Checking in to see if you're still happy with this setup for silent band rehearsal through headphones? I'm on the fence between this, a Jamhub Tourbus (discontinued) and a Roland HS-5. I'll use primarily for silent band practice with a quality edrum kit. The separate headphone mixes of the Livetrak make it a contender against the other two. Do you think the "live sound" through headphones on the Livetrak would be the best option?
I love the "live sound" through the headphones option. We're practicing and recording Sunday. And we use a edrum kit too. If we didn't use an edrum kit the drummer would blow us out of the room. But that's one of the advantages to using the headphones and an edrum kit, we can use a very small space. The only thing that can be heard outside of the headphones are vocals and guitar. If it's acoustic guitar, I run it direct to the board but you still have the volume of the acoustic guitar itself in the room. If it's electric guitar I mic the cab with two mics. Because of that we go back and overdub the vocal tracks so we have clean vocals with no bleed over from other instruments into the mics like we get when we record the original vocals while playing.
The one thing I do not like, but I understand why, is when recording, it records whatever signal you send to it "flat". If you use the board's EQ and/or FX bus, those do not get recorded. The reason behind that is if you use the board at a live gig and you record that gig, you don't want the sound after it has been adjusted on the board for the room's acoustics. So even though you can set up FX and EQ directly on the board for live sound via monitors, PA, or headphones, that's all it's for is the actual live sound, not the recorded sound. If you want FX in the recording you either have to:
1) Add them later in a DAW
2) Run some sort of FX in your signal chain before the signal hits the board.
Like I said, I don't like it, but I understand it. Say you're in a room that is boomy and you EQ out a lot of the bass for it, you obviously don't want that in your recording. Or the room needs a lot of bass so you EQ it in. What works for the room may not work for a recording that can be played on various playback devices.
The only thing that is recorded post signal are the levels, and compression if you go into the options and tell it to record post compression. I've contacted Zoom and ask them to look into a future firmware update to let you decide to record pre or post EQ and/or FX. Cause those of us who use the board via headphones could then cut out a lot of post work later in our DAWs.
I hate sharing this as this was only the 2nd recording I had done using the LiveTrak L-20. And in a room not much bigger than a bathroom, and I was still learning tricks to keep stuff from bleeding over into the the mics.
But it also shows how fast and easy one can get up and going with a board they know nothing about. And I was more preoccupied with monitoring the board than I was playing bass. So the bass lines are pretty simple.
The Wind Cries Mary (straight board / pre DAW)
The Wind Cries Mary (post DAW)
And a 2nd bass track added as well so there's two bass guitars
An EMG GZR split P loaded 1985 Epiphone tuned D#, A, D, G (original bass track)
2000 Peavey Millenium BXP 5 string / B, E, A, D, G (2nd bass track)
