Recording your DJ set ...

brianroche · Post by **brianroche** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 2:33 pm

Hi,

I've been doing some searching in the forum and didn't quite find the answer I've been looking for, so I'm going to post my own.

Some background ... I've been using Ableton now for almost 8 months. I play out with it every weekend. So far, no problems, everything has been going fantastic. Recently I've been asked to record my sets so they can later be played on the radio. So, my questions are these ...

- What are the best ways to record while playing from Ableton. If you choose the record option in Ableton, is it possible to record a 4 or 5 hour set with little or no problems? (Recording into the arrangement view) Is it foolish to even try because Arrangement view cannot handle that much data? Has anyone tested Ableton doing something like this. Naturally, I don't want to try it live in the club.

- Or, I recently purchased the M-Audio Microtrack (waiting for it to arrive) and was thinking of recording my sets this way. Is it possible to connect the M-Audio Audiophile to the Microtrack and record the output from the master channel of the Audiophile?

Those are two very specific questions, but if anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Thanks, great forum!
Bri ...

Mk · Post by Mk » Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:00 am

i have used the record button to record a Dj set from session view into arrangement mode. I turned off all other programs, 4 channel set up, only 8 knobs assigned to volumes, bass kills and two fx triggers. I recorded for 3 hours without even one hiccup...

keep in mind that NOT one track was on WARP, there were 150 songs in session view, mp3 320 kbps + analysis files.

Now as for attempting it at the club... I still use cds and vinyl at nightclubs, at go-go's & gentlemen's clubs, i bring the powerbook, with various DJ templates, including reggaeton, rock, hip hop, & a ton of house. and in these .als's, there are are about 5-10 tracks that are warped in order to transition between the tempos of each genre. When you have warped tracks and a lot of tracks, and not a lot of RAM, I would not recommend trying to record as well as perform. If I make it through 6 hours of playing with two sound "hiccups" that's the average. One of the two reasons, I don't do NYC gigs with my computer...
if you have 2GBs, i would say, press record and don't switch over to arrangment view in the middle of your set...

Toufas · Post by **Toufas** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 1:59 pm

i use voxengo recorder

John Sweet · Post by **John Sweet** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 7:27 pm

I was thinking of bouncing my master output back in to a new live channel, then turn off monitoring, set it to record, and collapse it out of view. Anyone tried this? I'm wondering if file size ever becomes an issue, etc. But maybe Voxengo is a better idea. I just want what's most stable & easiest on the CPU. Has anybody on a lower-powered (i.e., Apple) system tried Recorder against routing & recording within Live? When I play it's usually for at least 4 hours & I'd like to record the whole thing.

serotoninsteve · Post by **serotoninsteve** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 7:42 pm

Recording a large set into arrangement shouldn´t be a problem, the data your machine has to handle is far smaller then recording in realtime to the same HD when resampling or using a 3th party app to rerecord.
The problem when recording such a large file in realtime is the limitation to about 2 GB wich comes from the Os and can cause lots more problem as recording into arrangement.
When rendering in arrangement afterwards you can simply split your set into chunks of less than 2 GB.

Greetings

LJ Martin · Post by **LJ Martin** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 9:57 pm

I either record into arrange and then render, or I make a new track a new track, set to "resampling", turn monitoring off and record, I found that the first way is a little easier on my computer.
Never really had any problems with hiccups or dropouts either way, normally play 2-3.5 hour sets. The only time I had a problem was on New Years, I used the resampling method and at the end of my set Live "unexpectedly quit", since then I have mostly used the record to arrange method.

If you want a failsafe method, buy a standalone recorder (like a DAT) and take a second feed off the mixer to the recorder.

dCross · Post by **dCross** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 11:05 pm

serotoninsteve wrote:Recording a large set into arrangement shouldn´t be a problem, the data your machine has to handle is far smaller then recording in realtime to the same HD when resampling or using a 3th party app to rerecord.

I assumed as much as well - kind of like recording midi messages instead of raw audio

Never assumed that recording into arrange view for even marathon-length sets would present any problem.

cosmosuave · Post by **cosmosuave** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 11:32 pm

I use the resampling method with the master output... One problem i have discoverd is tht after 20min or so it will stop recording... I have more than enough disk space and looping (Session) is turned off..

håkan bråkan · Post by **håkan bråkan** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 11:43 pm

I use hardware mixer and record with minidisc, works nice and puts no extra pressure on my lappie. There are some good mp3 players/recorders also, with the iaudio player you can record many hours, with 30 gb of memory and real time encoding to 320 kbit/s mp3.

massiveheadpain · Post by **massiveheadpain** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 7:14 am

Check out audio hijack pro records audio from any app in realtime 30 bucks

www.rougeamoeba.com

brianroche · Post by **brianroche** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 2:40 pm

Thanks for all the responses everyone. I just received my Microtrack in the mail. Having investigated the device I think I should be able to use the s/pdif output on my Audiophile to record directly to the s/pdif on the Microtrack. The advantages to this that I can see are:

- Don't need to worry about Audio levels when you're playing in the club. Recording using digital and not analog mode disables the volume.

- No possible loss in resolution due to Analog to digital (digital to digital) translation as the data passed down the wire.

- No additional over head on the cpu of my Mac when I'm DJing.

All in all this could be the best solution. I will put it through it's paces prior to the club and post my results to this thread.

Incidentally, I did want to respond to a post that was made concerning problems when playing with live. I've noticed that once or twice throughout my set there will be a little hiccup in the sound, this doesn't happen every week, most weeks everything is fine. I also notice that occasionally there are audio drop outs when I first select the cueing buttons to send the track to my head phones. But that's just once or twice when I first hit the buttons.

So it seems, all in all, that Ableton acts inconsistently depending on hardware and software configurations. This isn't something I would not expect, but it's enough to tell me that I don't want to take a risk recording into arrangement mode, given the relatively large amount of data that a 5 hour set would create.

Thanks again everyone!

Jesse_mtl · Post by **Jesse_mtl** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:08 pm

there is a problem recording into the arrangement for a dj set... i dunno if u guys ever experienced it. using live 5.02, when i do a dj set, if im playing a track with a loop, and i exit the loopto continue playing the rest of the song, it wont record into the arrangement. then i end up with blank spaces in the arrangement after when i wanna render....

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 8:24 am

the record button does work.

i have recorded dj sets right into the arrange with hundreds of warped tracks in the session view, loads of beatrepeaters + fx, and a lot of automation.

only time i ever ran into a problem was when i accidentally left the loop on in colorado, i triggered another track to mix out of and then hit the red guy next to the transport. done.

1.67 PB, 2GB ram.

serotoninsteve · Post by **serotoninsteve** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 1:12 pm

Jesse_mtl wrote:there is a problem recording into the arrangement for a dj set... i dunno if u guys ever experienced it. using live 5.02, when i do a dj set, if im playing a track with a loop, and i exit the loopto continue playing the rest of the song, it wont record into the arrangement. then i end up with blank spaces in the arrangement after when i wanna render....

I can remember that I had a similar problem in some DJ set´s a wile ago, bits of clips where simply missing in arrangement. That was during Live5 beta testing I think, have you checked out the latest beta, because it works fine here. If it still happens, how to reproduce.

Greetings

Jesse_mtl · Post by **Jesse_mtl** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:17 pm

cool ill try to update

Recording your DJ set ...

Recording your DJ set ...

Microtrack ...