Creating instant mixes, masters and bounces to CD

[nick danger]

My studio is on the main floor of my house, and it's much more of a practice rather than a recording studio. It's in a mostly commercial/light industrial neighborhood, which also makes it a very good performance space for house concerts (no neighbors to complain.) We're intending to have a regular series of house concerts for the house band, as well as other local and touring musicians. I'd like to be able to make recordings of these performances, and make them available to both musicians and audience.

So I'm looking for suggestions on how to create insta-CD's.

Anyone have any experience with this? What's your process, and what equipment do you use?

And while I know that the mixes will necessarily be somewhat rough, what shortcuts are there that could make them listenable in a short turnaround time?

Edit-- one additional question: What media other than CD? Flash drives, maybe? Or posting to a website for download?

thanks in advance for any suggestions

[calden]

Mr. Danger:

Several years ago our city had a small - very small - coffee shop/cafe that hosted 2x weekly concerts of local music. The owners also ran a small recording studio, so they had the tech and tools to do what you want. They installed a small mixing room booth and did the live PA through a Mackie 1604 mixer, with directs outs ALSO into an ADAT or something - I think it was limited to 8 tracks - then into a ProTools Digi 001. So while they were running the board for a live show they simultaneously multitracked each live board channel into protools.

After the gig the sound guy made some very initial mix and eq decisions for a few minutes, had the band listen for a bit and okay the general direction, then in a week or so had a CD ready.

My band got a GREAT live CD out of this process. I think we may have tinkered with it more than other bands (because we also were experienced in recording ourselves.)

You could easily shorten this process by making firmer decisions about the final mix while it's recording, and basically as soon as the performance is done throw in some quick mixing and maybe compression if needed, start bouncing a final, and then burn a CD. Not quite recording a CD in real time but close to it.

Let us know.

Carlos

[Dwetmaster]

the "Posting to a website for download?" approach is definitely the fastest, easiest, cheapest way to do this...

[HCMarkus]

If doing a series of concerts, customers could subscribe to the recordings and receive a flash drive, labeled with your venue's logo, that they could have loaded after each show (faster than CD's) and/or download as Dwet notes.

[Pappy725]

Dwetnotes... Is that a new website download service?

Pap

[Pappy725]

Seriously, if you're using the direct outs of the live mixer, make sure they are pre fader outs. Levels will be all over the place if not. Have one person mix the live show and another on headphones or in a control room with monitors mix the recording. I try and do both and rarely get a good take.

Pappy