Bo Eder
Platinum Member
Hey all -
So the question has come up to me privately on how I record the stuff I've been posting for you all to see on YouTube. Obviously, my video isn't that great, and that was never my intention to make that part really good, I wanted it to sound good. So I wanted to share with you what I'm currently using to make my audio recordings.
When you see one of my videos on YouTube, what I'm doing is letting the video camera just capture the image. The actual audio part is going into a separate recorder. Both the video file and audio file then get dumped into Apple's iMovie and I sync the two together. And how I do that you see because every one of them has me clicking sticks or striking something before I start playing.
I'm no salesman, and I'm not trying to sell anyone anything, I just want to show an alternative to the common "get an audio interface and go into your laptop" thingy. Now, I do not knock those folks who use audio interfaces and make great recordings with their computers. I'm a professional audio engineer working for Disneyland in California (where I was a musician before that), so I've played with alot of stuff and have people who do ProTools like there's no tomorrow around me. But being a little old skool - doing things in the computers is kind of a drag. For one, you need a really powerful computer - those little $400 Dell laptops are not going to cut it. And if you want to be able to record at least eight tracks at once, and then add effects and eq, you're in for some slow times. So I wanted something that operated like a mixing console but didn't need a computer.
And I found it on a whim when I went to a Sam Ash and told them what I was looking for. They pointed me at the Zoom R16.
So this little box can take eight inputs in at a time, but you can record up to 16 tracks. They also have another model that is 24 tracks total, still keeping with inputting 8 tracks at a time. And how I do it is everything is going in live to this recorder, and it records to SD cards. Quick and easy. No interface to worry about latency with, it's basically like a 16-track cassette Portastudio from years gone by.
What I do is lay down my music tracks on two tracks, and then plug the mics in, including my vocal mic. Put on my in-ear monitors, play the track and record the drums and voice live in one take. Simple and done. I can then plug it into my powered studio monitors and do a mix down, when I have it the way I want it, my output from the R16 goes to the input of my 2-track Zoom H2 flash recorder, which also records to SD cards, and there's my stereo mix, ready to be dumped into my iTunes library, or into iMovie for syncing up with the video from the camcorder (which also records to SD card).
This process is much more intutive for me, being a sound guy by trade, and easier to understand because it's very much how you would've recorded back in the day.
But what of the computer, you ask? The R16 also can act as the audio interface to get 8 tracks into your computer recording software too, as I found out. It will also act as the mix-down deck too (the audio coming out of the computer via USB and getting mixed by the R16). Another thing I've tried is, once I recorded 8 or more tracks, stuck the SD card into my card reader, and dumped each .wav file track into a separate track in GarageBand, then I could tweak each track to my heart's content on the computer screen if I wanted to!
How much does this cost? Well, the R16 itself is about $400, and my H2 is about $175. Just to make nice audio recordings costs almost $600. Yes, I still need my Mac computer for doing the video part and being able to use iLife for the tools like iTunes and iMovie, but in reality, at that point it doesn't have to be a huge Mac with all the power. When it gets to the mac, they're just audio and video files. I'm not using it to process or mix or save eq settings for each track. In other words, I'm not taxing the computer, so the work to get the final product finished is actually rather fast. The only thing I hate is uploading to YouTube. If I did full quality, a four minute completed video could take over 200+ minutes to upload. One of the reasons my video doesn't look good is because I'm uploading a smaller video file so uploading only takes about 14-18 minutes. So long as the audio sounds good, that's what I'm after.
So that's how I do it with the R16 and also the Zoom H2. The fact that it does all that other stuff is icing on the cake for me, and should be a consideration if you absolutely have to use your computer. I hope that was clear. I know this forum gets alot of questions from folks who don't have a clue on how to record their drums, I think I found an easier way to do it rather than tax that poor laptop you're using.
Thoughts?
So the question has come up to me privately on how I record the stuff I've been posting for you all to see on YouTube. Obviously, my video isn't that great, and that was never my intention to make that part really good, I wanted it to sound good. So I wanted to share with you what I'm currently using to make my audio recordings.
When you see one of my videos on YouTube, what I'm doing is letting the video camera just capture the image. The actual audio part is going into a separate recorder. Both the video file and audio file then get dumped into Apple's iMovie and I sync the two together. And how I do that you see because every one of them has me clicking sticks or striking something before I start playing.
I'm no salesman, and I'm not trying to sell anyone anything, I just want to show an alternative to the common "get an audio interface and go into your laptop" thingy. Now, I do not knock those folks who use audio interfaces and make great recordings with their computers. I'm a professional audio engineer working for Disneyland in California (where I was a musician before that), so I've played with alot of stuff and have people who do ProTools like there's no tomorrow around me. But being a little old skool - doing things in the computers is kind of a drag. For one, you need a really powerful computer - those little $400 Dell laptops are not going to cut it. And if you want to be able to record at least eight tracks at once, and then add effects and eq, you're in for some slow times. So I wanted something that operated like a mixing console but didn't need a computer.
And I found it on a whim when I went to a Sam Ash and told them what I was looking for. They pointed me at the Zoom R16.
So this little box can take eight inputs in at a time, but you can record up to 16 tracks. They also have another model that is 24 tracks total, still keeping with inputting 8 tracks at a time. And how I do it is everything is going in live to this recorder, and it records to SD cards. Quick and easy. No interface to worry about latency with, it's basically like a 16-track cassette Portastudio from years gone by.
What I do is lay down my music tracks on two tracks, and then plug the mics in, including my vocal mic. Put on my in-ear monitors, play the track and record the drums and voice live in one take. Simple and done. I can then plug it into my powered studio monitors and do a mix down, when I have it the way I want it, my output from the R16 goes to the input of my 2-track Zoom H2 flash recorder, which also records to SD cards, and there's my stereo mix, ready to be dumped into my iTunes library, or into iMovie for syncing up with the video from the camcorder (which also records to SD card).
This process is much more intutive for me, being a sound guy by trade, and easier to understand because it's very much how you would've recorded back in the day.
But what of the computer, you ask? The R16 also can act as the audio interface to get 8 tracks into your computer recording software too, as I found out. It will also act as the mix-down deck too (the audio coming out of the computer via USB and getting mixed by the R16). Another thing I've tried is, once I recorded 8 or more tracks, stuck the SD card into my card reader, and dumped each .wav file track into a separate track in GarageBand, then I could tweak each track to my heart's content on the computer screen if I wanted to!
How much does this cost? Well, the R16 itself is about $400, and my H2 is about $175. Just to make nice audio recordings costs almost $600. Yes, I still need my Mac computer for doing the video part and being able to use iLife for the tools like iTunes and iMovie, but in reality, at that point it doesn't have to be a huge Mac with all the power. When it gets to the mac, they're just audio and video files. I'm not using it to process or mix or save eq settings for each track. In other words, I'm not taxing the computer, so the work to get the final product finished is actually rather fast. The only thing I hate is uploading to YouTube. If I did full quality, a four minute completed video could take over 200+ minutes to upload. One of the reasons my video doesn't look good is because I'm uploading a smaller video file so uploading only takes about 14-18 minutes. So long as the audio sounds good, that's what I'm after.
So that's how I do it with the R16 and also the Zoom H2. The fact that it does all that other stuff is icing on the cake for me, and should be a consideration if you absolutely have to use your computer. I hope that was clear. I know this forum gets alot of questions from folks who don't have a clue on how to record their drums, I think I found an easier way to do it rather than tax that poor laptop you're using.
Thoughts?