Help a Noob Record a Concert

[littlefalls]

Hey, I've been having a lot of trouble trying to find the best way to record a live concert. It'll probably be loud, obviously, because it's a rock concert- and I will be very close. I also need my equipment to be a minimum because they don't allow voice recorders, cameras, ect. I have no intellect when it comes to recording, and i've read another topic on this site about live recordings, and I really don't understand it lol- I need it to be dumbed down for me lol. Can you guys please help me find the best way possible, and cheapest way possible to do so? Thanks, and sorry for my noob posts lol.

[A440]

There are a lot of opinions on what's best. Minidisc is one option. It's more complicated than it should be, but so is life.

I record most concerts with:

a MZ-NH700 minidisc recorder http://www.minidiscaccess.com/item.html?PRID=1553219

Sound Professionals BMC-2 mics http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-BMC-2 They are jellybean-sized on black clips and a thin cord, easily hidden and then (once the lights go down) can be clipped to the collar of a dark shirt.

a Microphone Madness mini classic battery module http://www.microphonemadness.com/products/mmcbmminminc.htm

Mic-->battery module-->Line-in. Settings on the unit are Hi-SP (second-best sound quality) and Manual Volume at about 20/30, less (as low as 12/30) if the music is punishingly loud.

RM-MC40ELK remote (from Ebay), optional but makes things a lot more convenient

Here's why:

To record a concert you need:

1) a microphone to pick up the music

2) a recorder to record the music.

3) a medium to hold the music. On a minidisc unit, it's the disc. On a hard-drive unit, it's the hard drive. On a flash unit, it's the flash memory, etc.

4) Here's where it gets a little confusing. Recorders generally have a Line-in jack to accept a signal that is already amplified--like recording something out of a CD player. Many, including the MZ-NH700, also have a Mic-in jack that has a preamplifier behind it, to amplify the much weaker signal out of a microphone. But that preamplifier is not made for signals as loud as amplified music--it overloads. The battery module provides just enough of a boost to the microphone to record through Line-in if the music is loud.

With minidisc recordings, you can (obviously) play them back from the disc. To get them onto your computer, you need to use a clunky piece of Sony software (free) called SonicStage, which generally works well now after many years of bugs. Note: the MZ-NH700 is only compatible with Windows PCs. If you're in the Mac world, you need the MZ-RH1.

I use minidisc partly out of habit--I've been using minidiscs for a while, since the days when they were clearly the best option for budget recording--and partly because minidiscs have a feature I love, which is that you can insert a silent, gapless track mark while recording or playing back. That is, press the Track button during applause and on playback you can skip from song to song.

You don't have to go the minidisc route. You could look on Ebay for the iRiver H120, a 20GB hard-drive recorder, around $150 nowadays. (It's a discontinued unit, so you need to use common sense on whether you trust the seller.)

To use it for concert recording, you pretty much have to install third-party firmware from www.rockbox.org -- a simple tweak, with excellent instructions, but not for someone who doesn't like tweaking. The H120 only has Line-in, not Mic-in, so the battery module is essential. (There's a built-in mic that gets a lot of hard-drive noise and can't handle the volume of a live concert.) A good thing about the H120 is that its recordings can just be dragged-and-dropped--it's basically a hard drive with a recorder. The rockbox firmware adds minidisc features like track marking and level control while recording. But the buttons and interface of the H120 take some getting used to. You can find more about it at http://www.misticriver.com

Supposedly a new flash-memory recorder, the Samson Zoom H2, is being introduced this month. It promises a lot and it's only $200. But Samson's previous recorder, the H4, disappointed a lot of people. Depending on your time frame, you could see what user reactions are when the H2 is actually available.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/H2/

Edited August 17, 2007 by A440