Can you please detail what the band consists of, what kind of recording equipment you have to use and your mic selection? The XY set up will work but unless the band has a perfect balance and the room sounds good chances are you going to wish you had more to work with when you mix /master. Kurt

I have a 24 track hard disk, an 8 channel digital mixer, Sytech pre's (4 channel), Rode NT4, and 2 large condensers.

The band will be going through a mackie 16 channel mixer. Rock / Alt Rock is the flavor of the day. Drums, guitar(s) bass and vocals with harmonies. This is the kids first real gig!

hi all
I do this every week
IMHO forget about the nice pres you have - AND your mics - take a line from each channel of the Mackie to your recording input - it's live - you most likely will not ever hear enough to justify any more effort - the last cd I put out - last week by the way - was recorded from a live Mackie board - into a Korg d16 (8 channels of 16 bit) - as a live cd it sounds very good -
sometimes for certain live setups I will drag out the studio setup (my studio setup is a radar 24 classic and a yam 02r96 board with lots of outboard pres etc - so I do know good studio sound), but it really is a total pain - and I really don't think the vast majority of listeners hear the difference.
While we all want sonic excellence - let's keep some perspective when doing a live recording

just my 2 cents

Dan

hi again
I should clarify an important detail I omitted earlier
after I have done the live recording on the Korg, I dump the material down to wave files and load them into the Radar - then I edit and mix on the radar in the studio - sorry if the earlier post was misleading
Dan

Well here's how it went down. . . I ended up using a single LC Mic in a perfect triangle from main to main to Mic. I used no compression. The room emphasized the Low end with Boom and Hi end with a raging Hi-hat. I had -3db low (shelve) and -6db high (Shelve) and mid -5db cut at 324hz with a Q of 1.

This all sounded good in tech-rehearsal. Then the lights went down and the soundman was tweaking his ass off. . .

At this point I really just had to let tape (hard disk) roll. I watched my levels from there forward. I could not hear much difference from the live sound and the sound that I had coming through my mixer. I did have closed capsule headphones.

I really could not take anything off of the live board. I would have I liked to take a direct bass feed as well as the drum grouping. Not this time.

I did come out with a rather dry mix. The Bass was there but light. The hi-hat was there but not annoying. The vocals were way back in the mix. Yikes.

I did a direct data load from my Mackie HD to my DAW and separated the songs. I had to boost the shit out of the Bass and the Mids. I did a cut on the bass up to 38hz. 12db from 110 with a Q of 1 and 5db gain at 500 with a Q of 1. Vocals are now more in the mix but still a little weak. Added some 250 but no improvement. I did have to compress the shit out of it to have everything come together.

All in all I ended up with a reasonable rendition of the event. Here are some things I would have done differently

Bring a Flashlight - My Cell phone worked pretty well
Cut two tracks one with my tweaks and one flat just to have a baseline.
Instruct the soundman to let me know when he is going to do a major volume adjustment
Get the direct feeds where possible.

Any hints from your experiences would be helpful

I second taking the outs out of the board esp if its a 4 or 8 bus. On top of that i would have x y ed for the overall live sound, I've done this well for a mini 32 peice symphony, and btw my grandma says its the best shes ever heard that lil church symphony sound out of the 14 other guys that tried doing it. so :p

Mini 32 piece LOL. . . In a rock scenario how do you eq? It so loud it is near impossible to hear what is actually being picked up by the mic?

First of all, I would have found the hottest chick in the bar and paid her to distract the idiot sound guy from messing your life up. :D
If that fails i've heard that chloroform and a body double works good.(har dee har har!)

The only things you could have done here, would be a direct feed from track to track, or used your own mics on the stage. A splitter snake to another room is a good idea too.

Sound like you did real good for what you had to work with. :tu:

Chlorphorm - Is that legal? :D