posts: 607
Loc: Rochester, NY
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Hello all - I hope this is an appropriate forum for this post, it kinda crosses over between several areas that are discussed on this site. It's also a bit long, I apologize. I had posted this on a different board last week, no replies.
I'll begin with a bit of background. I have been working with my DAW for about a year now, mostly as a scratch pad for ideas, no "serious production".. It consists of a Dell PIII 500mhz Laptop with 512MB Ram, External 120GB Firewire Harddrive, and Echo MONA24/Laptop interface, Yamaha MG16/6FX mixer, DBX 266XL compressor/gate, Alesis M1AKMKII powered monitors, SONAR 2.2, and as of today, Sound Forge 7.0 (w/ NR2.0 plugin)
I've been able to get pretty great sounds in my humble room recording my direct instruments, some acoustic guitar with an SM57, no vocals yet, and have a fairly good grasp of getting good levels in SONAR, but last week I tried something totally new, which presented a few issues.
I ran sound/recorded my friends band live. To do this I added to my laptop based DAW, a Macki m1400i power-amp and a 100', 16x4 snake. So we mic'd everything up, I put an SM-57 on each of the two guitar tracks, two SM-57's about 2' above the cymbols, left and right, a Audix mic (I forget the model, it's my "conga" mike) just below the top of the snare to it's side, to capture the very loud snare and the hi-hat which was up above it. A Shure BETA 52 in the kick, and each vocalist I believe was using an SM58. The bass was direct. So I'm back there in the sound area, which is not seperated at all from the room, everything mic'ed into the snake and into the mixer, ALT1-2 went back out to a powered head on stage which ran the monitors, on ALT3-4 I put the DBX, with just a very tiny bit of compression to make it all punchier.. After setting the various pans hard left/right and assigning various tracks to SUB1/2 or SUB3/4, I had four tracks, going out into my Echo MONA and recording in Sonar (Bass, all Drums, both guitars on one track, both vocals on another)
So far so good right? (edit: Everything is also on the stereo bus, which are converted to mono to feed the house, things aren't panned hard L/R in the room (end edit)
The mixer mains are feeding the Mackie m1400i, and Mackie powereing the main PA speakers (a couple of 18" JBL something or another, not mine..) and the house is cranking.. The room really sounds good, the guitar player had helped me setup the actual mix, 'cause I had only heard his band once, but anyway - room sounds great. Things are pretty clear, except perhaps the vocals, but the compressor and some EQ helped bring them out. All meters I see are peaking around 0db, that's hardware and in SONAR. My phones (nice Sennheiser HD-280) are plugged into the MONA headphone out, so I can hear what's being recorded - and they do a great job of attenuating outside noise.. As the show goes on, I tweak levels on the board here and there as I notice things that could sound better (should I not have done that seeing as my tweaks were going to tape?)
So all should be well right? The next day I listen to it and it just sound "flat" and "dull".. Now I've grown up listening to bootleg recordings, audience and soundboards (read: The Dead or Phish) and I know what a basic live recording can sound like, but this isn't it. As I solo each track, everything is just like, weak and dull. Pretty clear on their own, but just dull and muddied together.
So in SONAR I add a parametric EQ to each track, and a bit of compression to the drums and bass, solo each one and sweep various settings to get a good sound on the individual track.. This did make it sound better, a little reverb and chorus on the vox "smoothed" them out a bit.. I even panned the guitars track just a bit to the right as it seemed to allow more space and the sound came out a bit. But as I walk around listening to this for a while I'm just feeling there's just something not right about it.
Anyway - sorry, long post.. Anybody have suggestions for what I may have done wrong? (I know, it's hard w/o sound clips, but I've pretty well described everything I've done) - it just frustrated me that the live sound was soo pristine but the recording was just "ehh". I mean with that kind of gear I should have been able to get a pretty decent recording, but I'm also pretty sure that in this case if I had just put a pair of Schoeps CMC621 in the back of the room and did one track stereo, I'd probably be digging the sound alot more, if that makes any sense.
thanks!
-paul
_________________________
"You look hopefully for an idea and then you're humble when you find it and you wish your skills were better. To have even a half-baked touch of creativity is an honor."
-- Ernie Stires, composer
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#1662322 - 03/18/04 09:46 PM
Re: First Attempt at recording live band?
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Jazzman
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Registered: 08/15/01
Posts: 1409
Loc: ,,Hartland MI,USA
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mound, too bad you couldn't have soloed each mic to hear what you were getting. Maybe you could have picked up on something being wrong with the mix that way, bleed over from one mic to another.
(Quote)
"My phones (nice Sennheiser HD-280) are plugged into the MONA headphone out, so I can hear what's being recorded - and they do a great job of attenuating outside noise."
This I see as another problem.......mono. You could have heard problems if you were listening in stereo instead. You may have been able to detect where the weak points were through a stereo feedback. The levels that you were looking at on the meters may have been bleed in of the other instruments in other mics, giving you a false sense of what you were trying to get and hearing the whole thing in mono through the phones.
You saw the peaks, looked ok, but the individual instruments were weak. Mono in the phones, mono in the room, and you were trying to get a stereo mix. You were doing it somewhat wrong in the set-up I believe. It is also important to make sure that the placement of the mics are such that are as much seperated as possible to capture the mix as you need to(nothing new there).
This of course is MHO. As far as the electronics go, someone else will need to step in to see the compatibility within the gear you were using for the mix.
Did you try placing everthing in mono to see if it sounded OK then??? This will get you back to where you were listening everything in mono.....I bet it would sound as good as you heard it. What you did was screw up the mix by trying to straighten it out. 
Just a couple of thoughts and opinions.
My fade-out..........
Jazzman 
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#1662323 - 03/19/04 11:00 AM
Re: First Attempt at recording live band?
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mound
Gold Member
Registered: 01/12/04
Posts: 607
Loc: Rochester, NY
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Thanks for your replies.. A few comments on both replies thus far:
Kylen wrote:
Hi mound - Your comment makes me ask about the size of the room you were in and how far away you were listening when it sounded pristine.
You also mention that the snare was 'loud' you mean overdriving the room loud - bleeding into other mics loud ?
I guess later you say the room sounds great - is that up close to the band or way back like 50' away ? Was the bass in the room rolling off at your live listening position ?
Later do you listen to each of the close mic'd tracks and discover mush ? Maybe your mixing room is hyping the bass a bit too, if that's a problem stick a couple of socks into those M1 ports (I did) especially if the speakers are near walls in your mixing room. 
Jazzman wrote:
mound, too bad you couldn't have soloed each mic to hear what you were getting. Maybe you could have picked up on something being wrong with the mix that way, bleed over from one mic to another.
"My phones (nice Sennheiser HD-280) are plugged into the MONA headphone out, so I can hear what's being recorded - and they do a great job of attenuating outside noise."
This I see as another problem.......mono. You could have heard problems if you were listening in stereo instead.
The levels that you were looking at on the meters may have been bleed in of the other instruments in other mics, giving you a false sense of what you were trying to get
You saw the peaks, looked ok, but the individual instruments were weak. Mono in the phones, mono in the room, and you were trying to get a stereo mix. You were doing it somewhat wrong in the set-up I believe.
I think getting a good isolated solo level set for each instrument is probably the biggest missing thing..
thanks!
-Paul
_________________________
"You look hopefully for an idea and then you're humble when you find it and you wish your skills were better. To have even a half-baked touch of creativity is an honor."
-- Ernie Stires, composer
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