Recording LIVE

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Heya!

I have a question,

I was wondering, are macs good for recording live bands?

As I'm buying an iMac soon, I wonder if I could use it in my church to record some of the bands playing there?

We have 2 sound tables, that simply means I can copy the first to the second, mix it the way I want it to sound on MP3 or CD, and record it into my iMac,

So I wonder:

- would this work out?
- As the iMac (2,4 Ghz, 2 GB RAM) good enough for this?
- What kind of software do I need (GarageBand good enough?)
- Any gear needed to connect?

Thanks for reply!

Matthijs
 
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I was wondering, are macs good for recording live bands?

yes

As I'm buying an iMac soon, I wonder if I could use it in my church to record some of the bands playing there?

yes, the imac will do nicely. however, a 20 inch imac is quite a bit to pack up and take to church with you. have you considered a macbook? i do recording on both my macbook and imac, both with 1.5 gigs of ram and they perform nicely. a macbook would be a much better mobile recording computer.

- What kind of software do I need (GarageBand good enough?)
- Any gear needed to connect?

yes, garageband will work. its free, and its effective. however, you are going to have some serious limitations to just plugging in a board to your computer. it will come in as one track, making it impossible to mix or put any effects on individual instruments.

what would i recommend? pro tools. the pro tools m-powered software is great. you are going to need to get an interface as well. if you have alot of soundgear at the church already, and a decent board, im assuming the board has decent preamps and direct outs. i would look into an M-Powered FW1814. it can record 8 tracks simultaneously. this should at least be enough to record different instruments, vocals and a few drum mics into different tracks making it possible to do a bit of mixing later.

good luck
 
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yes



yes, the imac will do nicely. however, a 20 inch imac is quite a bit to pack up and take to church with you. have you considered a macbook? i do recording on both my macbook and imac, both with 1.5 gigs of ram and they perform nicely. a macbook would be a much better mobile recording computer.
Well, as I am not going to record on a weekly base, and would rather have a nice iMac, I don't see the point of buying a MacBook, because it would only be for that purpose, I don't travel at all and in high school own laptops are not allowed, or at least you can't do a thing with it :p

yes, garageband will work. its free, and its effective. however, you are going to have some serious limitations to just plugging in a board to your computer. it will come in as one track, making it impossible to mix or put any effects on individual instruments.

what would i recommend? pro tools. the pro tools m-powered software is great. you are going to need to get an interface as well. if you have alot of soundgear at the church already, and a decent board, im assuming the board has decent preamps and direct outs. i would look into an M-Powered FW1814. it can record 8 tracks simultaneously. this should at least be enough to record different instruments, vocals and a few drum mics into different tracks making it possible to do a bit of mixing later.

good luck

Thanks for your tips on that,

How much is Pro Tools? $_$

We have a pretty nice set of soundgear indeed, for recording we can use an entire sound table if we want to, so that is already a very nice thing :p (and it has preamps etc. etc. etc. on it)

but 8 tracks are not that much, when I play on stage I use 2 already :p our entire band uses like 15 channels I think :p so you will miss lots of sound, also with other bands,

but I suppose it's all getting very very expensive to just do it for fun,
I suppose I will just try it out with GB first ;)
 
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I think the only reason you would want an a/d interface is it you're recording each person individually. A 2 port a/d interface would work. Like Ryan said, it's one track, but it won't really matter since it's live and since you can't stop them in the middle of their performance to have them go back and fix a track.

Protools is expensive.

A 2 port fire wire a/d interface is like $250
 
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Ouch,

But when I pre-mix it all before plugging into my iMac, on a sound-table, with all the stuff etc. etc. so I suppose, or at least HOPE it will be mixed just smoothly,

at least it has a nice quality, the rest is just practice to mix it all good, cos you have only 1 shot :p
 
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Ouch,

But when I pre-mix it all before plugging into my iMac, on a sound-table, with all the stuff etc. etc. so I suppose, or at least HOPE it will be mixed just smoothly,

at least it has a nice quality, the rest is just practice to mix it all good, cos you have only 1 shot :p

As long as you use an output that comes after the eq and such. Some outputs are not affected by the EQ's on the mixer.

Don't get me wrong...if you have the money, you can always do something along the lines of a professional live recording.

You can daisy chain something like two Motu 828 fire wires together for 20 inputs, and get a recording software like Logic Pro to record them all at once and run each channel into the Motu and then into the you Mac...but you're looking at $2600 for that setup, just for the a/d interfaces and software.

If you're church wants the recording though, maybe they could fork over some dough for the equipment...until then, I think just running something like a two channel interface from the mixer would work fine.

edit: And the problem I find with protools is that after the entry level consumer equipment, it starts getting VERY expensive. But you do have the peace of mind of having exellent compatibility since they make software that requires their hardware. Besides, I think anything over 8 channels input requires use of a PCIe card. You would need a Mac Pro for that.
 
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There are two ways to do it, one with your computer at the concert ( and I agree), who wants to lug that around, never mind the risk of damage), and one without, which follows:
1. A cassette recorder WON'T give you good sound quality. Believe it or not, take your VHS machine, and hook up the L and R output of whatever you are recording from ( make sure it's the Line Output !! not the output to any speakers in the room !! ) to the L and R audio input RCA plug on the back of your VHS. Use a good tape, and record in Short Play if you also have Long Play - Short play is like using 7 1/2 ips versus 3 3/4 on an old reel-to-reel recorder. Because of helican scanning, the sound recording quality is near-CD ! Just set the VHS going and with a 3 hour tape....
2. At home, unless you or someone is handy with soldering plugs, you will probably have to get a local hi-fi store to make up a connecting cable, with RCA audio plugs one end, to fit into the VHS; and at the other, have the cable going into the single (stereo) audio plug that fits into the audio input hole on your Mac.
3. You need a brilliant piece of software called SoundStudio which I think is the easiest to use, the best interface, and best features. You would just open this and Click a button to start a new recording, and start your VHS playing back the tape. Watch the audio input meter of the software for a while, particularly loud passages in the music, and adjust the volume slide of the software to make sure, as the volume fluctuates, that it doesn't 'go into the red'. When you're happy -(and it's best to slightly underestimate ie have the volume a bit lower than you think in case at some point there is a music peak), close and don't Save that recording, and start again, this time letting it rip to the end. Stop the VHS and the software and save to hard drive.

The beauty of SoundStudio is that when you play it back, you will see if the visual representation of the sound wave goes above the upper line, indicating distortion. Because you recorded at a lower level, it shouldn't. But now, you can amplify any track by varying amounts, check if it stays within the lines, or Undo and try again. This will maximize the volume level of the final recording on a CD. You can edit out any 'waste' before the bands start, and Cut out any/all the recorded sound/chatter/interrruptions etc between songs. If you want them in different order, you could cut and paste them into a new File in the order you want; or if you just want to omit one or more songs, just highlight each by dragging across from beginning to end, and use Cut command.
This will make a CD that can be copied for any family and friends. But as you can see, if you just take the VHS tape and play it normally through a Surround Sound system, obviously, no video to the TV screen, but you will get the sound, the whole lot, pauses, interruptions, applause etc but in great high fidelity. If you decide to do this, and need further help, let me know.
 
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Great post Terry!!!!!

Welcome to the forums. I hope you stick around.
 
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Pick yourself up a Mackie Onyx Satellite, B&H Photo has them for $199.00 they retail for about 300-400 elsewhere. I record my daughter using garage band and logic express and the end-result is amazing, it has two inputs one for mic and one for guitar etc, two headphone outputs and even has a "talk to phones" option so you can talk to the singer as you record for retakes etc.

Going right into the mic input on your mac wont give good results.

Check it out, you wont be sorry.
 
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I don't understand what you are getting it!! We both suggest line feed going into the Mac, one captured by SoundStudio, and one by GarageBand. He is saying that he will do all mixing with sound tables prior to recording, so...
What is it you foresee and object to? Please spell it out so we can all learn.
 
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I don't understand what you are getting it!! We both suggest line feed going into the Mac, one captured by SoundStudio, and one by GarageBand. He is saying that he will do all mixing with sound tables prior to recording, so...
What is it you foresee and object to? Please spell it out so we can all learn.

I think he's saying that it would sound better through an a/d interface than straight into the line in on the mac. Makes since though. a/d interfaces are made with the primary function to switch an analog signal to a digital signal with losing as much fidelity as possible where as the line in on an iMac probably wouldn't have the quality that you would get from an a/d interface...

Would your average person be able to tell the difference? Probably not...Should you do one over the other if you require as best quality as you can get with a cheap setup and limited recording options? Probably...
 
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I find the problem with most "line in's" on computers is that they distort early and often! This is usually problemmatic for someone with less experience adjusting levels, and often you don't know it's terribly distorted until you finish the recording and play it back (at which point there's nothing you can do about it). The Onyx Satellite is a great box, and comes with Tracktion software which is quite good for computer based recording and mixing.
 
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Fellers - understand. True, the equipment you are recommending would be cheaper than a professional recording, as suggested by another responder, but still cost big bucks. He's saying it's a relatively infrequent occurrence, and doesn't want to have that kind of outlay. The RCA to Apple connection will cost less than $10. I have no recall, over 35 years of analog and then digital using line in/out, of ever having distortion when the signal was not being attenuated by some intermediary equipment. The one place in this process where it could happen is when being captured by SoundStudio which actively alters the strength of the line-in signal, and so I warned how to guard against distortion.
 
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Fellers - understand. True, the equipment you are recommending would be cheaper than a professional recording, as suggested by another responder, but still cost big bucks. He's saying it's a relatively infrequent occurrence, and doesn't want to have that kind of outlay. The RCA to Apple connection will cost less than $10. I have no recall, over 35 years of analog and then digital using line in/out, of ever having distortion when the signal was not being attenuated by some intermediary equipment. The one place in this process where it could happen is when being captured by SoundStudio which actively alters the strength of the line-in signal, and so I warned how to guard against distortion.

$200-$300 is cheap, considering....
 

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