DAP-1

For our first show at Sunset Tavern in Seattle I took an output from the board. That night there was a good bit of feedback from the bass mike, so I am not sure how the tape will sound. At our very well received show in Portland, we played in the center of the coffee shop, and I placed the mike in a stand on the stage. Unfortunately (for the recording), the stage became a dance floor, with lots of foot stomping, so I am doubtful that recording came out either.

At Bruno's in San Fran I also had another direct input, but I know for a fact that there were level issues that night, as the band before us used mikes and we did not. The nature of the lineup and the club layout didn't permit me to switch to mikes for our set with the AT822, so that recording is also questionable. At Folklife I recorded with both the direct input from the board on Center Stage and with the mike on the ground while busking on the street. I am eager to hear the differences in those recordings.

AT-822

When recording with the mike, I just tried to find a reasonable spot and let the recorder run. I wasn't carrying a mike stand, but when possible I used one from the venue. In one case mike placement involved climbing up a ladder to place the equipment on a 12-foot display wall in an art gallery. The place was boomy as hell, so it will be interesting to see if those efforts were worth the trouble. In the primitive living community we visited, I placed the DAT on top of the porch of an adobe structure. In that case, the mike was actually behind the performers. It was an open-air performance, and optimum mike placement would have meant putting the DAT and mike near the campfire with several people drinking beer and dancing around it. No thanks.

Since I couldn't guarantee being able to monitor the signal, I left the limiter on the DAT turned on all the time. According to the peak indicator, there were still several times we had a clipping signal. Dancers, not the music, often caused clipping. My experience showed that Hungarian folk music really doesn't lend itself to recording live with dancers unless you have a dedicated engineer, and maybe some special compressors and mikes and/or acoustical tile to cut down on the unwanted aspects of the dance.