Behringer BCA2000 - Manual (Page 18)

18
B-CONTROL AUDIO BCA2000
5. APPLICATIONS
This recording setup is easily transportable, for example, to a
recording session at a friend’s or fellow musician’s apartment.
All you need is a laptop computer, the BCA2000, two to three
headphones and/or a couple of active loudspeakers—plus of
course microphones and instruments as required.
There are several options for recording a guitar: you can either
connect the guitar to the front-panel guitar input and process the
signal with the BCA2000’s dynamics section and/or your
computer’s plug-ins or, as shown in the illustration on the previous
page, connect your guitar to a preamp (e.g. BEHRINGER V-AMP 2)
and the preamp to the BCA2000’s line input.
Connect a vocal microphone to the MIC B input. You can also
record an acoustic guitar or other acoustic instruments together
with the vocals. In this case, use two microphones: one for the
instruments and the other one for the vocals.
If you are using loudspeakers for monitoring, the sound
engineer—armed with a laptop, the monitors and the BCA2000—
should be located in a separate room isolated from the musicians,
in order to properly judge the recording without hearing the original
sound, and to prevent feedback and ambient noise problems. If
the engineer uses a third set of headphones instead of the
monitors, everyone can be in the same room (although the
engineer will have to be very quiet!). In this case, the two sets of
headphones for the musicians can be connected to one PHONES
output using a Y-cable or adapter. The sound engineer’s
headphones are then connected to the other PHONES connector.
5.5 Multi-channel recording with
5.1 surround monitoring
Illustration 5.6 shows how to do a multi-channel recording of a
live performance and monitor it in 5.1 surround sound.
Theoretically, you can record an entire orchestra, big band, choir
or a play with a maximum of eight channels and monitor your
recording in 5.1 surround.
Recording: In our example, an orchestral performance is being
recorded. Six microphones are being used: 5 studio condenser
microphones and a so-called boundary microphone, which is
placed on the floor close to the orchestra. Of course, you can
also use other microphones and positioning as your experience
and/or preferences dictate.
Two microphones are used as main stereo mics (L/R), while a
third, emphasizing the center signal, is placed near the conductor.
Two additional microphones (facing the audience) record the
surround sound (surround left and surround right), while the
boundary microphone in the orchestra supports the low
frequencies for the LFE or sub-bass channel.
All microphone signals pass through a multi-channel mic preamp
and are converted into digital signals. The BEHRINGER
ULTRAGAIN PRO-8 DIGITAL ADA8000, shown here, generates
an eight-track ADAT ® signal that is routed to the BCA2000 through
the optical output. From there on, it is passed on to the computer
via High-Speed USB.
Mix: To mix the live recording, hardware control elements to
control the software mixer can be very useful. In this illustration,
two BCF2000 MIDI controllers are used; connected to the
BCA2000 via MIDI, they control the software mixer during
recording/playback.
Monitoring/playback: All loudspeakers necessary for
5.1 surround monitoring can be connected directly to the
BCA2000’s analog outputs. Here, 5 active monitor loudspeakers
(shown: BEHRINGER TRUTH B2030A) and a subwoofer for the
LFE channel are used. You can also connect two additional
loudspeakers to the control room outputs, with which you can
monitor the main stereo signal. The main stereo signal is also fed
to both headphone outputs, allowing conductors, technical
assistants or sound engineers to monitor via headphones.
The loudspeaker setup shown here can also be used to listen
to the sound track from a DVD playing on your computer in
surround sound, provided your software features a
DOLBY ® DIGITAL or DTS ® decoder.