recording rehearsals problem

hi, i use sonar to also record all band rehearsals.the problem i have is i can't find a quick and easy way to distribute a recording of the practice to the guys in the 10 min. we usually have of talking after practice. 2 of the guys have sonar x2 pro like myself so i would think it would be easy to burn them a copy or drag them a usb bundle file, but incredibly i am finding this very hard to accomplish as the practices are 45 min long and they lose their gusto if i keep walking out into the control room after every song and rerecording new tracks.(the other strange thing is that when dragging what says it's a 13gig bundle onto a 16 gig usb doesn't fit?) (also of note the reason i am dragging a huge bundle is so that it will open on their systems.correct?) could someone please help me find a better way of passing out the recording of the day so these guys can listen in their cars. i also find the quick burn in sonar frustrating, never can get it to burn a disk. i have to drag it into sound forge and use cd architect from there.(very time consuming)    (also of note i am recording 16 tracks of the rehearsals, most of which is necessary.)
here are my specs.   win 7 64, sonar x2 pro, i7, 8 gig. roland studio capture ,mostly in the box
 
dear lord why can i create great cd recordings but not make a quick and easy practice disk?lol
 

thankx wdi, i ll try that. i ll need a converter as i don't have the extra mp3 option on x2. never paid for it once it ran out. this does seem like the best way a mixdown. why didn't i see this. thank you
 

thankx bob. i ll try that. i appreciate the help guys.

If you do try this, make sure you export the wave from sonar as 44/16. I've encountered problems opening up waves at higher bit rate / sample rates in Nero WaveEditor. Not sure which one was the problem or both. Never tried troubleshooting it.

20 min of waiting seems to be all I can do guys and gals. any suggestions? how do you do it? burn fast copies that is.
 

I have found from experience of recording rehearsals is the 16 tracks is way overkill. All you really need is a stereo mic in the room. Yes it is roar but it actually shows up much more than any 16 track session might. For example if anyone is playing too loud it is very obvious in the stereo recording. It is not production you are after it is how well (and balanced) people are playing and stereo recordings do that very well.
 
Record to one interleaved track. Also I used to when I was a band leader only record after the band had spent some time practicing the tune first. Practice a tune for half an hour then record one take of it after that. Then you will end up with just a bunch of tracks on a single track. You should be able to burn that quick smart for people to listen to on the way home.
 
As long as there is a PA in the room and everyone can be heard it is actually a very good way to do it. It is brutal but that is what you need in this situation.
 
A great band will still sound amazing through a stereo mic.

Couple of things you can do.  One is use less tracks as suggested before. You can use a pair of overhead or room mics to get the drums and guitars/bass on two tracks.  If you wanted more control you can record bass direct, overhead mic plus kick mic (for drums) and mic the guitar cabinet.  Vocals on a separate track and you're at a total of 5-6 tracks.
 
Remember the more tracks you use, the more control you have, but the more time it takes to mix down everything.
 
When I record "live" practice (which I don't do often unless we're creating) I literally use three mics - one room (drum) mic, mic in front of guitar, bass (direct) and vocal mic.  This gives me a little control on guitar, bass and vocals as well as "room" sound.  I've placed the room mic in a good location to balance drums and guitar/bass sound.  I could in theory just use the room mic to get the whole band sound.  The additional mics allow a little more control for my mixes.  Remember the live "practice" is just that - practice.  The sound doesn't have to be perfect.
I can mix down the practice in about 10-15 min.
 
If I was recording a live performance, then this setup wouldn't work well and I wouldn't be under a time constraint as well.
 
Also, are you using 45 minutes of recording time without stopping, as in a one-take 45 min live session?  If so have you considered stopping the recording in between songs, so that you can export songs individually?
 
As suggested you can mix down quickly to mp3 and email the song to your bandmates. 
 
I export my tracks individually and use Sound Forge to make CDs/MP3s.  I can export a 4 min song in about 30 seconds to a WAV file, import that WAV file into Sound Forge, do a quick mastering for volume and compression, and export it to MP3 in a total of about 2 minutes.  I'd then just use windows media player to make a CD out of the WAV files and a playlist out of the MP3s to email to people if I wanted to.
 
 

I record every practice as well for this purpose. Stopping the recording process inbetween playing music can really help cut out the stuff inbetween songs, but it's a PITA to run back into the control room to hit stop/record. You may want to setup a midi controller for this purpose with an Ipad and WIFI, or a long USB cable and a cheap controller like a korg nanocontroller. Also if you are close miking everything (I do) you can cut down the number of tracks by combining things like a bunch tom toms down to a single track by using an external mixer before you go into the DAW. I also take all of the vocals, main and backups, out through the PA mixer from an Aux send into one DAW track. A mono cymbal mic works fine for cymbals. This way I can record 5 vocal mics, drums, a guitar, bass, and keyboards on 8 tracks (4 channel on drum - kick, snare, toms, cymbals) all vocals on 1 track, bass, guitar, keys) You just have to experiment to make sure the vocal levels and such are ok as you cant go back in and change their volumes once recorded.

ok thankx again for the suggestions guys. upgrading to x3 is out. i really like x2, but thank you.(i have plenty of vst2 plugins that work great.) dropbox is out, no going to pay extra money per year for the convenience of handing out a disk. been in this game a long time.95'. been recording sense 85, i ve come to the conclusion that the x3 of this world will just keep coming, and if you have a system in place that works great, why pay the extra money in this economy that you don't have every year for upgrading programs and then plugins.but thank you.
 
stopping the vibe of playing right through a set(practice the way you play-out!) is not going to happen.but thank you.
 
 i already knew that if i lessen the mic count it would be faster, but the fact is that the sound is plush now. we catch a lot of songs - lightning in a bottle like , using 16 mics. i just wanted to make sure that when using so many mics, that this is the fastest way... getting feed back from other musicians is what the post is about.
 
i do have another computer and i have been thinking about just running my fast pro into it. might even be able to dump 2 tracks of output as i have 8, into the fast track.  then the fast track 2 tracks on a separate computer could be for the 5 min, here you go guys. see ya next time. (and yes we play non stop for 45 min, prating the set that we use in bars) so i ll get to keep the 16 track copy, and they can have the 2 track reference.(some of these 16 track practices are really nice live recordings. sonar is a powerful tool. i love it.)  the only problem here is sonar doesn't let you use the program on another computer at the same time. i ll have to see if i still have one of those older versions of it around here.   
 
again what do you all think, your suggestions are very important to me as you are the best people to bounce sonar ideas off of PERIOD.  thank you as always, vizio

Mix down to 16 bit wave-file " quick bounce " if possible .
Making a CD of 1 long wave-file, i do not know the limit of 1 file, or if it need to be split !
size of a ordinary CD is like 720 mb !

If u need to do it quick, maybe buying a cheap recorder that can record
in MP3 format at 128-256 kbps with 16/32 Gb memory
connect it to the headphones out from your soundcard
Viola ... a finished recorded MP3 on the fly .

btw here is an option, a plugin that u can put on the Master bus and record down Audio
then i think u can save time to bounce down audio, i have never tried it on the fly myself. Voxengo Recorder 

Many new car stereo's today can play mp3 from a usb stick !

Free and simple Converter : MediaHuman Audio Converter