For those of you who record live events,  How do you mike the audience to capture the cheers/boos when bands are playing?
 
Stereo paired mikes? a few single mikes spaced about the audience? Front of stage pointing at the audience?  All the above?
 
I recorded a few bands in the last couple of weekends while doing FOH and now I've come to mixdown I realise I caught almost none of the audience with just the band mikes..  It sounds like they're playing a practice session when in reality there was upto 500 people !!

Ha ha, Cheat--- Just find a clip of some audience from another recording.  
 
Applause often blows my levels over the top when doing acoustic type recordings so I have the opposite problem and have to edit the levels way down. 
 
A condenser mike(s) will work and with experimenting they can even serve double duty as room mikes for the band too. The trick is to get them away from the speaker stacks somehow so it doesn't blow the levels to high. 
 
Best results for recordings at live gigs I get with my Tascam DR-40. 
Place it FOH on a camera tripod. Mine is 4 track so the FOH mix goes in XLR and the ambient mix via the on board mikes. If you were way back in the room you just have to time shift the mike tracks until you get a nice room delay. 

hmmm...  I can't see that working at the sort of rock gigs I do...   Room ambience?  The room varies depending on the price of the beer at the bar.

If possible I'd try to get ABOVE the audience with the mic(s) if at all possible. Having them in the crowd tends to pick up the immediate area (and the yahoos therein) as opposed to a good overall crowd sound. On the front of the stage pointed toward the crowd is gonna get a lot of stage noise and again front row yahoos (and you might get dingleberries grabbing the mic trying to be Eddie Vedder which is always annoying).
 
A lot of clubs will have hooks or other crap in the ceiling you could probably hang/tie a mic off of. Safely out of reach of drunken numbskulls and gives a more general crowd sound as opposed to close up yelling or set up at the back of the club picking up noise/convos/fights at the bar or entrance.
 
That would require a ladder though. If there's a balcony you could sling some over the edges on either side which would be cool.
 
Meh. Crowd noise is awesome but troublesome at the same time. I have some many live recordings that are ruined by various nonsense.

A strategically placed human with a Zoom or other portable recorder would be cool too. Then you have someone who can gauge the derp level of the area the input device is in and move around as needed.

That's a lot of good advice/ideas. Thanks guys, I'll try some out next time.


Meanwhile.... Any thoughts on good live albums to rip crowd noise from? I'm looking at a 400 to 500 crowd size.