I’ve recorded a gypsy orchestra (two violins, one viola, contra bas and cymbal) from Budapest a couple of month ago and today the end mixing was planned. I used the qu-16 and its mixing and sound processing features to mix the recordings on the qu-drive. With the professional speakers the sound was great. The idea was to record the L/R channels. I tried several options to have the L/R channels recorded properly and without loss of quality but all the options I tried resulted in a serious quality decline in terms of depth and dynamics of the music compared to the sound when playing the original recordings on the qu-drive.
I tried to record L/R using Audacity with the back USB connection. Technically it worked OK after some messing around, but the depth and the dynamics where gone at the L/R recording.
I went to the sound equipment rent out and rented a special device (UR-2 stereo rack memory recorder) to record the L/R channels on SD card. First I connected the special device to the outs of the used QCS K-serie speakers. There was still a serious difference in sound. Then I connected the L/R channels of the mixing table directly with the UR-2 stereo rack memory recorder and this also didn’t fix the sound quality problem. The idea was that the recorded L/R channels would (more or less) sound the same as what was to be heard from the speakers while the recording was taken place.
Questions:
- Have I done something basically wrong and is doing end mixing on a QU-16 and recording the L/R channels simply not the way to go?
- Is a significant decline in sound quality when recording the L/R channels inevitable?
- what is a better way to make an end mix of a multi track recording so the depth and dynamics aren’t lost?
Thanks in advance for any pointers, advice and suggestions.