Chicago, IL (June 17, 2013)—Blues musician Ray Fuller recently recorded a number of live sets at the Buddy Guy’s Legends blues club in Chicago. The recordings, which consisted of non-stop 60 and 90-minute sets before a live audience, was captured in its entirety using the Orion32, which recorded 26 tracks of audio in 96k to a MacBook Pro running Pro Tools.
“I didn’t want to have to carry a lot of gear, and for this particular project, I wanted to keep my set up lean yet powerful,” commented freelance engineer Mike Picotte. He acquired the signal by placing a splitter snake onstage so he could access all of the venue’s microphones, then supplemented the house mics with his own, creating a fully redundant set up with plenty of alternate audio source possibilities. “I wanted to have everything covered and then decide later what I actually needed, so I brought my own mic locker with me, just in case,” he said.
Picotte ran the snake up the stairs into a small room where he was able to record and monitor the performance using a Dangerous D-Box system and a pair of Sennheiser HD 380 closed back headphones.
At the preamplifier stage, Picotte employed two True Precision 8s and an Audient ASP008, which he then connected to an Antelope Audio Orion32. He then recorded the entire performance over USB 2.0 at 96k to the MacBook Pro via the Orion32, without incident or interruption. “Performance-wise, the Orion32 was amazing,” Picotte recalls. “There was no lag time on the screen, and no hiccups at any point during the entire gig. I ran 26 channels at 96k without stoppage and had no issues whatsoever.”
Picotte was also able to run backup audio feed to a separate system through the True Precision 8 as a safety. However, the backup system suffered a complete failure mid-way through while capturing audio at just 44.1k. “Next time, I will probably use another Orion32 as a backup instead of another device,” he said.
Picotte characterizes the Orion32 tracks he captured as ‘extremely detailed and accurate.’ “There was great separation on the drums and particularly good transient response on the kick, snare and overhead,” he reports. “Some converters will soften the transients, or it will feel like they are not coming across like they do live. Ray Fuller is known for his tone and I wanted to capture the band the way they sounded that night at Buddy Guy’s Legends. With the Orion32, I was able to do this and deliver a ‘true to life’ recording when it was over.”
Antelope Audio
www.antelopeaudio.com
