Recording a gig

[realgonekid]

HI, Just wondering if i can record a live acoustic gig direct onto Audacity using a laptop?
Thanks

[kozikowski]

Qualified yes. What kind of laptop, how long is the gig, and what is the gig? Are you recording the laptop built-in microphone?

Getting from an acoustic sting quartet into Audacity is a college level course in mixers and microphones.

Koz

[realgonekid]

Hi Koz
My fountain of knowledge..
I was going to come straight outah the PA system and into the laptop (Dell Inspiron 6400) and record on audacity on one stereo trk.
Would this work mate?

[kozikowski]

No, but you're not that far off. The laptop is expecting a tiny, delicate, wispy, mono microphone signal, not the powerful, stereo signal from the amp or mixer. You can bridge the gap with one of the USB sound cards we reviewed. You can probably use the UCA-202.

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9477

Koz

[realgonekid]

the gig will be bout 2 hours, forgot that part.

[kozikowski]

I do multiple 2-hour recordings every week. You need to have room on your computer. One hour of recording can take up almost 1GB of space and you need lots of room over that.

Does the PA have a Line-Out, Tape-Out, or, in pinch, Headphone-Out? You can't bridge the speaker feeds. That will blow the laptop across the street.

Koz

[realgonekid]

Ah that beringers quite reasonable too..yes the PA has a line out.
So do i then set audacity trk to stereo and makesure its not peaking?

[kozikowski]

Yes, That's the whole setup. Play some of a test back and make sure it isn't doing something else wrong. Nothing like getting back from a gig and find you have perfect peaks but the show, for some reason sounds like trash.

Audacity will not save a sound file. To get a sound file, you have to export one.

If you do clubs, you may run into hum problems. Make sure your laptop is plugged into the same socket or power strip as the PA. If you can't do that, run the computer on batteries.

Koz

[kozikowski]

You know we're going to want to hear a sample of your show, right?

Koz

[realgonekid]

hmmm i'll give it a go !
Thanks for the help Koz