virtual soundcheck

[jet1968Participant]

I like the idea of this, can someone who’s tried it please list the necessary steps and settings to make it work?

thanks

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

First take your band.
Then take a USB device (PC or preferably something like a SANDisk Extreme stick)
Do a basic soundcheck with them, get the preamps dialled in.

Record a few songs using the multitrack (via USB-B to a PC or QuDrive to a stick)

Tell the band to go and get drinks in and to bring you a favoured tipple

Change the inputs to USB (Qu-Drive or B as per above) and replay the multitrack.

Now you can tweak eq, dynamics, gates and make the levels ok – you can eq the venue and generally make yourself feel good about the mix.

You can listen to the umpteen different monitor mixes and make reasonable approximations if you know the band well.

Then you can replay the tracks again, and again, until you are happy.

Bring the band back, and they’ll change how they sound (because none of them had a lime and lemonade did they…) and all your settings are off by a country mile 😉

Or they’ll come back and it will sound awesome, because you’ve had a good while to get the sound the way you want it…

[jet1968Participant]

Thanks for that Bob, not much chance of the band buying me a drink! I have a 16gb sandisk stick which I’ve been using for the firmware updates, will that be enough to record a song or two in multitrack? I’ve also got a 500gb Samsung external drive for the purpose of recording a show which will obviously be better but if the stick will work I’ll give it a whirl?

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

Depends on the stick, the Sandisk Extreme works well, others will vary in their hight speed data tolerance…

[coffee_kingParticipant]

Also then decide it was a bad idea as none of the backline was playing along with the virtual soundcheck and so all your volumes and EQ’s etc are now way out.
Sure its worth having a laugh with this but it isnt ever going to sound the same as the bands backline also playing. 🙂

[jet1968Participant]

its worth it to me to have a vocal take to play around with and get that sounding right in the mains and mons without the band there fiddling with their guitar amps. (there’s always one who wants to fiddle when you’re PLAINLY trying to check the vocals – STFU!)

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

You let your band have a back line?
It’s not perfect, but actually it can be very powerful. The “input” eq can be dialled in to a pretty good reference, since the backline were playing, but the output does need a live soundcheck.

Of course the best thing is to be able to take the desk and stick home after the first gig and play/train yourself on the desk.

That’s what I’ve done a fair bit – it’s how I know my way around the desk, I simply put in a stick with a known multitrack recording (from a previous desk) and mix to my home hifi (using the console Alt-Out)

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