Dave Matthews and friends

it's cool. I can find a better copy on the newsgroups anyway

 

Shn, FLAC...it's all good! Try this link for a killer live show archive (over 8,300 shows):

http://www.archive.org/audio/etreelisting-browse.php?PHPSESSID=ecd105fc7ea7fc6006b5bbcd2fe30c56

Then to convert your Shns or FLACS to WAV or MP3, you'll need these:

For FLAC: http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html

For Shorten (.shn files): http://etree.org/shnutils/shorten/


Have fun!

 

I haven't converted any of my Shorten to Flac. I still store about half of them on my computer (~120 shows total) and that's taking up a ton of space, so I might burn them to backup, store them, and rip them to mp3.

People get all pissy about mp3 in the trading community, and I can see why. But for personal consumption, mp3 on the computer and for burning my own discs for listening? Close enough.

I tend to like Flac more because the files are seekable. SHN isn't. Roughly the same compression, though, which isn't enough. I've heard that APE is getting bigger but fuck if I know anything about that.

 

I would much rather have a good quality show from a taper than anything from the soundboard. I like to hear some crowd noise to keep the "live" effect.

 

No doubt. The stuff mags was talking about, Jimi and Zep is waaayy different. The PA systems back then sucked horrendously, as did the quality of field recording equipment.

Things changed in the '80s.

I have an incredible aud. tape of one of the Wall shows form 1980. No way a board is as good as it.

 

yeah, but most of my other experience comes from DMB type situations, where obviously we're talking about newer than 70s, and still talking about specific taping sections in the crowd.

I like crowd noise. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the competency of the taper, but I've seen too many shows that aren't as good because you're hearing as much crowd as band. My main focus is still the band, I want to hear the crowd between songs moreso than through them.



Nonetheless.
Meat, what'd you use to tape? mic, tracking? Did you do much processing of it?

 

I taped several hundred shows.

Primary setups in early '90s:

1) AKG C460 Cardioids ORTF>Grace design preamp>different DATS.

2) Schoeps CMC64 Cardiods ORTF>Odae supply with Jensen transformer>Panasonic SV255

For the Phish shows, there was alot. Mixer was a heavily modified soundcraft 16 channel, mics were doxens - Schoeps omnis overhead, B&K 4011 on the hammond and the bass, AKGC460 on Trey's guitar, Vocal mics were all the road mics. I forgot what we did with the Neumann U89s. Some venues we ran an aud ORTF also. We had an effects rack also. We bascially off-loaded their truck, and the loaded all our shit into the back and made a sort of mobile recordning truck.

I ran some spaced omnis for aud recording also.

In the late '90s I had Schoeps CMC64, Lunatec V2, Tascam Dat.

Crowd noise can ruin a tape quick.

I'm glad I did it, I'm even gladder somebody else is now.

 

burn me a copy of that hampton 88 and that philly show, bitch.

 

That's not what I was talking about. I meant converting them to WAV so that I can play them on my stereo or in my car. Shn and FLAC both sound so much better converted to WAV than any bitrate of an MP3. I usually do most of my serious listening on my stereo anyway, so I download shows, convert them to WAV and then delete them to save hard drive space.

 

I've never noticed huge quality issues between compressed Flac and SHN, compared to WAV. If you mean between lossless and mp3, of course.

Of course, the only time I'd listen to straight audio is in the car.
My point about SHN -> Flac is that I prefer flac. Seekable, more modern.


Meat, great rig. Only recording I've done is off soundboard, and that's totally for demo purposes only. None of it my equipment. I wish, some of it. DAT's great, I don't know why people say it's going out of style just because you can't immediately pop it into your car and listen to it. No shit it's going to take some work to get it to that far, but I don't see it as a listening medium in design anyway.

Not sure I totally understand why you ran totally separate sound for recording, though, for Phish. What'd you run in the FX rack? And for what purpose?

Dammit, you noted in 4/02 that you had some Dead that would make my toes curl or something like that. Put up or shut up