I'm curious if anyone has done this for more of a "live" feel or effect vs just recording your stuff and directly meshing, via a DAW, with the BIAB tracks you've made and how it turned out.

No. 99.9% of the time, it's a really bad idea to do it that way.


You will get way too much bleed from the speakers, especially if you're using a condenser mic. The result is that you can also add comb filtering and phase issues within the tracks since they are picking up the music you've already recorded. The slight delay introduced by the process (not just latency in the computer, but actual speed of sound issues, speaker to mic, added to the latency over several takes) will put the track bleed out of phase slightly. Remember that sound travels approx 1 foot per millisecond. So if there's 6 feet from the speaker to the mic, you just added a 6ms delay to the bleed. With all the bleed being recorded, you will have a mess down under the tracks.

Use headphones when you are tracking with a mic and keep your headphone volume as low as you can to avoid bleed. This gives you nice, clean, quiet, tracks to mix.

If you want a "live feel" go for that using other methods.... such as not fixing the small timing and note issues. You can also add reverb for a live feel to the room. And.... yep, you can even add canned audience sounds.

I've done this for many reasons with good success. It's best to use a mic that's unidirectional and choose a polar pattern carefully so the area of rejection (least amount of pickup) works with how you will be placing your mics.

Ditto that. Try an SM57 with a gobo behind the mic. The Stones used to record like this all the time.


Regards,

Bob