Somehow after 45+ years around loud music my hearing is still relatively decent. A few months ago I decided to work on setting up my studio space so we could do small group practices with headphones. First setup was taking the headphone from the "Phones" out on the mixer to a no-frills 4 channel headphone amp, with a second smaller unit by the e-drums (with it's own volume control). It really worked out well, after playing for two hours ears were fine and hadn't spent the evening shouting over amps and drums.
My "Studio/Practice" space is 12' x 16', while it's a small space there is sufficient room for three people and drummer (on the e-Kit). My goal was to have the mixer capable of sending directly to my DAW should we want to get a decent multi-track recording during practice. Last night with three of us, it actually happened. For the headphone feed I used the phones out from the USB interface and it worked great. With this configuration if we want to switch over to "live" sound it's effortless - switch the headphone line back to the mixer for "quiet" practice, or ditch the headphones and turn on the power amp for the PA.
The system is not high end but seems to work pretty well. Base hardware is a Behringer Xenyx X2222USB mixer, USB interface is a Tascam US16x08, with Cakewalk by Band lab for the DAW (freeware). Mic's are our stage gear: SM58's, SM57 clones, Sennheiser 825's. Getting to this point we recorded our practices with a Tascam DR-05 either from the back of the room or off the board. That will still be the method for the full band, but for smaller practices in the "studio" I think this will become the "go to" method. It took me about a 1/2 hour before everyone arrived to get the DAW set up, next step is to make a template for this setup.
Thought I would share: it is possible to set up a functional digital recording outfit without breaking the bank. One thing I found is there are considerable learning curves with digital hardware and software, lots to learn along the way.
Many thanks to the folks here on TB for helping me understand how to use the insert outs from the mixer to the line in ports on my interface. Couldn't have done without the help from the forum.
Observations and notes:
1) Pro: Having individual tracks from a practice is really cool to work out or add parts (and mix them in if you want).
2) Con: The Behringer preamps seem to be lower quality than the Tascam Pre's on the interface.
3) Meh: For vocals a condenser mic provides better results, but not worth the bleed over in the tight space. I was doing some recording a few weeks ago with an SE X1A for vocals going through the mixer (Behringer preamp) and it sounded pretty decent.
4) For the DAW: After the setup is completed and we are ready to start I just armed all the tracks and hit record, then hit pause until we want to record the next song. Really worked out great. Not sure how much disk space I used will need to check today.
5) The Behringer X2222USB is limited to 8 XLR inputs but for this small space it works fine. Each XLR channel has Insert which made this setup possible.
6) FYI: In this setup the Tascam US16x08 has XLR inputs (channels 1 - 8) which I don't use. All my mic XLR inputs are coming through the mixer via insert out to Tascam line in (channels 11 - 16). One guitar player has a Spark modeling amp that we run the headphone out to a line in on the mixer (channel 9) and use the Aux 1 out to send the signal to the Tascam "line" in (channel 9), and do the same for the e-Kit using the mixer channel 10 and Aux 2 out to "line" in Channel 10 on the interface. Tascam channels 9 and 10 can be switched from instrument to line levels which is really handy. For bass I'm using the XLR line out from an Ampeg BA210 v2 with a pair of headphones plugged in to kill the output.
My "Studio/Practice" space is 12' x 16', while it's a small space there is sufficient room for three people and drummer (on the e-Kit). My goal was to have the mixer capable of sending directly to my DAW should we want to get a decent multi-track recording during practice. Last night with three of us, it actually happened. For the headphone feed I used the phones out from the USB interface and it worked great. With this configuration if we want to switch over to "live" sound it's effortless - switch the headphone line back to the mixer for "quiet" practice, or ditch the headphones and turn on the power amp for the PA.
The system is not high end but seems to work pretty well. Base hardware is a Behringer Xenyx X2222USB mixer, USB interface is a Tascam US16x08, with Cakewalk by Band lab for the DAW (freeware). Mic's are our stage gear: SM58's, SM57 clones, Sennheiser 825's. Getting to this point we recorded our practices with a Tascam DR-05 either from the back of the room or off the board. That will still be the method for the full band, but for smaller practices in the "studio" I think this will become the "go to" method. It took me about a 1/2 hour before everyone arrived to get the DAW set up, next step is to make a template for this setup.
Thought I would share: it is possible to set up a functional digital recording outfit without breaking the bank. One thing I found is there are considerable learning curves with digital hardware and software, lots to learn along the way.
Many thanks to the folks here on TB for helping me understand how to use the insert outs from the mixer to the line in ports on my interface. Couldn't have done without the help from the forum.
Observations and notes:
1) Pro: Having individual tracks from a practice is really cool to work out or add parts (and mix them in if you want).
2) Con: The Behringer preamps seem to be lower quality than the Tascam Pre's on the interface.
3) Meh: For vocals a condenser mic provides better results, but not worth the bleed over in the tight space. I was doing some recording a few weeks ago with an SE X1A for vocals going through the mixer (Behringer preamp) and it sounded pretty decent.
4) For the DAW: After the setup is completed and we are ready to start I just armed all the tracks and hit record, then hit pause until we want to record the next song. Really worked out great. Not sure how much disk space I used will need to check today.
5) The Behringer X2222USB is limited to 8 XLR inputs but for this small space it works fine. Each XLR channel has Insert which made this setup possible.
6) FYI: In this setup the Tascam US16x08 has XLR inputs (channels 1 - 8) which I don't use. All my mic XLR inputs are coming through the mixer via insert out to Tascam line in (channels 11 - 16). One guitar player has a Spark modeling amp that we run the headphone out to a line in on the mixer (channel 9) and use the Aux 1 out to send the signal to the Tascam "line" in (channel 9), and do the same for the e-Kit using the mixer channel 10 and Aux 2 out to "line" in Channel 10 on the interface. Tascam channels 9 and 10 can be switched from instrument to line levels which is really handy. For bass I'm using the XLR line out from an Ampeg BA210 v2 with a pair of headphones plugged in to kill the output.
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