Advice on Audio Recording

Rew

I want to record a friend singing and playing acoustic guitar. I wan to put it on CD for sombody for their wedding. Dosn't have to be profesional but id like to get a decent enough result.

I can setup what evers required, lay my hands on multiple laptops etc so its software and hardware advice im really looking for. I presume room acoustics will come in to it as well?

MLM

A good mic would be a shure sm58. Even better would be a condenser mic. You'll also need n A/D converter to get it onto your laptop. Software, look for pro tools or logic. These are professional programs. TBH its been years since I've done any recording so somebody else might have more up to date suggestions. Most of the above can be borrowed from musician friends etc. To buy would be rather expensive. You could also try a digital hard disk recorder as this would have the A/D converter built in.

extopia

Any of your friends got a Mac? Garageband and a mic could be all you need.

cornbb

Good advice from MLM. I'd suggest that protools or logic would be overkill for what you want to do though, you could probably get away with using free software like Audacity for what you want to do. The hardware can get expensive though, especially the A/D converter/soundcard. If you intend to buy stuff let us know what your budget is. I suggest also asking this question in the Recording / Mixing / Pro Audio forum for more assistance.

Rew

Im not going to buy stuff as id never use it again. Friend of mine suggested it would be cheaper to get 2 hours in a studio and do it that way.

I have G5's coming out my ears as we use them in work. The real kicker is my company has a recording studio but not in this country...

Deliverance

As far as I know a DAT; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape recorder would be usefull to record the sound at the best quality with the minimum compression connected to the mike mentioned above:

http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/WiredMicrophones/us_pro_SM58-CN_content

Use a camera with a dv tape and blank out the tape first ie: let the whole tape run with the cap on, this lays down a timecode for the whole tape for the software to read later on.

When you are filming the scene first let the tape run for a couple of minutes to get up to speed, then use a clapperboard to create a sharp sound and visual cue (usefull later when synchronising the sound in Final cut). If you don't have a board then use something else like two sticks, the trick here provide an audio and visual instance which can be used later.

Start filming the scene and have the DAT recorder capturing the audio seperately with the mike positioned correctly.
Once the scene is captured, audio and video, then both can be imported into Final Cut Pro delete the audio captured by the camera and import the audio from the DAT the audio and video will be out of sync.

This is where the audio visual clue comes in, the visual clue on the video track will be on one frame where the clapperboard or prop strikes, you can track this down to the exact point where the board or prop connects to make the audio spike visually by moving frame by frame through the video track set a marker here.

On the audio track there will be a spike which will be obvious, drag this spike to the marker on the video track and it should snap to the marker on the video track, your sound and video is now synchronised with the best quality sound.
Export to DV with a DV tape in a camera or Deck.

Ok that's my input, I covered this a few months ago in college and my knowledge may be a bit rusty so feel free to correct or enhance above advice. I hope it helps in some way at least. From the sounds of it the OP shoudn't have any real problem accessing said soft and hard equip necessary.
A little practice and perhaps correction from above said techniques hopefully helps.

cornbb

DAT is on its deathbed as a recording medium AFAIK, having been replaced by hard disk/PC-based recording systems. But I dunno, maybe things are different in the video/TV industry, I'm open to correction. Is there video involved here OP or am I missing something?

Deliverance

Good point I never thought of that, that's just the method I was taught recently for audio and video sync and quality. Apologies if I'm wrong.
Ps as far as I know though DAT has the least amount of compression therefore the best option in that sense. All PC based recordings have a lot of compression in comparison. It depends on your needs at the end of the day.

MLM

Portadats are used widely in the film and television industry to record sync sound, even today. They are convenient for location recording. Most sound studios seem to be recording straight to harddrives now as the workflow is convenient. DATs were really only ever used as a mastering format. They were originally developed to replace domestic analougue cassette tapes but they never caught on, and ended up as a professional format by default.

cornbb

Have never worked in film/tv but I've used DAT a wee bit, its handy alright but a pain in the ass to rewind/ff etc, hence the handiness of hard disk options like this yoke: http://www.thomann.de/ie/edirol_r4_pro.htm

Deliverance: don't mean to be pedantic but pro-audio PC-based recording formats (such as AIFF and WAV) do not use any compression and should produce quality identical to that of DAT. The same can't be said for the likes of MP3 or WAV of course...

Deliverance

DAT is the best compatible use of sound with digital available today. It uses the minimum of compression, gives the best analogue sound possible with regards to this compression as you can tape an original in this format then compress it to DVD or CD or whatever format you choose with the least loss of quality of sound.
The beauty of DAT is that if you have access to the equipment then it is easy to use with a little instruction, plug it in, record, then import the result into prefered program. The loss of quality due to compression will be the minimum possible as mentioned previously... it is a good master format to use.

Rew

Booked a recording studio, not cheap but not outrageous. Was the best option to get the job done in the time frame I have.

Thanks for the advice all round.

Deliverance

cornbb wrote:

Have never worked in film/tv but I've used DAT a wee bit, its handy alright but a pain in the ass to rewind/ff etc, hence the handiness of hard disk options like this yoke: http://www.thomann.de/ie/edirol_r4_pro.htm

Deliverance: don't mean to be pedantic but pro-audio PC-based recording formats (such as AIFF and WAV) do not use any compression and should produce quality identical to that of DAT. The same can't be said for the likes of MP3 or WAV of course...

Agree, AIFF and WAV are good but, AIFF and WAV are compression programs which are great but they are compressions and good ones at that. There is no such thing in the digital world as no compression from analogue as yet. Even DAT involves a slight compression of original data. The day will come though, possibly.

Deliverance

Rew wrote:

Booked a recording studio, not cheap but not outrageous. Was the best option to get the job done in the time frame I have.

Thanks for the advice all round.

Good luck, remember practice, practice, practice, practice, before the final take it will be worth it.

hshortt

Why note get a Video camera (mini-dv or better) and video it. The audio will be high quality and you'll have the video to edit too. Multiple takes can make it interesting.

Cheerio
Howard

Deliverance

Visually yes that is true but the standard camera comes with a standard mike (omindirectional) which captures all sound ie: the whirrr of the cam, the chat of the user etc. The shure58 mike positioned correctly will provide said capture needed. In what format is the question.

cornbb

Deliverance wrote:

Agree, AIFF and WAV are good but, AIFF and WAV are compression programs which are great but they are compressions and good ones at that. There is no such thing in the digital world as no compression from analogue as yet. Even DAT involves a slight compression of original data. The day will come though, possibly.

Not quite true. AIFF, WAV, DAT and all digital formats use digital encoding but this is not the same as compression. Assuming the same bit depth and sample rate are used, AIFF/WAV will store digital audio data in a manner effectively identical to DAT. A loss of fidelity is always a side effect of the transfer of any sort of data from the analogue domain to the digital domain but with todays high sample rates this loss is pretty negligible. But compression (in a data storage sense) is never used in pro audio formats, unless its for MP3 conversion.

Deliverance

cornbb wrote:

Not quite true. AIFF, WAV, DAT and all digital formats use digital encoding but this is not the same as compression. Assuming the same bit depth and sample rate are used, AIFF/WAV will store digital audio data in a manner effectively identical to DAT. A loss of fidelity is always a side effect of the transfer of any sort of data from the analogue domain to the digital domain but with todays high sample rates this loss is pretty negligible. But compression (in a data storage sense) is never used in pro audio formats, unless its for MP3 conversion.

An education outside the classroom, cheers. Still think that size is an issue though in that sense, modern digital tech is capable of producing best quality but that means a choice of quality over size and storage. Which gives a great flexibility.
Is AIFF propietary or is it able to be used outside of apple apps and hardware?

MLM

Deliverance wrote:

An education outside the classroom, cheers. Still think that size is an issue though in that sense, modern digital tech is capable of producing best quality but that means a choice of quality over size and storage. Which gives a great flexibility.
Is AIFF propietary or is it able to be used outside of apple apps and hardware?

I think they are a standard audio file format. I've used them on PC based Avids.

cornbb

AIFF and WAV are supposedly both propietory but they're pretty much interchangeable in practice. You're right about size, even a 4 minute song broken into its constituent parts/multiple tracks would take up gigabytes of hdd space.

frobisher

Rew wrote:

Im not going to buy stuff as id never use it again. Friend of mine suggested it would be cheaper to get 2 hours in a studio and do it that way.

I have G5's coming out my ears as we use them in work. The real kicker is my company has a recording studio but not in this country...

I'll give you a top quality recording in return for one of those G5's so!