Road Warrior Recording

Well, here it is!

2008-03-05T18:29:00.001-08:00

After lots of mastering and graphics work, you can now buy the CD and listen to some samples on my website.

Conclusions! #1

2008-02-17T07:45:00.000-08:00

My justification for going with a computer-based setup was, in retrospect, a flawed one. I wanted a system that would be useful in many situations before and after the trip. Alas I paid dearly for this in two departments, a) set-up time and b) weight.

a) because I assumed that I would have always at least five minutes in the space before the performance began. While this was technically true, the choir sang masses and religious occasions, which means there was a service going on in the space and I had to set everything up really quietly and sometimes incompletely (settling for only one mic, for example). Also, even though Macs are the quickest laptops to come out of any low-power mode, it still took too long to wake up, open Logic, record-arm the right tracks, hit record and have it start writing out to the right files. Furthermore there were too many cables to find and connect - USB for the hard disk, Firewire for the Inspire, and MagSafe from the external battery (if it was needed) all into the computer, plus two mic cables and headphones into the Inspire.

b) Weight - again, I those four devices (computer, interface, storage unit, battery) could have been consolidated into a single appliance weighing no more than one pound and occupying considerably less space. Since the concerts or masses were often combined with all-day walking tours, I found myself having to haul like you see in the "Honor Guard" picture below for an entire day, sometimes asking others to help me. It's fun only for about the first five minutes and then it gets really, really old.

In conclusion (ha ha), my inventory SHOULD have been: Zoom H4 portable recorder, rechargeable AA batteries and a charger, ziploc bag full of SD cards, mic stands, mic cables, mics.

Well, that was that

2008-02-15T18:45:00.000-08:00

Give me a few days to rest up and collect my thoughts (or maybe I'll
do it on the plane) and then I'll do an extensive post-mortem. Suffice
it (for now) to say that almost a year of prep work resulted in the
actual trip going very smoothly in terms of getting everything
recorded, there were some situations that were very specific to what
we were doing that I could not have predicted in advance.

The entire point of this thing is the sharing of knowledge, though, so
now that I've learned some things the hard way, I will write them all
down here to share with you, in the hopes that some of you will be
able to go off in the future and have even better experiences!

Okay, I'm rambling because I'm not awake. It's almost 4am here - we
have to be out of the hotel by 4:45, so I'm up ensuring everything is
packed.

P.S. Unlocked smartphone + prepaid sim card with data package = great
success! Just used my phone as though I were merely another inhabitant
of Italy, because that's all I was as far as Telecom Italia cared.

Honor Guard

2008-02-13T08:43:00.001-08:00

On the road ah-ha moment #2:

2008-02-11T05:41:00.000-08:00

Mic stands are sometimes overkill and quite indiscrete.

That is, if you're just going to sing a song or two and then get out
(as in, it's not a proper concert where you get permission and set up
time and everything). That's what we're doing today at the Baptistry
in Pisa (insane acoustics, Google it).

The way our tour guide put it was, "anything that looks professional
requires special permission", so I get to try and sound professional
while looking supremely ghettotastic. Sometimes the barriers are
interpersonal and not technical.

To that end, I will be holding (or having someone hold) the two mics
on their stereo crossbar as high as I possibly can. I've left a few
feet of cable outside the bag but coiled and tied up the rest. Also
untaped the USB/Firewire cables and ties them together instead. The
idea is that I can stand with audio interface, hard drive, and
outboard battery in the backpack, laptop in one hand, and holding up
the mics with the other. This is a worst case scenario and my hope is
that I'll get to set everything but the mics down. We'll see.

And yes, I know I will look like I'm an alien trying to contact the
mother ship, or at least a UFO enthusiast. We all must suffer for our
art.

On-the-road Ah ha! #1

2008-02-10T04:49:00.000-08:00

Having gone to what I think is a pretty good school, I would expect I
know all about entropy (the Universe's tendency towards disorder). So
you'd think I would have checked whether my mic cables were still
coiled nicely after being baggage on an international flight.

However, I didn't, the result being that the mass I was due to record
this morning began before I had finished setting up because I wasted a
lot of time untangling. I ended up having to sneak around, low to the
ground and silently, to finish setting up. Oops.

Now, however, my gear is safely locked away in a Florentine gold shop
run by the tour guide's old friend (pretty safe place, I figure), so
it's on to an afternoon of ordinary tourist stuff. Ciao!

First concert today

2008-02-09T23:36:00.000-08:00

Everything appears to have survived the trip.

Arrivés

2008-02-09T05:09:00.000-08:00

If you're reading this, we've landed in Milan and my data connection
is up and running.

During our brief stop in Frankfurt, we think we saw Grey's Anatomy
actor T.R. Knight - sneakily snapped photos submitted to Perez Hilton,
of course :)

Pictured below are the alps we flew over between Frankfurt and Milan.

Rolling back from the gate...

2008-02-08T14:25:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since I was on a 747 because airlines have trouble
filling them and now favor fuel efficiency over capacity and use 777s.
No photo this time because I am on my cameraless Blackberry - iPhone
is already packed and off for battery purposes.

No problems at security with the gear and they even decided not to
charge for my obviously oversized On-Stage stands bag. Yay Lufthansa!

I'll post again on the other side!

Rolling back from the gate...

2008-02-08T14:23:00.001-08:00

No problems at security with the gear and they even decided not to
charge for my obviously oversized On-Stage stands bag. Yay Lufthansa!

I'll post again on the other side!

Backpack is packed!

2008-02-07T18:13:00.001-08:00

Since this is supposed to be of some value and not just me
liveblogging the packing process, here is a tour of my recording
backpack.

At the top is the batterygeek external battery (you can see the
special white MagSafe cable), left is the MacBook, center and largest
is the C-4 mics in their box, and on the right is the Inspire/Hard
disk combo showcased in my previous post.

Does this look too much like...

2008-02-07T18:04:00.000-08:00

A bomb? That just occurred to me while packing...

24 hours...

2008-02-07T17:00:00.001-08:00

Less, actually.

As part of my final prep I went to OSH and spent $8 on a roll of
sticky-back Velcro. Here I'm using two strips to mount my USB hard
drive (which I always use for recording) to my Presonus Inspire audio
interface.

Disaster #1

2008-02-03T17:04:00.001-08:00

That's a microphone stand not fitting into a suitcase. I wonder what Plan B is.

Less than a week...

2008-02-02T22:36:00.000-08:00

Less than a week before I head off to Italy with my carefully chosen recording gear. The entirety of the system fits in this M-Audio Studio Pack. In the space they reserve for one of their Oxygen8 USB-MIDI keyboards, I instead pack my Studio Projects C4 small-diaphragm condenser microphones in their big and robust carrying case.

...Well, ALMOST everything fits in there. Mic stands and mic cables are too big so I carry one stand and two 50' XLR cables in an On-Stage stands bag. I've been carrying the system around on my own for the last few weeks as I recorded Global Grooves 2008 for Harker's Fashion Show and although I look pretty ridiculous with the huge stand bag, the entire thing is actually not too heavy. I don't get tired, which is good as I hear we will be walking long distances in Italy. Just have to be careful not to trip anyone (locals or tourists) with the mic stand.

I'm going to take a moment now to cover one other detail that, while not strictly related to mobile recording, may be of interest to you if you're anything like me: how to stay in touch on the go, especially internationally. Again, if you're anything like me, you don't make too many voice calls so you would much rather have internet access on the go than the ability to use the phone. To that end, I recommend you invest in an unlocked GSM smartphone OR an unlocked EDGE/HSDPA card. Why that and not the superior EVDO? Well, because that protocol isn't as well supported outside the glorious US and A. Personally I have an unlocked iPhone, but you certainly don't need anything that extravagant just for email - woot.com sometimes has unlocked Palm Treo devices for $130. Then, jump on eBay and look for a prepaid SIM card in your destination region, and before you order it, see if you can figure out whether the carrier at your destination has a special prepaid wireless data package. For example, Italy's TIM has a 500MB/month offer for 20 euros, which I will be taking advantage of while there. I wasn't so lucky the last place I visited outside the States, Canada. I bought a SIM card there to send text messages back home but their mobile data rate was exorbitant ($50/MB) so I checked the weather exactly once the entire time I was there and ate through $3 of my $10 prepaid balance.

Why do I feel this is better than both finding a local dial-up ISP and relying on local wi-fi hotspots? Well, dial-up is on the way out all over the world, not just here, so they're becoming more and more of a specialty and therefore expensive. (Remember the netzero days? Unlimited dial up for $9.99/mo...) Wi-fi hotspots, it's harder to argue with as both technologies are wireless. If your hotel offers wi-fi or even wired ethernet internet access then you may not need a data SIM card. I'm taking this along as "insurance" since the tour director has been incredibly tight-lipped about the particulars of the hotel we're staying in. Even if I don't end up using the data because we're wifi-ed at the hotel, I still do like to call home.

I will post a complete equipment list soon and might make some posts from Italy (assuming the Blogger client works in the iPhone's web browser) about how it's going!

Eqpt. selection, part 2: Powering everything

2008-01-23T18:27:00.000-08:00

It's quite clear that the very ancient churches and other venues that the choir will be performing in may or may not have power outlets, and even if they do, I'd prefer not to shell out for a 240v power strip and drag an extension cord around. Thus it has to be battery power.

Since everything runs on DC power once you get down to it, a single high-capacity DC battery seems to be the best choice. Since I settled on a computer-based system in an earlier post, I decided to simply supplement the Macbook's battery with a high capacity external laptop battery, and let it do the power distribution through USB and Firewire to the external hard drive and the audio interface.

I bought a 130watt-hour external Lithium battery from Battery Geek (link), which in my testing lasts solidly through two sessions of mobile recording between charges, running the computer at full brightness with Logic open, recording to the USB hard drive from the Inspire with phantom power on for my two Studio Projects C4 mics that go in my backpack.

Wait, what backpack? Oh right! How am I going to carry all this stuff with me onto the airplane and around Italy? Maybe next time...

Update on Mackie and the Inspire!

2008-01-16T20:27:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately I can't report that things with Mackie and the Satellite have been going very well... the person who was supposed to analyze the audio samples I sent them never got back to me!

However let me say that the Inspire has been an excellent and worthy companion. While the preamps are a bit less dynamically spacious than those on the Satellite, it wins in the categories of safety and convenience.

I've been using it for my last few mobile gigs, and the fact that everything is entirely software controlled is incredibly handy - Now I don't have to take my hands off the laptop to adjust levels, and it also means I can place the interface in a place that's convenient for cable management, rather than having to compromise between clean cable routing and knob accessibility. Doing everything in software is really a godsend and I know I'll miss it when I'm back in the studio working with the Firepod.

The built in analog-limiters are also lifesavers. Usually if a huge discrepancy between someone's "practice take" and the real one causes them to clip because I set the level too high, I have them stop and start over. While it's probably a bad idea to be bouncing off your limiter constantly, I have to say it saves a lot of time not redoing things if you happen to go over here or there. In live work it's kind of unpredictable what might change between the sound check and the performance so it's good insurance.

So even if the Satellite issues are addressed, I think I'm taking the Inspire to Italy...

Not to worry, the post I promised on how I am planning to power the rig is coming soon.

Onyx problems and an alternative audio interface

2008-01-05T09:26:00.000-08:00

I'm now working with a Level 2 support tech at Mackie to get my problems with the Onyx Satellite sorted out, which is great because I really like the idea of it -- it's the perfect audio interface for me to take along to college in the fall.

However, for redundancy and also for the sake of trying new and different things, I went ahead and ordered a PreSonus Inspire 1394. Why did I choose it?

Well, first of all I've had a wonderful experience with PreSonus' midrange FireWire recording interface, the Firepod (since renamed FP10). It also has two features that I really like:

-Everything is software controlled, there are no knobs and buttons on the device. Not only does this make me less nervous about throwing it in a backpack and kicking it around, it also allows the software to store and recall different configurations on command. Also, since I'm recording in stereo with a matched pair of mics, it makes it trivial to ensure that I have both preamps at the exact same level, since it displays the precise amount of gain, whereas with knobs it takes a magnifying glass and some "feeling" to match them up.

-An analog clip limiter for both preamps. This is important to me because I am always torn when setting levels between my desire to maintain the dynamic range of the performance, and my knowledge that the recordings I make in Italy will end up in the iTunes libraries of the teenage performers, next to Soulja Boy et al. I've often tried to recover from digital clipping with a limiter plugin, with varying degrees of success. Analog clipping sounds a whole lot better than digital clipping so I'm really excited to have a hardware limiter in the signal chain BEFORE the A/D conversion.

Coming soon, maybe today, the promised Equipment selection part 2 post, where I'll discuss how I chose to power this setup.

Spoke too soon, part 2

2008-01-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

Mackie support suggests jacking up the latency and then slowly dialing it back until it reaches tolerable levels. It could be that the latency setting I was using before I got the Satellite was fine for the Firepod, but too fast for this smaller, bus-powered interface. Will report on how that goes later.

Erp! Spoke too soon.

2008-01-01T16:46:00.000-08:00

I didn't want to mention this about the wonderful Onyx Satellite interface but I'm actually on my third one... Mackie has promptly and courteously replaced the last two, but today during a recording gig I found that this one too had the same problem. It makes a crackling/artifacting noise regardless of the level of the incoming audio. I've captured an isolated sample of the crackling sound and plan to call Mackie again tomorrow to discuss this with them.

I'm actually hoping to get a full refund and switch to the smaller (albeit less flexible) Presonus Inspire, because of the great experience I've had with the Firepod.

Equipment selection, part 1

2007-12-29T14:50:00.001-08:00

First, some background: up until I started planning this trip, my primary DAW has been a Macbook running Logic Pro 8, with a PreSonus Firepod for Audio I/O. As I've said before, this rig has participated in some mobile recording, where mobile means "pack your car full and spend an hour beforehand setting up". Needless to say I found the system needed revision or replacement before it was fit to accompany me to Italy.

In choosing a new system to take along with me, I identified the following challenges:

-must fit in carry-on and checked luggage

-must record a maximum of two tracks at once -- the choir's director informed me that none of the pieces were accompanied by any instrumentation, so I choose to stick with a stereo mic pair

-must not rely on the availability of a power source AT the location; these churches are thousands of years old and I doubt they have conveniently placed outlets, if any, since that's a luxury we've just gotten used to over the past 100 years.

-must be able to utilize Italy's 240v AC power when it IS present

-must set up and tear down quickly; no guarantee that I'll get any time in the space before the singers start warming up

The two options I saw here were to replace the Firepod with a smaller, bus-powered audio interface into the laptop, or ditch the laptop entirely for a portable recorder such as the Zoom H4. I've read lots of great reviews of the Zoom and know some people who use it personally, and the sound that comes out of it is really very high quality. Also it certainly is smaller and lighter than laptop + audio interface, and it runs on readily available AA batteries for hours on end.

Why, then, did I stick with a laptop-based system? Because a second, smaller audio interface is of much more use to me before and after the trip than a dedicated portable recorder, which I'm afraid would sit collecting dust after my return home.

The market is pretty much saturated with small, bus-powered, 1 or 2 channel audio interfaces for all different prices. My first instinct was to go for the Presonus Firebox because of the great experience I've had with its bigger cousin. However, browsing at Guitar Center, I came across a unit that's not only $100 cheaper but has one huge differentiating feature that I literally benefit from every single day.

The Mackie Onyx Satellite is a mobile interface that not only has two of Mackie's really nice mic preamps in a compact package, but also has a tough metal housing that looks like it was meant to take a beating on the road, and most importantly includes a "base station" that it docks into, which give it additional monitoring and input routing flexibility, as well as the ability to quickly detach from the rest of your audio equipment without spending any time disconnecting cables.

In my case it allowed me to set up a second set of monitor speakers on my desk for times when I can't or don't want to use the garage for mixing or editing work. When it's docked it even has a talkback mic for slating takes and 5.1 monitoring outputs!

In fact, I probably would have bought this thing even if I weren't going to Italy simply because it makes packing for any location gig that much quicker (saves me from having to pull umpteen cables out of the Firepod).

Macbook on the desk with KRK RP-5 monitors and docked Satellite.
Lots of lovely monitoring and routing options.
Very quick and easy to undock the Satellite and go recording! The Satellite is coming to Italy while the base station stays here in San Jose connected to my monitors.

Next time: Powering the whole mess!

Who are you and what am I doing here?

2007-12-28T22:44:00.000-08:00

Both good questions. Let me address them in order.

My name is Ben Englert and I'm weeks away from turning 18. In the past three years or so, I've been active as a local amateur sound engineer, producer, and technician. I have a project studio in my garage where I've worked on EPs and albums with local high school bands like Echodelic and most notably The Pizookies. I attend The Harker School here in San Jose, CA, and as well as doing a lot of performing of my own (acting, singing, etc), I've been assisting with the recording of many live performances by various ensembles in the school's conservatory.

And this transitions us nicely into the second question. This coming February, I will be accompanying Harker's classical women's choir, Cantilena, on a 10-day tour of Italy to record their performances and later sell a CD. Though I've done "mobile" recording in the past, it has usually involved luxuries such as readily-available power outlets and having an entire car to load up with gear. Through this blog I hope to both give and solicit advice on how to approach the challenge of TRULY mobile recording, by explaining my approach to certain situations and hopefully hearing about yours.

At this point I've procured most of the equipment I hope to use on the trip, so over the coming weeks I will start by detailing how and why I chose it. I hope all this is helpful to someone in the same shoes in the future!