Balancing instruments in practice and general "mic in room" recordings

PolarityMan

So we spent quite a bit of the last practice trying to get our un-mic'ed instrument balance a bit better. We have a fairly big limitation that our bass player is using a fairly underpowered amp and the drummer has a tendency to play too loud for him to keep up.

Anyway Im still not massively pleased with how this sounds through a little zoom recorder so Im looking for 2 things. Firstly any advice on the balance itself.

But secondly, do I have unreasonable expectations for a  completely unmic'ed practice. Could you guys post some similar practice recordings so I can see what the average standard is like for this kinda stuff?

Anyway here's a linky:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s8y124qisqrwlkw/Protest the Volcano.mp3

There's a couple more but we made some holers in them so Ill only post them if people want to hear them? Btw about 06:09 to the end is my favourite part of this song.

Danny1969

I don't like recordings done on those zooms, they always sound thin. I don't use mine anymore, I found I can get better using 2 Behringer C1's and a mini mixer into a laptop

You can experiment with height that can help with cymbals, also make sure there's a no reflecting surface behind the Zoom, you can hear loads of phase cancellations in that recording which makes it sound thin and kinda wishy washy

Cool song though, deserves a better recording but if it's only for rough listening to iron out arrnagment it's fine 

PolarityMan

Its partly for reference but also we play a bunch of gigs with only vocals going through the PA so its partly practice getting a better sound for those gigs too.

I also think we're massively too loud for the room which doesn't help with the reflections