how do you get a decent soundboard recording from a club???

afurth · Post by **afurth** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:31 pm

the vocals are always so much louder in the mix becuase it sounds good coming through the PA - sounds like shit in the recording. any suggestions?

my band plugged into the board and recorded into protools but my guy is out of town for a few weeks who knows how to run it. if the vocals are SUPER LOUD is there a way to turn them down using EQ/effects/etc. (this is a single track recording)?

Speenis · Post by **Speenis** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:53 pm

if its all one track then its impossible to separate certain things out, like the vocals

I don't think theres anything you can do after it has been recorded

sunglassesatnight · Post by **sunglassesatnight** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:10 pm

You need a dedicated tape/record out that you can control separately. Monitor on site during soundcheck to get a solid sound.

Recording in mono is also a terrible idea, as you should be mixed in stereo anyway, and post processing in mono is horrible anyway.

SO, your solution either is to dedicate some outs that you can mix separately from the board or to run mics to record the house mix next time. I'd say you're about stuck with what you have right now. There really is not much you can do to change the mix in a poorly mixed recording, especially not a mono one.

UNCcrombie · Post by **UNCcrombie** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 5:25 pm

like above you can have them feed you a send in which you can go to your interface and then just have him mix your mix while you're doing soundcheck and then check it when your done

eliot1171 · Post by **eliot1171** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 6:06 pm

I was kinda wondering this too. Tim Reynolds is coming to Lincoln to play at a very small venue. I wanted to hook up to the sound board to record it. I would only have my laptop, Cool Edit, and a small Behringer mixer to work with. What would be the best setup?

sunglassesatnight · Post by **sunglassesatnight** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 8:05 pm

It isn't going to be good with what you have.

First of all, they're not going to give you any A/C power, so the mixer's out. Second, your laptop battery will probably not run long enough to get the whole show. Third, without that mixer, all you have is probably a 1/8" line in jack, which ain't good for much. Fourth, a board like Tim will take with him or will run will have HOT outs (professional line level or +4 dB). I don't want to get too technical, but almost certainly the outs you get will be hot enough to clip a digital recording, especially if you're going line in on a laptop with no in-line attenuation. That's not to even go into the quality of the laptop's internal analog to digital conversion either.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

afurth · Post by **afurth** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:15 am

so back to my problem - we recorded the tracks in stereo, with just a little bit of panning. there are two tracks - but we obviously don't have every track individually recorded.

anyone have any EQ tricks to make this shit sound crisp?

sunglassesatnight · Post by **sunglassesatnight** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:25 am

Right, you have one stereo track.

If your problem is still the vocals, which I assume it is, you're still stuck. If you don't mix a recording out separately from the P.A. out, there's not much you can do.

The board is mixed for the P.A. to sound good in the room. This is why a lot of soundboard recordings are junk. It's because the outs from the board are not mixed to produce a recording, but to sound good to the FOH guy, at the board, through the P.A. To get a good board recording, you either have to mix separately or get lucky.

I still don't think you can E.Q. out a loud vocal in the mix. I suppose you can play with the mids, but you're going to also kill the mids on any instruments, so I really don't think it's going to do you any practical good.

afurth · Post by **afurth** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 4:03 pm

well here's the thing... we've got it sounding pretty good (the track is streaming on my website at http://www.andrewfurth.com ), however, the bass drum is clipping HARD. on protools, it sounds fine, but when we mix it down, it all the sudden appears and it ruins an otherwise solid recording.

any suggestions? are our parameters on protools off, etc.?

listen to the track there and tell me what you think - if you have a minute

thanks

sunglassesatnight · Post by **sunglassesatnight** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:23 pm

Now that seems really really weird to me. I'm not coming up with any reason why it would do that. If the mic was overloading, you'd hear it in post.

Edit: A long shot, but possible: does it clip on mixdown in WAV? It's possible that you're getting some dirty mp3 artifact doing that, I guess.

eliot1171 · Post by **eliot1171** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:44 am

SimsUK wrote:Now that seems really really weird to me. I'm not coming up with any reason why it would do that. If the mic was overloading, you'd hear it in post.

Edit: A long shot, but possible: does it clip on mixdown in WAV? It's possible that you're getting some dirty mp3 artifact doing that, I guess.

I've had this problem with Cool Edit sometimes. It had something to do with mixing down into an MP3. I mixed it into a WAV and converted it with a separate program and it worked fine.

sunglassesatnight · Post by **sunglassesatnight** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:09 pm

That's what I thought it might be. I don't use ProTools, but I do use Audition/CEP and the mp3 encoder that's built in is pretty terrible.

Plus, you ought to save copies of everything in WAV anyway.

afurth · Post by **afurth** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:11 pm

well my buddy is converting it to WAV this afternoon and i'll see if it works out - thanks for the suggestions guys!

sunglassesatnight · Post by **sunglassesatnight** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 11:15 pm

I'm curious to find out how the remixdown worked.

afurth · Post by **afurth** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 3:44 pm

SimsUK wrote:I'm curious to find out how the remixdown worked.

oh, i totally forgot to tell you guys - sorry

it worked perfectly and sounded great. thanks for the suggestion! it was some sort of weird mp3 effect and the result actually sounds pretty good.

you can hear the new mp3 tracks (without the clipping) at http://www.myspace.com/theprojectboston