Adventures in (Recording) Aspen

One of the problems I had recording Aspen last year was that the mics on a camcorder are awful. They record a lot of ambient noise, and while I can do some audio scrubbing with software, it takes more work and sounds a little weird (like that weird electronic effect Kanye West uses on the voice).

I worked to remedy that problem by getting another camera that’s been sitting at NORML in DC, which has a direct audio input. With my Stash recording gear getting the PA audio straight to the camera, we’ll have good audio. I set up the whole system at home and ran it for two different two-hours recording runs and it was fantastic.

I also arrived in Aspen early so I could set up this system and test it, since I’d be getting a signal from the hotel PA, and who knows what it would be. I brought every audio adapter I thought I could need. I hooked up the system and plugged in the hotel audio, and it was magnificent. I gave it another one hour test and all was good. Satisfied, I went to bed.

Naturally, then, this morning, as we’re powering up the system, the hotel’s PA power amp decides to die. It would stay on for five seconds, then switch off. The hotel called a local A/V guy, he brought a powered speaker and hooked up the feed from my board (now acting as the PA). It sounded great.

It also caused a ground loop hum on the camera audio input.

So all my work and preparation was for naught; I had to record the day with the crappy camcorder mics.

On top of that, a couple times during the day the laptop decides it needs to just crash and shut off fo no apparent reason. Never did that in testing, just today.

Sigh.

Fortunately I’ve worked out the bugs that caused the ground loop – a combination of a bad cord and an audio setting on the camcorder. Me and the A/V guy just tested it and it works perfectly.

Just like last night.