Recording live music from soundboard (outputs?)

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BigBadBiologist

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So I'm going to be recording a show my friend's band is doing tonight and this is the first time I'll be doing something like this. I'll be using Audacity on my MacBookPro.

From what I've read, soundboards generally have either RCA stereo, 1/4" mono, or (unlikely) XLR style outs. Are there any other possibilities I may run in to? I'm ok as long as the board has RCA or 1/4".
 
OK, Alot of Mixing boards, will have standard outputs. Such as:

Tape Out: This is a stereo 1/4" RCA connectors you can use these with a adapter cable:
Submix out: This is the mix before it hits the power sections: You can use these aswell, they may be dual RCA's or they may be 1/4" phone or other. These are the ones I would go with. Remember when recording music live you can't just stop whenever you want. Try and keep your level between -6 and -3db this will give you some headroom for peaking. Good luck

You can use minijack to stereo RCA or RCA to RCA or 1/4" phone jack to RCA's depends on what your audio interface has.

How are you planning on recording it just one long track? or stopping and rearming the tracks between songs?
you need to have all this planned out. How long can your software record before hitting limit..etc?
Ho much free space do you have? what bit depth and sample rate..etc....you need to do some planning if this is your fisrt time a good plan will go along way to getting the tracks you want and need for editing.
 
Right now I'm practicing by recording one of their previous live shows (that they paid someone $600 to record) being played through another computer. I'm recording at 22KHz and 16 bit and I've got space to record 157 hours of music. If I increase the bitrate up to 44KHz, I still have space for 87 hours available. I just don't think I'll need quality that good.

So with Audacity, I can just hit stop and record and it makes a new track for each song. I'm still learing, but I'm pretty sure I can export each track separately.
 
If your gonna be doing editing on the music you need to be recording at 24 bit and 96 Khz. At this rate when you edit or apply ANY type of effects you want get errors that you would with lower bit depths and frequecny rates. 22 Khz is way,way too low. You need to be recording in better quality. Consider:

16 Bit @ 44.1 Khz -Cd Quality
16 Bit @ 48Khz - Dat Quality
24 Bit @96Khz - Digital mastering quality.

If these guys are gonna pay they are gonna want something that sounds good. Check your capacity 24/96 or 32/96 dpending on the application
You cannot record AT CD quality and then ,aster it nd put it on CD it won't sound as good as a CD. You need to sample the audio in a higher bit depth and frequncy rate then you apply ediitng and whatever else you need and then you dither down to CD quality. I am guessing you don't know anything about Limiting and compression correct? -Trying to figure all this out a few hours before the job is not really the way to do it.
I can try and help but....
 
Heh. It's nothing that big. Basically, they just want the shows recorded to check how they played and maybe handout CDs of previous shows or upload the shows to Archive. (and I'm not getting paid :) )

I'm probably not going to be applying effects or filters or anything.

But I really appreciate the help thus far.

/edit: 48KHz, 24bit and I've got 40 hours worth of space.
 
OK, anyway it is generally acceptable to record track in 24/96. Then you can do whatever you like with them. Take my word for it. If you want to put them on CD you do some compression and limiting and dither down to CD quality 16/44.1. This way they will sound decent. If you had of recorded at 16/22khz you wold have gotten something similar to a badly recordrd Yinyl record. When you record you need head room in the sampling to prevent errors from any number of different actions. So:

Record at 24/96 set your levels to around -6 and -3 during the warm ups. This way if there is any peaking it won't clip out. -Going over 0db which "clips" the top off the waves and distorts. With this bit of head room you can do what you want. I would suggest recording a song. when it's over stop and save it and rearm the editor for another song. this way if you get a crash you lose ONE song only. -this make sense? -the rest will be safe on the Hard drive and you have time to get the system up and running again for the next song;)
Good luck.
 
Yeah, the bit about recording each song individually is a nice idea. I'm not sure if I'll have time to do that though. I've been doing a lot of recording with it today and I've only crashed it once while I tried to change the bitrate in the middle of a song. I'm thinking this is a pretty stable setup for recording. Also, I have Audacity set up to back up every 3 minutes, so I shouldn't lose more than one song.

And 24/96 gives me enough space to get 20 hours, so that should be fine.
 
Yes, record at that bit depth and frequency. Then you dither down to 16/44.1 for CD. Do NOT record at 16/44.1 and think your saving time because it does not work like that. Remember proper levels. If the recording goes into the red and clips your losing information..
and is it's bad enough and for long enough you can easily hear the distortion.. The main points behind recording is to get all the information being presented. Good luck with your project.
 
I think I'll be able to adjust the input gain so that I'll be able to keep it between like -10 and -5. My adjustments aren't fine enough to get any closer without potentially clipping... especially because they go from some very soft stuff to very hard.

Thanks for all your help. I'll send you a link if we ever decide to upload it to Archive. [shameless plug] (and in case anyone wants to check them out now) [/shameless plug]
 
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