Friend needs advice on church recording...

[laboitenoire]

Hey all, I've got a friend who's not a forum member who needs some advice. He's planning on recording his church praise band, and needs to do at least 8 track. He's got a Yamaha board, which he'll use for mic pres into whatever recording hardware. He asked what he should do for actually recording, as he can't record 8 track at the moment. I was figuring he'd be well served by renting one of Alesis' HD-24 machines. Is this a good suggestion? And if so, anybody know where in the Worcester, MA area rents them for cheap? He'd only need it for a day or two...

[jnorman]

the alesis is fine, though i probably prefer the roland VS workstations. why does he need to do 8 tracks for this? why not a 2 track capture with ORTF pair, for example?

[NorseHorse]

It's a praise band! CCM I'm assuming. ORTF = disaster. The recording wouldn't be good for much of anything except a reference to see if you are playing the right notes.

If you only need eight tracks, you might want to consider a KORG D-888.

Korg D888 | Sweetwater.com

Very reliable for tracking, and you can send the WAVs to your computer afterword if you want.

[Corran]

I can vouch for the D-888, I use it a ton and it's very good.

[laboitenoire]

Well, the key word is at least 8 track. He's doing one mic for each of the four vocalists, has two guitars, bass, and drums. I figured the HD-24 would get him as many tracks as he needs and then some, and then he just dumps the files over network to his computer.

[Jim vanBergen]

option B: buy a DA-88 or DA-38 for a couple of hundred bucks.

People like me have RACKS of them sitting unused!

Option C: find someone with a Digi 002 and a pre with optical I/O. One of the cheapest multitracks out there, and mix ITB.

[tnjazz]

If he's covered as far as mics and pres go, then I have to say the Alesis is probably the easiest and most stable choice.

Advise him to supply his own IDE hard drive, so that he can just remove it from the caddy and transfer the files at his leisure rather than doing it over ethernet or having to scrounge up a Fireport (unless the machine comes with one).

Can't help you with rental houses up that way, but I do think it's the way to go in this case. That would give him 24 tracks to work with.

[Remoteness]

I'm with the Big Purple Dog on this one...

Alesis HD24 or HD24XR is you best bet.
As it has been said before, it's an extremely reliable hard disk recorder.