gigging with a 4 track - Live / PA / gigging forums

Forums - Live / PA / gigging

Subject: gigging with a 4 track

Pages: 1

Original Message 1/4 10-Aug-02 @ 10:35 AM - gigging with a 4 track

Normal

Posts: 53

Link?: Link

File?: No file

I'm after some kind of digital multitrack to play my set from. I'd like atleast four channels input and output, so i can record all tracks simultaneously from the PC. Then at gigs i'll be able to play them back to the mixer, adding FX to what i like. We've got an SP808, but it's unreliable (it's crashed on stage before!!), and it's really noisey anyway. I thought about minidisk 4-track, but data disks are too expensive, and i'm not sure you can get them with four outputs. I've also thought about ADAT, but i've heard that is quite unreliable. The media has to be cheap - so don't want anything with smartmedia, so maybe something with a hard-disk, or zip.

So what to do then? We're currently running a minidisk for the backing, then layering live stuff on top, but i need more channels.

Ta - Al

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 2/4 14-Aug-02 @ 03:28 AM - RE: gigging with a 4 track

Brett

Posts: 781

Link?: Link

File?: No file

BT, Hybrid use it. most likely with prerecorded tracks on it that they mix back and forth between the midi. In Bt's vase he had the hole show on it,a nd just jumped around and banged on his synths. every once in a while he would use the d-beam to to slow it down to a flange effect then frop it back in at normal tempo. So if you want to pretend to be doing stuff live the sp808 is pefect! But you could use it as a loop device to layer stuff on the fly. You just load your phrases into it for trigering instead of entire mixes, So why is yours unstable. My buddy brought his ovet beat to hell and missing knobs and it never had a problem. he uses it to play his tracks mixed with his dj sets.

NIN uses emu's and da88's. so does Depechemode. so many live shows use mutli track digital for playing backing tracks.

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 3/4 14-Aug-02 @ 11:04 AM - RE: gigging with a 4 track

Normal

Posts: 53

Link?: Link

File?: No file

Cheers for the reply Brett. The main problem with the SP808 is that with the output board you get 4 outs, not 4 ins (i think?). This means recording tracks seperately, then having to rearrange them in the 808 to get them to sync. We do quite a lot of gigs and this is too much hassle. Hopefully the crashes were due to dodgy zip-disks, but the sound quality is still shit. Dunno if it's better converters with the extra outputs.

Loop based sequencing doesn't really work for our music, as it is mainly breaks and cutups, so it changes every couple of bars. The timing on our beats has to be totally tight, so i don't want to mess around with sequences live... just FX on the backing, then we've got the guitar, keys, more FX, and silly dancing for the live bit.

What emu are you on about? Does it do HD recording then? I guess the DA88 is ADAT. Maybe i'll look into that. Has anyone got experience of using one for live stuff? How reliable are they?.. Gotta be better than a PC.

Cheers,
Al

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 4/4 14-Aug-02 @ 04:23 PM - RE: gigging with a 4 track

damballah

Posts: 1675

Link?: Link

File?: No file

DA88 is tascam's digital multitrack tape machine -- ADAT-like but uses DAT tapes instead of S-VHS. the emu he's referring to is probably one of their rackmount smaplers, E4 given mr. reznor's checkbook I'd assume. MDMs (the trade name for DA88s, ADATs and the like) all toss out time code that you can sync sequencers to with something like a JLCooper DataSync. the reliability of any tape based system is somewhat a function of maintenance.

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Pages: 1

There are 4 total messages for this topic

Reply to Thread

You need to register/login to use the forum.

Click here to Signup or Login !

[you'll be brought right back to this point after signing up]

Back to Forum