CDs available within five minutes of the band coming off stage London based music company FX has been at the forefront of the development of the 'live to CD' service, where concerts are readily made available on CD shortly after a concert. The company's technical manager Adam Pope worked closely with the groundbreaking live to CD company, Live Here Now since its inception. In its development FX made many recommendations to ensure practical and professional working situations.
X recommended that the best way for Live Here Now to proceed would be to source a soundproofed, air-conditioned truck into which duplication equipment could then be installed. After further research, and to supply the required CD output, Pope also advised Live Here Now to invest in 50 seven-bay Magellen CD duplicators, together with a total of 14 Tascam CDRW750 and HHB CDR830+ single CD-R burners for creating master CDs, plus outboard equipment including limiters and compressors. Working in partnership with Will Shapland Mobiles, a Live Here Now engineer mixes the audience mics and live material coming off stage before the masters are burned.
"After our recommendations had been made, Live Here Now wanted technical backup, primarily during installation of the equipment, and within their start-up period," says Pope. "FX was very involved in how all this would be put together logistically. It's a simple concept, but making the whole process happen quickly and efficiently took a bit of working out."
Another important recommendation from FX was to take a multitrack split of all live channels directly from the stage, rather than a stereo feed from front of house, as had initially been done when the service initially launched in the US, combined with ambient mics recording the audience.
"Will Shapland and myself felt very strongly that it would be wrong to go down the stereo feed route when we started," he says. "We wanted to go straight to the multitrack level and handle an independent mix. Even if some of the main rivals weren't at this stage when we started out, it would have been a natural evolution and the audio quality would have just got better and better. We wanted to be one jump ahead!"
Live Here Now's technology means that within five minutes of the band coming off stage, CDs are available at points of sale around the venue, with up to 500 being sold within half an hour. "We're now looking to increase the number of burners and duplicators so that we can produce the CDs even quicker," says Pope.
Recent projects for Live Here Now have included the recording of unsigned and breaking bands and live seminars at the In The City forum in Manchester, plus recording of selected Goldfrapp tour dates for immediate release after the concerts, in special packaging designed by the band. Earlier in the year, fans of Erasure, Moby, Client and Throbbing Gristle were also able to purchase live recordings of the gigs they had just attended.
