The producers of the festivals hire a separate crew to do all the DAT stuff,
FOH engineers just send signal to them and a person sits with headphone all
day to monitor the recording and changes tape when it is time( pauses
between acts).
As far as musicians showing up with crap gear, happens all the time and you
deal with it as fast as possible ( I have had to troubleshoot too much gear
that I was not getting paid to fix, but the set happened great and even get
calls back from bands to mix for, at my price per show)


"Pat Janes" wrote in message
...
In article et,
"Barney Kable" wrote:

All the festivals I work, LINE CHECKS ARE MANDATORY!!!!!!!!
Every act is taped to DAT for archive purposes

I don't miss DAT recorders. I have a Tascam DA30 mkII that's gathering
dust. I've just finished transferring tracks from a pair of Masterlinks
that were used to record a festival. Max capacity of 35 hours per unit
at 24 bit/44.1. Recording at 24 bit lets you be more conservative about
record levels, plus you never have to remember to change a tape. The
only thing to watch with a Masterlink is the danger of a power cut while
recording, and a UPS solves that.

and all channels must be
there from the start ( no humms, buzzes or miss patches) and yes mics
and
cables do go bad in the middle of a long day.

Not to mention the musicians who show up with dodgy instruments and then
insist that the problem has GOT to be with the sound system.