The RME MADIface USB in use alongside TotalMix FX
RME has won many fans in the live recording sector over the years, largely thanks to supreme reliabilty and unrivalled performance. Professional sound engineer Rob Baldock shares his experiences below.
When choosing the equipment to capture live events, the main focus for me has always been on reliability. The recording can never be allowed to fail and it has to be of studio-level quality. The main recording rig I’ve run for years is based around Alesis HD24s and external pre-amps. It’s a solid system that has served me well for the last eight years or so.
I’ve used RME products for years. Starting off with the old faithful and reliable Digi9652 ADAT cards in the studio. The first time I ever used an RME device on a live show was at The London Palladium with Patrick Wolf in 2009. The FOH desk was a Digico SD7 and the only way we could interface was via MADI, so we hired in the RME ADI 648 to convert the MADI stream to lightpipe so we could capture all of the mics on stage. It was so quick to set up and so solid that we used the ADI 648 quite a few times after that, most notably as a redundancy recording for Chase & Status’ massive gig at The O2 in December 2013. Incidentally, the main recording for this show was through the HDSPe MADI FX card inside a Mac Pro…RME all round!
I’ve recently invested in an RME Fireface UFX, which, in combination with my MacBook Pro enables me to have a smaller recording rig when flying out to shows or traveling by train.
We were approached again this year to record Splendour Festival’s main stage for the recently launched Notts TV channel. All bands on this stage – including Happy Mondays and Scouting For Girls – would be using the main house line system provided by ESS – so we could take a split into our pre-amps and record on the HD24s. Headliner, Tom Odell’s crew, however, would be bringing their own Digico consoles and running their own digital stagebox. In order to capture this show we’d need to be able to interface with their setup. While I knew I could rely on RME’s MADI products to capture the set without a hitch, I immediately considered the ADI 648, however the changeover would need to be extremely quick between Happy Mondays and Tom Odell and there would be no soundcheck – you rarely get a soundcheck at festivals. Considering that the main “A Rig” of the HD24s would still be hooked up for all the other bands, I needed to run a MADI feed to a completely separate recording system – the “B Rig”!
Having spoken to Martin & Rob at Synthax, they recommended the RME MADIface USB. Perhaps one of the most impressive things that first struck me is that there was no additional installation involved. Straight out of the box, the drivers and TotalMix software I already had installed for my Fireface UFX worked instantly with the MADIface USB from the second I plugged it in. My recording software of choice, Reaper, instantly recognised the device and offered me the option to record via the MADIface USB – and, as predicted, we didn’t get any kind of sound check for Tom Odell – but on the night it just worked perfectly and we didn’t miss a note! What’s more, I had a rig capable of recording up to 64 channels – that would all fit inside a small backpack!
I can’t see a time when I won’t want to use RME products. They’re just solid, quick and easy to set up, the software is simple but extremely powerful and they just work…flawlessly, every time!
Rob Baldock – re:live recordings
rob@reliverecordings.co.uk
www.reliverecordings.co.uk
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