Tony Palmer wrote:Ok I will upgrade my Tascam, as I’ve always liked it and made some decent recordings on it.
However the question remains, I still need a PA head...any recommendations if not a powered mixer?
You need to define for us what your purpose is for this equipment.
Getting a powered mixer is fine but are you recording as you play through your PA? Or do you need to hear yourselves as you record?
There is a bit of confusion as to your plans.
An outright powered mixer can be a Behringer.
But are you going to want to plug and unplug mics away from your recording gear to set up your live sound rig?
And then have to reconnect all that for recording?
Skipping ahead, perhaps you just need a power amp to tap your TASCAM line-outs?
Looking for a powered mixer that will mainly be used for vocals and the keyboard live but also able to take a mixed output to send to a recording device.
If you do the above, you may want to consider that (again) recording will be a different process and criteria for a good recording that will be dependent on your source signals than it will be for a live sound system.
Having a PA mixer might work for live but it might not do as well for recording. It depends on which mixer you use for the PA.
You will then need to send lines from each instrument/mic from your PA mixer to your recording mixer. This would mean your PA mixer would need channel inserts (sends from each channel) to go to the inputs on the recording mixer. Still this does not deal with the audio quality of the PA mixer providing signals to your recording mixer. Which would then mean a "snake" cable from the PA mixer to the recording mixer and then individual lines from the recording mixer to your recorder so you can achieve separate tracks.
See how complicated this can get?
It may be easier and better sounding to use your TASCAM as the main mixer, send your recording signals to your recorder from that, and then just s
end a mono or stereo line to a power amp to feed your speakers off of the TASCAM.
Do your mixing from the TASCAM.
BUT the two processes cannot be expected to go without a hitch. You have a band who will want to hear more or less of themselves. That will present its own set of issues.
And if your recording is done in the same room you plan to do your live playing, the recording engineering will suffer from no separation from the live instruments even if he/she wears headphones. How will you tell what is showing up in the recorder if your're hearing the live amp at the same time?
Can't serve two masters in this case.
One will have to take a back seat.
Expect more connectivity and cable purchases.
Or use headphone mix systems. And those can vary in what they do and how much they cost.
Video below, live jamming in church, acid test for bad acoustics in a quest for sane recordings. Note they use an AVIOM headphone system and a drum shield.
Granted this may not be as far as you'd like to go but these are today's basic environments!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RihPNxg15IU