The band has purchased a Mackie SDR 24/96 Hard Disk Recorder, a Mackie Control for ProTools, an HDR Pro Firewire Interface and an M90 drive cartridge and drive tray, which they have used to do multi-track recordings, over the past two months, at all their live gigs.
Sheppard went on to say: "Basically, we record directly to the SDR and then pull the removable M90 drive out and load it into the HDR Pro Firewire interface. We then move the audio files over to another hard disk where they are flown into ProTools and then edited using the Mackie Control as an interface for ProTools. It's a really fast way to move files and allows us to edit and record at the same time. Fantastic! With the SDR we get the incredible ease of a tape machine and the convenience of digital. By flying the tracks into ProTools we can do rough edits for the record company on our mobile ProTools system; made up of a Powerbook G4 and an M-Box. The tracks can then be tweaked later on a full size ProTools system for the commercial release of the live tracks. The SDR really is incredibly intuitive and easy to use, we simply show up and hand it to the FOH guys with our wiring looms and they patch it into the desk's direct outputs, check levels during sound check and then hit record before the gig starts. In fact, most of our FOH guys ask us all sorts of questions about the SDR as they are usually interested in getting one themselves. They are all amazed at how easy it is to use and the quality of the recorded sound."
(Lee Baldock)
