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Re: LAL recording techniques



On Fri, 22 Mar 1996 WFang01@aol.com wrote:

> The purpose of the "mixing board" is to take the outputs from the various
> instruments and redirect them to the amps (ultimately to the speakers) so
> that you can hear the various instruments clearly and with somewhat equal
> "power"... 

The mixing board redirects the outputs from the mics placed in front of
the speakers & drums, and in the hand of the singer to the PA so you can
hear the music.  In any of the stadium shows on video Pete only has 3 or 4
100W heads, each with 2 4 speaker cabinets, and John had something roughly
equivalent.  By what you're saying, the mixing board can at most put out
800W for guitar & bass combined (hardly the loudest rock band in the
world) since the board runs through the amps which are rated at 100W each. 
Now if you run the amps (including mic'ed speakers) through the board,
then send that to the PA, you can crank it up as loud as your PA system
permits, as well as give the band a final mix they can hear from the
monitors in front of them so they can yell at you when they don't like the
sound. 


> For recording purposes, you would never want to record off of the speakers,
> but rather at the source (ie the mixing board) as once the signal travels
> that far, its no longer "pure". Think about recording a CD through your
> stereo hookups, as opposed to sitting with a walkman by your speakers with
> the volume cranked...

The mixing board is run off the mics at the speakers.  Yes, recording from
a stereo with a walkman would sound crappy, but then so does playing a
guitar through a stereo, as does playing a CD through a Princeton Reverb
(tried it, don't recommend it).  Stereos are made to reproduce the entire
audible range with reasonable accuracy, while guitar amps are optimized
for relatively narrow range that a guitar makes, and at pretty
lo-fidelity.  The classic 'Marshall stack' (or in this case HiWatt stack)
sound comes from a) overloading the amp past the point where it faithfully
reproduces the sound & becomes distorted, and b) the effect of the speaker
which doesn't faithfully reproduce the signal produced by the amp due to
material limitations, and the fact that the air resistance varies
non-linearly with the amplitude of speaker movement, especially in closed
back speaker cabs. 

In the case of LaL, I would imagine there would be 2 mixing boards, or 
duplicates of everything on 1 board with 2 people at the board, since, as 
it's been pointed out earlier the mix for a record, and for a concert 
hall vary quite a bit, and I doubt the audience was made to listen to an 
inferior mix.


Shane Matheson						MechEng/CompSci UWO

	"I smash guitars because I like them. " -- Pete Townshend