More and more recording artists and bands are recording their live concerts than ever before.  While recording of live concerts is nothing new, these ones are actual legal! :)  SERIOUSLY though...a live concert recording will always have more energy and a “vibe” to it than a studio disc.  Making music is about passion, and those that have passion for their music create magic when playing live. The perfect live recording are those capturing this passion, magic, and energy to make the listener feel like they were there.  And those that are done perfectly make them want to be there!  As a recording artist or band, this is also additional revenue that can be earned outside of studio CD sales, ticket sales from touring, etc.  But even if you’re not a professional artist on the road, there are many benefits to recording live especially for houses of worship.  Multi-tracking live to Pro Tools with Venue is one of the easiest, yet most powerful means of live recording I’ve ever experienced.  Technically speaking, there are two different scenarios for recording a live event as outlined below.

This configuration is pretty typical in that you’re taking the direct outputs right off of the console.  If you’re recording on location, then you’re at the mercy of whatever console is installed at FOH---not all have direct outputs.  Another factor is that not all consoles allow you to bypass the channel EQ and inserts as well as the gain level.  Although many mixing boards do send the direct out after the pre-amp gain, you’re also relying on the gain level set in FOH.  This might be fine for a concert or a club, but in a church setting they might run a lower gain-stage.  Either way whether it’s too hot or too low,  it’s not up to the recording side of things to set the level but rather the FOH engineer--and that’s not always a good thing!

Another issue is monitoring the recorded signal, are you sure that you’re getting a clean recording?  The following example is showing a Mackie Onyx 48ch console feeding (2) Alesis HD24 recorders via analog snakes, then returning the tracks digitally into a Tascam DM4800. While this does sound just fine, it does have some limitations and drawkbacks.

This second configuration is really the BEST way to multi-track a live concert or worship service by utilizing splitters.  A splitter will take a single input per channel and literally split it into two or more outputs.  Typically this is used for the FOH Mix and a separate Monitor Mix, but often a third split is introduced giving a recording mix.  But when using a console for the recording, you can also create a monitor mix and “kill two birds with one stone, so to speak”.  There are basically two different kinds of splitters.... a passive splitter means that one console/pre will control the phantom power and an active splitter where each engineer has true and total control over each level. 

I’m showing this configuration using a duplicate analog console, however using dedicated microphone pre-amplifiers is often used as well.  The issue, however, is you still need a means to monitor the recorded tracks.

In either case, the Alesis HD24’s are not the only solution--but it’s one of the most common that I see and design for my own clients.  As they say, there are many ways to skin a cat but when it comes to recording a live event--these are really the traditional ways of doing it.  Either way, there is plenty of analog cabling involved.  By the time you get down to the end, there’s a lot of signal loss across all frequencies.  And that’s not even taking into account the cost involved with this!