good cheap digital 8-tracks or the like?

[xAzagthothx]

hey eveyrone, i'm looking into investing in some basic recording setup for my band, to record our live stuff via our PA system.

basically, what I want to do is have all of our instruments/vocals going through our powered mixer and then using the speaker outputs to the inputs on a recording unit. would that work? or like, use the stereo outputs or something (i think it has those)

basically I just want to make double use of all of our mics: by micing them up so that we can use our PA for rehearsal/shows, and then use those mics to capture stuff to tape/digital. Does that make sense?

like, my main idea was, as i said, to use stereo speaker outputs and just doing stereo 2 track recordings, just basic basic stuff so we can record rehearsals, mainly.

thanks guys. sorry, i'm mad tired, if this is confusing. haha

 

[beechstudio]

Dude....your options are wide open! If your looking for budget friendly ideas, you can pick up a used digi001 on Ebay for $100 to $200. If you're going to do board mixes, you can pick up a used Adat on the bay for around the same price. There are a lot of 8 track units new from Tascam, Fostex and the like for a little more money. Pick your poison.

 

[Yhanthlei]

powered mixer [...] speaker outputs [..] inputs on a recording unit

Dude, BAAAAD idea!
Those speaker outputs are meant to be connected to speakers, there's a lot of juice coming out there... If you connect them to a recording unit it'll probably just fry

However, if your mixer has line-outs you could do what you described.
(Although you'd benefit more from a multitrack recorder actually using all the inputs, and then taking a stereo out from there into the PA system. This way you can rock live and at the same time record the performance, and actually mix it a bit afterwards [I'm saying "a bit" here because to actually mix drums and guitars and vox and shit you'd need more than 8 channels, but you could have a stereo mixdown of the drums, 2 guitars, bass, vox and maybe some synth or whatever])