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Originally Posted by Todd Stanley  I've heard on here a lot that bands often ask the soundman for recordings of the set through his mix. I have a show tomorrow and would like to do this for our band, but don't own a minidisk player or anything. What would I need to do this? I'm sure I can borrow whatever it is I need. I am assuming just an mp3 player with a line in or similar device? |
Ask the sound man before you get to the venue! It'll make things a zillion times smoother, trust me. The variables are just too numerous to assume anything without talking it out in advance. Bottom line otherwise: bring every adapter you might possibly need (XLR-->1/8", XLR-->1/4", 1/4"-->1/8", RCA--> XLR, 1/4, and 1/8, etc.) if you want a board mix, and be happy with whatever result you get.
I mix lots of jam bands that are taper-oriented. The ones that are serious about recording typically bring their own recording tech/engineer, and at the very least their own mikes and recorder. I've seen them bring in 16 track DAWs quite a few times, which also requires a 16 channel mike splitter or a lot of direct out patches as well, unfortunately.
We have a CD recorder that receives the stereo house mix in our 300 seat club, but it rarely sounds as good as a basic room recording that's done well. But that totally depends on the room and how much or how little stuff goes to the front of house mix. If you're really lucky, there may be leftover busses on the house board that can feed a dedicated recording mix, which is great when it happens and the sound guy has time to tend to it. But he may or may not even consider that to be part of his job. For me it's an afterthought, since all I can do is send whatever mix the front of house needs over to the recorder. The bigger the venue, the better the board mix is likely to sound in most cases, IME. But again, there are a lot of variables at work here.
All that said, I'm a huge advocate of recording every practice and gig. Even if the recording is lame, you're bound to find some valuable lessons in it, IME. My band got lucky and got a board mix of a show that works OK as a demo too, which was a nice surprise.
