Topic: First matrix attempt....

[newblue]

I had to do some arm wrestling to get my UA-5 from fedex, but its here.  I usually run KM184 > MP2 > modSBM1 > M1/Sony VIAO.  But my deck and adc are in the shop with Doug O.  I got a digimod UA-5 and the truckers are playing at a small bar here in Knoxville.  I don't know if they allow sbds but I'm gonna try to run a Neumann/sbd matrix for the first band at least to see how it turns out.

I have been searching the board for issues on latency settings with matricies, but havn't found anything.  I will be running an analog input through RCA > UA-5 form the soundboard and mics to XLR, what latency settings on the UA-5 device driver are appropriate.  I assume that the signal from the rig and the sbd won't be getting 'there' at the same time.  I'm pretty excited about trying this out.  Any suggestions?   

[bhtoque]

I've done this from as far back as 25 ft with no audible delay problems.

JAson

[dklein]

too funny...I have done this exactly.

Drive By Truckers, small bar, 184s into the UA-5 fronts, soundboard into the rear, from a distance of about 25 feet.  It sounds great but that's definitely the limit in terms of distance and the delay factor.  You're off by ~25ms at that point - more than you would do if you were post-mixing it - but it is acceptable.

The real trick is setting levels live.  Do it during the opener, leave lots of headroom.  You can turn the mics on and off with phantom so the easiest way to do this is:
1.  rear input to 0, phantom on, set your levels so that mics are just below setting the peak light. 
2   turn the phantom off (cutting the mic signal), do the same as above using the rear input level control for the board
3.  turn the phantom back on, record some of the opener and give it a listen if you can but no big deal if not. 

pm me if you wanna hear a track of that setup.  DBTs are very taper friendly, though you might have competition for the board feed.

[dklein]

what latency settings on the UA-5 device driver are appropriate.   

The latency settings are not useful for this purpose.  They are of concern if you're using you're UA-5 as a playback/recording device (like layering a guitar track on some existing tracks).  It has to do with the time delay involved in routing the signal thru the device and back.  You hear it, you play your guitar along with it but there's a delay and in your headphones your guitar lags because it had to get processed first to be heard in your monitor - so you try and tighten up the lag but if you go too far the hardware hiccups.  You may run into ASIO drivers - they allow direct monitoring without running thru the computer.  But again, for us it doesn't really matter.  You just want what's stable and low on the cpu usage.  You can use big buffers and delays. 

There is no way to delay the sounboard source unless you use an external delay box.

[newblue]

dklein,  +T for the advice.

The DBT's show ROCKED!  2 hours straight!

DBT's sound man, Matt, was super cool. and gave me a sbd patch out of his P1.  Like you said I ran RCA in the 3/4 slot and my mics in the 1/2 fronts.  It turned out great.  I think that the sbd feed was a little vocal heavy and I was about 40 feet from stage, but I've never listened to a matrix recording (that I know of), so of course having taped w/ my 184s for years, I loved the blend between mics/sbd.  I don't know if it was me but there was an ever so slight muffled quality to the recording.  It may have been the shitty ass sony headphones I was using but when they ended a song and the crowd cheered (which would not be expressed in the sbd feed) it seemed to be clearer (only coming through the mics).  Is this the audible effect of the delay between the sbd and the mic feed?

When setting the levels for 1/2 inputs and doing the same for the 3/4 (rear) inputs, do you get a doubling effect (dBs) from both inputs or are they layered on top of one another resulting in a dB output that would be the same for either 1/2 or 3/4?  I'm sure I'll figure this out on the next run.

I didn't think about it, but after looking at the device driver settings there is no way to adjust the latency of 3/4 over 1/2 or vice versa.  You would need an external delay.  Is there any device out there that can do this on a budget?

Jack

[Scooter]

Driver latency and delay between the SBD feed and the AUD feed are two totally different things.  Driver latency really only comes in to play when multitracking/overdubbing.  The delay between the SBD and AUD feeds can only be adjusted in post if they are on totally seperate tracks.  If you combine them on-the-fly to two tracks, you are stuck w/ whatever result you get, you can't fix it later.  You'd have to use a multitrack prog like Vegas or Nuendo to track the band, then time-align it later and mix it down.  You could delay one of the signals goin in to the UA5 on the fly, but you'd have to have exact measurements to know how to set the delay.  If you have to run more than 25ft back from the board (as mentioned above), it's prolly best not to run a matrix.

[dklein]

Glad it turned out for you.  I'd like to hear a sample.  You are likely hearing a bit of blur from the delay.  Sometimes the  cymbals, hi-hat or vocals get a kind of phasey, swishy sound when you've got too much delay.

The best way to get a feel for it is to take a mic and board source and mix them yourself - I use CEP and you can monitor without doing a mixdown, so you can slide one track back and forth and hear the effect of 5ms, 10ms etc.  I've actually found that that it usually sounds best with the mics delayed by about 5ms as opposed to perfectly lined up.

Anyways, I'm off for the weekend but if you want a couple of sources to play with, let me know.  I can give you mic and board that were clocked by the same a>d so at least you don't have to deal with time drift issues.  It's very interesting to hear the effects.  If you want to hear major phase errors, try multitracking 2 of the same source and let one slip by a few milliseconds.

[newblue]

dklein- I'll take you up on the offer.  I would really like to hear the diff. in phase shifting.  For the most part, I record at a bar in Knoxville, where all the decent acts go, and friends with the front of house man too, which makes getting a board patch a little easier sometimes.  When I get my sbm1 and m1 back from the Oades, I could potentially run a board and an aud feed seperate and mix down later.  I have Cool Edit 2000, and I don't know if it lets me do multitrack (only two from what I know).  So I would have to do a software upgrade to get the post mix down.  Thus, it would definitely be MUCH easier to be able to pull a matrix on the fly.  No hassles. 

I'll send you a copy of that DBT show to see what you think.  PM me your mailer and send you some blanks and a copy of the show.

+T for the help

[newblue]

Driver latency and delay between the SBD feed and the AUD feed are two totally different things.  Driver latency really only comes in to play when multitracking/overdubbing. 


 If you have to run more than 25ft back from the board (as mentioned above), it's prolly best not to run a matrix.

Scooter- thanks for setting me straight on the terms.  Your exactly right, a delay is what I need (or closer to the stage).  I might have to get some longer cables for the board patch, but it'd be worth it (a little more hazardous but worth a good pull).

[Scooter]

i should prolly amend the above statement to say if your going to be more than 25ft back from the stage, and you don't have multitrack capability, the results might not be great.  i run a VXpocket 4 channel PCMCIA card in my laptop and record to 4 tracks using Nuendo when i do matrix's.  It's really handy, that way i can tweak the results in post to compensate for delay and whatnot.  Makes it SOOO much easier.  Good luck with future pulls!

[Chanher]

i should prolly amend the above statement to say if your going to be more than 25ft back from the stage, and you don't have multitrack capability, the results might not be great.  i run a VXpocket 4 channel PCMCIA card in my laptop and record to 4 tracks using Nuendo when i do matrix's.  It's really handy, that way i can tweak the results in post to compensate for delay and whatnot.  Makes it SOOO much easier.  Good luck with future pulls!

are you recording 4 tracks into a multi-track program so you can individually edit each of the 4 tracks?

are they line inputs?

does anyone know of a soundcard with multiple spdif inputs? pc or laptop?

[Scooter]

i should prolly amend the above statement to say if your going to be more than 25ft back from the stage, and you don't have multitrack capability, the results might not be great.  i run a VXpocket 4 channel PCMCIA card in my laptop and record to 4 tracks using Nuendo when i do matrix's.  It's really handy, that way i can tweak the results in post to compensate for delay and whatnot.  Makes it SOOO much easier.  Good luck with future pulls!

are you recording 4 tracks into a multi-track program so you can individually edit each of the 4 tracks?

are they line inputs?

yes, so I can edit and align the tracks.

they are switchable between line/mic.  It has SPDIF in/out as well.

[newblue]

i run a VXpocket 4 channel PCMCIA card in my laptop and record to 4 tracks using Nuendo when i do matrix's. 

I've got a VX 2 pocket, but I'm not sure that it is has four channel capability.  Is this a 2 channel audio cardbus?  I don't use it because I'm using MS XP OS and it sucks.  I will upgrade to Win2k Pro soon, so that I can use the the VX Pocket.  Even if this is only 2 channel capable, the stablity of data transfer is much better than the USB from the UA-5 to the lappy.

[Scooter]

I believe mine is a VXpocket440? (at work so can't be positive).  It's cardbus w/ 4 channel balanced XLR.   I wouldn't say that Win2Kpro is exactly an upgrade from XP...  Most folks would say the other way around.  Did you mean ME??  I've used both with my laptop/VX440.  I use Win2kpro only because I found that when using Wavelab in each OS, slightly less resources were used in Win2k Vs. XP.  I agree that the PCMCIA buss is much better than the USB for recording...  But you should be able to go UA-5 spdif out>VXpocket spdif in(if your version has that capability), thats what I do and really like the results.

[Cooker]

440 = 4 channel
V2 = 2 channel

sof, your best bet in the future is to run SBD > M1 or SBD > SBM > M1 and KM184 > UA-5 > Vaio and mix them down in CoolEdit.  Or you could get a multitrack recording program and run Mics > UA-5 > USB and SBD > SBM > VXpocket and record all 4 tracks live at 24/48 and then add the delay in CEP later.