I'm going to do an audio recording for a seminar. Need some help.

[Bryan McCullough]

I've got a client that wants to record one of his seminars for distribution on CD.

It's an all day thing and I'm trying to get up to speed on what the best way to do this is.

Of course I could do the entire thing on DAT, but it just seems like there should be a computer or solid state solution to this.

I'm searching through the forum but don't really know what to look for as I'm up up to speed with audio.

Any suggestions for how to get clean audio out of a sound board? If I was going to go the easy route, I'd just do it on minidisk, but there's got to be a better way. I just don't know it.

Any help would be great.

Thanks!

[Glenn Chan]

Laptops with a USB/Firewire sound card are good field recorders. Laptop sound cards aren't great so you want an external device. Lots of choices.

Marantz sells flash card recorders (solid state) and a CD-based recorder. dv.com has reviews of the latter.

[Bryan Beasleigh]

The marantz pmd670 is a great recorder, i've been using one since last summer. The drag and drop feature beats the hell out of real time.

http://www.d-mpro.com/users/folder.asp?FolderID=1582

[Steve Savanyu]

I did one of these several years ago where the client wanted every bit of the day (except lunch and breaks) captured for a set of "seminar" tapes sold to the attendees for a way to relive the excitement of the event...

Used two DAT recorders and 2 hour tapes. I made certain that i had a two minutes or so overlap (both machines) recording at once so as not to loose anything. I really would not want to be one who bought the seminar live tape set though, as there was a lot of non essential blah blah blah stuf (including the long discussion on the quality of the catered lunch( put to tape...

I took a feed from the rented PA system for all of the presenters live mics and fed it into my own mixer along with a couple other room mics to pick up room ambiance. Since a great part of the day was audiance discussion, I had two wireless handheld mics that could be passed to folks asking quesitons.

Post was simply to record the entire thing to a series of 90 minute cassettes and give them to the client who had them duplicated.

The most difficult part... Sitting through the 16 hour 2 day "seminar".

(Note, I also fed my audio to the video guys who were capturing it for the seminar "video" series.)

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Hmmm.....
Straight to your laptop if you have a good soundcard such as an Echo indigo, Maudio 410, Echo Layla or Mona (Firewire or cardbus, latency will kill you in monitoring with a USB card)
Extremely high quality sound potential. Already on HD

An MD recorder, preferably one with optical or USB out for digital transfers. It will take more than one if you end up having sessions longer than 60 mins, as there is overlap, 2 will cover this.
Good sound potential. Slow or very fast copy to HD

a DA 88, but requires mix feeds from an aux, same story though, you'll need 2 to cover the moments when a 60 minute tape ends.
Very good sound potential. Slow copy to HD

DAT, feeds from console but you'll need two again to cover moments between 60 minute tapes.
Very good sound potential. Slow copy to HD

Flash-based recording device. Need two in the moments that you run out of memory to capture the blank spots.
Good sound potential. Instant copy to HD

All call for a feed from the board. Most boards have an aux or two that are not being used at seminars as they are generally used for monitor or FX feed. Very few seminars do monitor or FX feed. If you can run one channel at a lesser input than the other, run Right channel at normal levels and Left channel at -12dB from Right as a fall back in the event of a loud speaker or quiet speaker. Then you've got two levels to work with.