When I run my band’s show, I have everyone going into the mixer and I monitor with headphones. Stereo out quarter inch goes into our speakers.
I’m trying to figure out the most efficient way to record the stereo out into my Zoom H4n and I think there are only two solutions: Use an 1/8th inch splitter at the headphone jack so I can monitor with headphones while one aux cable goes into the Zoom external mic input. The only problem there being if I’m turning my headphone levels up and down it will affect the volume to the Zoom!..Which I suppose I could just normalize later? Or I could just be diligent and NEVER touch that knob.
The second solution is two XLR outs into the Zoom XLR inputs. I assume I can record them as a stereo pair? I’ll have to experiment and look into that. Again, I have to never touch the stereo knob level which will be fine in our rehearsals.
Anyone seeing something I’m not? I’d rather take a route where I don’t have to worry about touching some knobs but eh maybe I’ll just deal.
Only issue is those are quarter inch…so I’d have to do some cable and adapter fuckery. Also that headphone knob says monitor/phones so I assume it affects monitor volume, too.
This.
They don’t call it the Stereo Out for nuthin; it’s there to record the Stereo mix. If you need to touch the master level mid rehearsal (or mid-gig) then then it’s probably OK if it also changes the record-level as well. It probably means ya’ll are playing much louder then you did at sound-check, as bands are likely to do.
Yeah, I really like to. It’s the way I can best guarantee the sound is good and where everything should be…Vocals, guitar, drums, all of it. I’m constantly adjusting and the headphones are the most accurate.
I would go 1/4 inch to the zoom h4n combo jacks XLR to your monitors and head phones are headphones. Alternatively I think you should be able to have headphones hooked up to the zoom and monitor with headphones there and then use headphones out from the mixer to the zoom.
This was the obvious solution I was looking for…I can just monitor the whole mix via the headphone out on the Zoom. DUH. I’ll need to hear if it’s clipping anyway, right?
Yes if you don’t want to use a laptop a digital recorder is the only other alternative.
I used to record to a Tascam in the past from my mixer but I did not like the recording results- and in the end I had to go through an additional step of transferring the file from the Tascam to my computer for uploading to Bandcamp or for any other editing tasks
Zoom H4n is just fine for what he wants to do. No need to complicate things, especially when someone already has trouble working out what cable goes between a mixer and recorder.
