Recording: Mixer to USB

[khedspeth]

Guys/Gals,

Our praise team has recently went from individual amp support to using the house sound system (mackie board). I need a "easy" way of recording off this board to either an ipod or a thumb drive or even a flash card. Any suggestions? We are currently using tapes to record the service and converting. I don't want to use a laptop at the board and don't want a separate digital mixer. Is there a simple and economical interface that we can use? Thanks for your help.

[Skywalker83]

You cant take a recording directly to a USB stick directly, you have to have a laptop of something to put the signal through.

I would use the tape outs from the desk Into a laptop and use a program like Wavelab to record the service. Then use wavelab to edit it.

[khedspeth]

I do realize some kind of Analog to digital conversion has to go on but had something like this in mind...

http://www.ikey-audio.com/ikeyplus.htm

any thoughts? i really want to keep this as simple as possible which kinda rules out a laptop.

[Skywalker83]

The other thing you've got to take into account is the how much audio you are going to be recording. Recording raw audio takes up huge amounts of storage space. You would probably need some sort of external hard drive plugged into this unit, say 100Gb. this would give you alot of storage, but would still require regular erasing of old material.

I still think in the long run that using the laptop setup IS the simplist solution. Because once you record all this audio your going to have to put it into a computer to edit it. So why not record it onto a computer so its there, ready to be edited.

[khedspeth]

Skywalker,

I agree. There is only so much you can do to make things "simple" so that anyone can handle it. Thanks for the input.

[DocBop]

Get something like the little Zoom handheld recorder or similar recorder with line inputs and take a feed from the mixer.