On Thu, 1 May 2008 23:34:38 -0700, Beta Zero wrote
(in article
<Pine.LNX.4.44.0805012321570.16608-100000@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>):
> Charles Tomaras wrote:
>> Sounds to me like you are on the verge of spending $800 on a bunch of
>> nearly pro-sumer audio equipment that you most likely won't use very
>> often, will disappoint with quality, and is a recipe for audio
>> disaster.
>
> Thanks for the vote of confidence.
>
>> Your equipment's resale value will also be disappointing once you
>> realize it didn't perform as well as you had hoped.
>
> Nope, I don't plan on reselling. The next major project is an indie
> movie in late August. I need some music for when the actors are
> driving along in their car, and they turn on the radio. So I thought
> I'd foley in some music.
>
>> While on the surface what you are doing may seem simple enough, you
>> will find that it's really more complex than you imagine to achieve
>> quality results.
>
> I want to keep the June budget down to $3,000 before I go to the
> August budget, something like five to ten times that. (Sort of makes
> me sound like a cheapskate, huh?)
>
>> My suggestion both for getting a quality recording and for learning
>> more about quality live recording
>
> Well, quality live recording is in a recording room, but I don't mind a
> little bit of background noise by shooting it out in a park, or some
> distant location in the National Forest.
>
>> would be to either hire someone with experience and equipment or rent
>> professional equipment along with a thorough tutorial on how to get
>> the best results out of it. The reason that professional recording
>> engineers charge what they do for their labor and equipment is because
>> they have already made the mistakes you are about to make!
>
> Well, I have to make the mistakes sometime, and I thought, "Well, what
> the heck, why not this summer?" That's why $800 on microphones,
> something like $500 on a digital recorder or two (the H4 looked very
> tempting), and then another $500 on hiring a band to play in some
> remote location, and then a little bit more money as a slush fund,
> depending on what happens.
>
>> On the other hand, if this is just a non-im****tant hobby type of
>> event....give it a shot, but don't expect to achieve top notch
>> results with a setup and experience level you have described above.
>
> Okay.
>
Look, good recording equipment doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg
anymore.
There are a number of fine microphones selling for under $100 each. There
are
excellent sounding mixers with ultra-quiet mike preamps available for
incredibly cheap prices nowadays. In fact, one can get a full-featured
excellent sounding 4-microphones-in, 2- channels out mixers for less than
$100 from companies such as Alesis, TASCAM, Behringer, Mackie, Rotel, etc.
These are far quieter and better sounding than state-of-the-art mixing
consoles of a generation or so ago (of course, the more microphone inputs
one
needs the more the mixers cost). Microphone cables are likewise cheap
nowadays with cables from Shure and others starting at less than $10 for a
20-25 ft length. Microphone stands are likewise cheap. The light, foldable
On-Stage "Euroboom" stand complete with boom can be bought on-line for
around
$20 each. These stands are excellent. They're all black, don't have the
heavy
cast-iron bases of traditional stands and four of them can be carried in
one
hand (folded up, of course).
It's truly a golden era for amateur/ semi-pro recording. The recordings
that
I have made using just the sort of equipment listed above are far better
than
anything one can buy commercially. With no signal processing and no
compression or limiting, one gets the entire dynamic range that digital is
capable of (and which commercial recordings NEVER give you). Careful mike
placement will reward you with the kind of sound-stage and image depth
that's
rare to non-existent in commercial recordings. I find the results very
satisfying and the process rewarding.
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