Advice Re: Live Recording In The Amazon Options

[omoanya]

Im going to record traditional music in southamerican amazon and am planning on taking a g4 power book.
Does any one know of:

a: battery operated hardware that i can use to get mic inputs into the power book?... i prefer to use 4-6 mics and record live multitrack
b. the most reliable software i can use


needless to say i wont be able to call tech support so it has to work!

theres a possibility ill have an a/c generator

i want the best quality as i will be releasing records from this material ,,,


any resources you can hip me to, i would appreciate,,

thanks for your help

[pepece]

Hi,

Maybe i'm arriving a bit too late, but if you plan to work in such extreme conditions, you should consider using simple and "work-proof" gear. Simple, because, as you mentionned it, you wont be able to call the tech-guy-that-will-save-your-work. I've been working with all types of Nagra machines, and they will do the job, with Sennheinser MD21 mics, witch are undestructibles. But, you will have to carry a LOT of tapes, and batteries. If you can afford to buy (or rent?) some digital or DAT recorders (marantz pmd, fostex FR2) some are tropicalized and offer 4 inputs, have a low battery consumption, and a fantastic sound quality. Another solution is to use some mini-mixers from Sonosax (all-weather+ excellent mics pre-amps) and record your takes on an "All-Weather"minidisc. The MD in itself is definitively not as good as, say, a DAT, because of the high compression ratio, but i work on some occasions with a very simple and cheap MD, with good mics pre-amps, and it's the lightest system ever. The other advantage of the MD is that you can do multitrack recordings, by adding MD's! I saw recently a report about some sound engineers who have made great recordings with a self powered mixer and 8 MD recorders: 5 hours of work with new batterys, in Africa. And if one MD recorder fails, you still have the other ones working. Hope this will be usefull...

The Giant Leap project

This post has been edited by pepece: Wed 17 Mar 2004, 21:02