My needs are pretty simple. I'm in a Senior Drum and Bugle Corps. It's
near the end of our season this summer and I'd like to make some audio
recordings during our final practice before Finals. Our final
rehearsal weekend is this coming weekend and so my timeline is short.
This won't be anything remotely professional, but just something to
keep for mementos and to distribute to others in the corps. For those
that have no idea of what Senior Corps is, just think professional
marching band without woodwinds, so we're talking brass and percussion
spread out moving on a football field.

I don't want to do something crappy like a walkman recording with a
single mike but I certainly can't afford to go out and purchase high
quality microphones, audio mixing software, mixing board, etc. I just
want to make the best audio recording I can with equipment I could buy
at Best Buy or something similar (audio only). Could anyone suggest
some options? I know some people dub live Corps performances using
dual small microphones hooked to a Personal Dat Recorder. Would this
be able to deal with the enormous changes in volume? I do mean
enormous.

I figured this might be a decent group to ask this kind of question.
Thanks for any responses.

Matt wrote:

My needs are pretty simple. I'm in a Senior Drum and Bugle Corps. It's
near the end of our season this summer and I'd like to make some audio
recordings during our final practice before Finals. ...

This kind of application is our bread and butter.

The solution you choose will depend on your budget.

For around $250 you can get pretty darned good sounding recordings:
Sharp portable MD recorder (MD-MT877, -MT831, or Sony MZ-N1, -N10, -N909
or R900) and a set of our LC Binaural microphones. None of the portable
MD recorders have digital outputs so if you want to transfer the
recordings to computer or a CD burner, you'll have to do it via an
analog link or buy a home MD deck with a digital output.

For around $900 you can get a Sony TCD-D100 portable DAT recorder and a
set of our CS Binaural mics. It has a digital output and it's
relatively easy to digitally transfer your recordings to other devices.

For a bit more you can get our new PDAudio system that uses PDAs (like
the HP iPAQ) as a digital audio recorder, and records to Compact Flash
memory cards or hard disk. Please see our Web site for more details.

--
Len Moskowitz PDAudio, Binaural Mics, Cables, DPA, M-Audio
Core Sound http://www.stealthmicrophones.com
Teaneck, New Jersey USA http://www.core-sound.com
Tel: 201-801-0812, FAX: 201-801-0912

In article writes:

Personally, I think you should have the boys in the corps ante up, and
hire a local studio to come out and record the performance.

That's a halfway good idea, but unless the "studio" has experience in
recording such a group in their natural habitat (few do), a better
idea would be to bring the band to a studio. Have them set up and play
a few tunes, and not march around on a field. You're not going to be
doing overdubs, and with a few run-throughs the engineer should be
able to place mics for a decent two-track recording.

If you're recording the music for the music's sake, that's what you
should record - not the wind, not the erratic mic positions, not the
flubs caused by playing while marching. If you want to capture the
experience of the band marching around on the field, get a video
camera and walk backwards in front of them.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

It is a delimea..how to get a good recording with out tons of expensive
equipment...

the best place to start is not just with the mis..but also your location...it
needs to be a place with good acoustics little echo..

then you can simply....get a f fairly good mic...and mini disc recorder...mini
disc does a little compression of it's own in the format so it helps with the
quiet places..even the portable pocket type work well..

Place the mics high over the sound so you get a good blend...but not too high
it will start to sound hollow...and that's about the best I can tell you
here....

For a bit more you can get our new PDAudio system that uses PDAs (like
the HP iPAQ) as a digital audio recorder, and records to Compact Flash
memory cards or hard disk. Please see our Web site for more details.

Are there any multitrack recording programs for these?
I have found that 11 KHz 8-bit gives pretty decent quality
(though I use 16 bit cuz Sound Forge doesn't have a batch convert for
bit rate when I wanna burn my WAV files to an audio CD)
and 11 KHz also doesn't tax system resources too much,
I use that in Cakewalk on my laptop and get pretty good throughput
- no latency. How hard would it be to program a 4-track program
for the Core-sound card on a PDA using Visual BASIC i wonder.