Recording a Live show with Mbox

[spookster]

My band is playing a show this Saturday and I'm going to record it. I've got an eMac, OWC 80 gig firewire drive with the Oxford 911 chipset and an Mbox. I'm runing the the latest version of Jaguar (Heard of too many problems with Panther and external FW drives; waiting for Tiger) and the latest version of PT for Jaguar.

I'm going to be playing in the band so I'm debating on how to record the show. It's a good sounding room and a nice club with a decent PA. So I've thought about just throwing up a couple of good mics and seeing how it works. Or I could take a mix off of an aux send from the board, or some sort of combination of both. I'm leaning towards using a couple of nice mics because I will be playing and won't be able to get myself a good mix from the board and I don't know the in-house sound guy well enough to know that he can give me a kick ass mix. Holy crap, I just had a kick ass Idea!! I could get a mix from an aux send and then monitor the input of my Mbox and just wear headphones. That might work in conjuction with a good room mic. That way I could know exactly how its sounding on the way to tape and be able to hear the rest of the band at the same time for playing purposes. That just might work if I can get a good enough mix during sound-check. What do you guys think. Is that too much screwing around. Let me know if you have any other ideas/advice. Thanks in advance.

[JFreak]

stereo pair of good condensers would be my choice...

[Cyamarin]

I've tried this, and I think you'll be disappointed with the feed off of the mixer. Here's why:

The sound guy's job is to make you sound good in the room you're playing in. This does NOT necessarily mean making you sound good coming out of the board. The process of putting your signal through the speakers into the house makes a huge difference in your sound. For instance--a lot of sound guys will mix your vocal absolutely dry, because the natural ambiance of the room will add reverb to your sound, and putting reverb on the mix in the board will make it sound muddy. But when you take a feed off of the board, you're getting a bone dry vocal sound, and it sounds weird. That's just one example.

You should also consider that some venues won't let you record without paying a fee.

[spookster]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I think I'm going to take your advice. I think I can get the best results with a couple of good condensors placed properly. Which begs the other question. I'm debating using an XY stereo pattern or spacing them far apart. I'm leaning towards XY, this could help to eliminate any weird phasing issues that I might get otherwise. What do you guys think. Thanks again for the help.

[DJ Insomaniac]

XY should be good on cutting down on the possibilities of any phasing.