Good room, good mics, what more do you need?

Just got back from recording two live band sessions for BBC Introducing. Sounding pretty good considering... Considering that is the whole evening takes four hours and in that time me and my colleague take all the gear to the venue we use (a church building) setup record two bands and then pack up and put it all away.

We're getting pretty good results too. Often as good as those from much higher profile and better equipped studio facilities on big bucks network radio. Partly that's down to our extreme skill (we're modest too) but mainly it's about the space.

Half decent instruments in a good space with some reasonable mics are going to sound good. Get the space wrong and you spend an age messing about trying polish that particular turd.

We're lucky in that the mics we have are good ones. So even though the mixing desk is cheap and the compressors are Behringer (shudder) the results are still pretty good.