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July 10th, 2002
I am totally new to this field, so forgive this elementary question.
I haven’t seen any talk about field recording directly onto a laptop hard disk. Is there some reason why a laptop is an impractical recording device?
I’m picturing using a mic hooked up through a jack adapter into the audio input port of the laptop to first capture the sound and then using Pro Tools software to then record the sound. If the typical audio input port on a laptop does not offer professional-level quality capture, then I could use either a pc card, serial port, usb, or firewire interface between the mic and the computer.
Can this be done to create audio recordings of broadcast-level quality?
(Bonus question: can a Pocket PC be used to achieve the same thing?)
I’ve been recording with the Sound Devices Mixpre and a laptop computer for some time. The Mixpre is a USB device and I have a firewire Orb drive for storage. A bit unwieldy…and the computer’s fan is annoyingly loud. For outdoor work off of a cart or a table it’s fantastic — 24 bit 48K sound…
-EL
Thanks for responding.
How much space on average is needed to record an hour of speech for mono and stereo with 24 bit 48K sound? I was thinking that I could just save to hard drive and then save to a larger hard disk when I had the opportunity.
Thanks again.
-GF
Another question Eric –
Disclaimer: I am a TOTAL newbie and have only been interested in this field for 36 hours.
I just looked up what Sound Devices Mixpre was –another piece of hardware. What I’m trying to figure out is why you need additional hardware at all. Can’t software allow you to capture voice in a professional way from microphones right to your laptop?
Well…24 bit mono is about 10 megabytes per minute — double in stereo. It sounds noticeably better than 16 bit recordings.
Much of the quality of the sound lies in the analog to digital conversion, and most laptops’ sound cards do not meet top standards. The USBPre also relieves the computer’s processor from having to make the conversion, leaving more processing power to manage the recording to hard drive, the power, etc. Additionally, any analog audio inside the computer is open to RF contamination by all the oscillators and other nonsense inside the machine — MUCH BETTER to keep the audio, balanced lines of course, away from the laptop altogether.
I’m particularly interested in doing this for film shoots — but the USBPre has no time code provision, which is key for most productions. Of note, the company "MOTU" makes firewire audio interfaces that do allow time code to be recorded. This weekend I’m recording a commercial shoot with the MOTU box, a Compaq laptop, and a firewire ORB drive. (The ORB drive is the same format used in the new Nagra V digital recorder). All told, this is about a $3000 investment (already had the laptop and orb drive, so actually less) in comparison to the $8000 Nagra. Plus, I can record up to eight channels/tracks simultaneously – the Nagra only runs two.
Bottom line — keep analog audio signals away from the computer, perform the digital conversion externally, and recording to your computer should work fine. A high-speed external hard drive is really the way to go — it eases transfer to another computer.
As already answered here, recording straight to a laptop (but not a pocket PC as far as I have heard…) can be done and is being done, but there are a few downsides. As Eric already mentioned, plugging a cable straight into your laptop, presuming that it has a microphone-in, will work, but you won’t end up with fantastic sound quality for all of the reasons he noted. However, in some circumstances, it might be passable.
Also, as mentioned, depending on the context, the computer drives or fans can make interfering noise. I use an iBook, which doesn’t have a fan, so I get away with recording with sensitive mics in fairly close proximity. I also get away with recording to the internal drive, although i have also used external firewire drives that add a small amount of noise.
The bigger problem is the reliability issue. Of course any device can let you down, but computers are notorious for locking-up or crashing at the least opportune moments. I have been lucky to have only two such experiences, and thankfully in recording sessions that allowed me to simply restart and try again. I blamed the external drives in both these crises, but I can’t prove it… But I’d be a bit nervous about recording directly to laptop with no back-up if the event being recorded was unrepeatable.
That being said, i have gotten successful hour-long stereo recordings straight to the iBook internal drive via an Edirol UA-1A. I have also done 8-channel multitrack sessions direct to the internal, or to a firewire drive, using the MOTU 828. And I’ve done overdubs, recording one channel while playing back 7, via the digi M-Box, all with very few problems.
So your scenario is do-able, but i would suggest some form of back-up, and to think about some sort of external interface, to inprove your sound quality into the computer.
I’ve recorded both directly to the iBook and with a minidisc.
So why bother with a minidisc if just the iBook works fine?
I find that for some interviews and recording situations, the iBook is physically impractical and sometimes distracting. And, unless you do it a lot, things go wrong and opportunities are lost.
And keep in mind that though the iBook does not have a fan, the internal hard disk does make noise, or at least mine does. Maybe the newer ones are as quiet as the external Pocket Drives.
Robert is right, laptops do make more noise than some of the little portable recorders, although some of my DAT recorders have a bit of a whine to them….. ny iBook is pretty quiet, but the drive makes a littel noise while recording, so if you are close-in with mics up high you might hear it.
But the bigger things is with the ergonomics of it, it can be distracting, I’ve missed the very beginnings of some live concerts while waiting for the thing to boot up and the program to load, and getting around the "disk too fragmented’ message, etc…. And let’s say your subject wants to get up and show you something in another room. It’s really great to be able to get up and chase around with your portable recorder.
Also, think about it, it’s the real world, you’re going to end up with too much stuff on your hard drive(s) and you won’t have remembered to back-up,and an interview is coming up, so what do you delete?!?!
Removeable media, such as DATs or Minidiscs do have the advantage of "unlimited" storage space, just pop another tape or disc in….
Hi.
The noise you talk about comes in two forms–internal and external. The soundcard in a laptop is probably pretty grim, and might not have a decent analog to digital converter, and might receive interference from the other electronics in the machine. This could leave you with more internal noise than you’d like.
External noise, from fans and disks etc, is a problem, as is (possibly) the fact that you have to use unbalanced lines (although I’ve never personally had a problem) and unpowered mics.
There is a workaround I’ve been looking at, and which is mentioned elsewhere on Transom–the Edirol UA3 (or UA5) (or Roland UA30). It would, I think, solve all of these noise problems, for about the same price as a cheap minidisc. I’ve never tried one, and I don’t work for them, but it is intriguing. Of course, it doesn’t solve any of the ergonomic problems–it makes them worse.
And keep in mind that broadcast quality is a lot lower than you probably think. For my broadcast documentary, I used a $100 mic, a $150 minidisc recorder, and unbalanced cables. I’ve recorded the whole thing through my SB Live super-el-cheapo soundcard. Once it gets to FM, everything sounds like (comparative) crap. So it might not be worth worrying about any of the things I mentioned at all.
Adam.
Hi. Sorry, I didn’t realize that most of the questions had been answered before I wrote my previous post. For some reason the computer wasn’t displaying all messages.
Anyway, I forgot to mention something I think nobody else has–the iMic. It’s a cheap way to improve quality, cheaper than just about anything else.
And I have another question: has anyone used a Nomad or iPod or other HD recorder for interviews? I think this could totally rock–high quality, ergonomic, massive capacity, cheap(ish).
Adam.
As cool as the Nomad and iPod are, they don’t record from analog sources.
And, as everyone knows, analog is…well, see above
Actually there are probably lots of people working on tweaks of the Nomad, I know for a fact some are…I’ll let you know when the info goes public, but i can say it looks really exciting. Even just off-the shelf, the Nomads will take an analog line-level in, but are subject to all of the same problems of the little portable minidiscs, bad ergonomics, metering, etc. So you would need a portable mic preamp, but you could start recording on a Nomad today. I’m sure there are plenty of annoyances, but if you can get it to work, the transfer back to a computer should be super-easy, just a file-copy. The older ones have USB, the newest version (Jukebox 3) has firewire. This newest one has an optical digital in too, and a 20 gig drive. About $400 street price.
here’s a
review:
I just found a site that’s selling the older 6-gig USB ones for $219 if anyone is feeling like experimenting…
Macmidimusic
I’m not sure it’s ready for primetime yet, it’s early… but with some little tweaks it should really rock. I’ll keep you posted on my end.
I’ll agree that laptops’ built-in soundcards can be pretty bleak… but any noise I have encountered has mostly been physical hard-drive noise, and it’s not too bad.
In USB-interface-land, I’ve used the M-Box and the Edirol UA-5, as well as the UA-1A and the UA-1D. I really like the M-Box and the UA5, they are both pretty versitile and do a good job of converting the audio outside of the computer. The UA-1A and D are very bare-bones, but simple and cheap… and are totally fine if you can work around the quirks, such as inconvenient monitoring, etc. The M-Box and UA5 make monitoring very easy, allow a variety of interfacing options, and both have good XLR mic preamps with phantom power, the M-Box a little better-sounding. M-Box about $450, UA-5 about $300. UA1-A or D $100 or less.
The iMic will work too, and because you spent only $35, you can learn to live with mini jacks.
I also use a MOTU 828 firewire interface, which can do multitrack, but is a bit large and cumbersome if all you need is stereo. The two built-in Mic preamps are OK. There are some new firewire boxes from Presonus, Metric Halo and others that look cool, althought they’re not cheap. They are usually rack-mount devices that require AC power, so not too portable either.
But even recording directly to the analog-in on an older G3 Powerbook, back when they had them, is not too terrible, usually fine for broadcast. I haven’t had an opportunity to try too many PC laptops, but I’m sure the quality varies, but think about it: it’s not exactly a priority to put high quality mic preamps or A/D converters on a stock laptop from any manufacturer. So i suggest using an external interface connected via USB or Firewire.
My mistake. I even checked the specs page at creative, but it didn’t mention any type of line in. Instead, it was listed on the features page: Analog/Optical Line-In for direct high quality recording from external audio devices.
Jeff, does it have a way to monitor levels?
Interesting discussion. Here’s some links to various devices and assorted pieces of information:
I’m not aware of any PocketPC device that supports external audio input . There is a company in Europe that has modified an iPAQ to take an external mic. It’s expensive. See http://www.pocketrekorder.de/. I think there is probably a do-it-yourself guide somewhere.
There’s a company in Seattle called Shine micro that is about to start marketing a recording module and software for the Handspring Visor. Check it out here: http://www.shinemicro.com/.
There are also dedicated solid state recorders but they are mostly expensive (see devices made by Mayah , Maycom, Marantz, Denon, Nagra, etc.). Orban is supposed to ship a cheaper device that records in MP3 sometime – supposedly around $500 – but highest quality is 128kbps. It is geared to interview recording. See http://www.dialog4.com/products/sountainer/supp_snt1.html.
A limitation of all the above is memory. Memory cards are still quite expensive and capacities limited although some of these devices will take PC Card hard drives.
In the next year it looks like there will be complete computers packed into devices the size of current PocketPCs. These will take Firewire or USB audio input devices (iMic, Edirol, etc.) and will presumably be able to run CoolEdit etc. Presumably will also be quieter. Check out the OQO at http://www.oqo.com/. There is more information and links to OQO news here: http://www.stevebarr.com/.
Some of the subnotebooks, which are mostly geared to the Japanese market, such as Toshiba Liberetto L5, Sony U1, and Fujitsu Lifebook P-1000 are pretty small (the latter is available in the US). There’s a laptop tapers forum on Yahoo. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laptop-tapers/ (search the archive for a critical review of the Creative Nomad 3). Also check out these pages and links: http://www.sonicsense.com/sncrdr.htm and http://www.24bitfaq.org/.
Yowza, Alan, thanks for that great overview!
The biggest problem is that most of these very small recorders will be geared toward replacing little minicassettes and dictaphones, where intelligibility is accentuated, but not sound-quality. The end use for most folks is to transcribe, or jog the memory, and very few folks are actually concerned with the voice actually sounding good.
That being said, it may just become easy to do it with good quality, so maybe we’ll get this by accident!
the Nomad has some primitive metering, worse than the little minidiscs, but there are input meters.
An interesting option is to drag around a good portable preamp, and output that signal into the laptop, or Nomad, or whatever. Core Sound is packaging the M-Audio Duo in a bag with a battery, which can be used as a stand-alone portable preamp, or USB interface. They do a similar rig with the Edirol UA5. The portable Duo rig is about $400, and a little large, but I’ll bet it works great!.
Grace Designs has made the battery-powered Lunatec V2 for years, and it has fantastic mic preamps, but no digital outs, or computer interfacing, just audiophile mic preamps (about $1,000). They are releasing a V3 in a few days with 24-bit high-sample rate digital out. It has no direct computer interface now, but they say they may offer that expansion. It looks fantastic, but MSRP of about $1,700. If you need the best sound in a portable rig, it’s worth looking at that.
Apogee has the MiniMe for about $1,200 but I think most of us are hoping for some good solutions for a *little* less money!
Keep the ideas coming…
A t-shirt to Atan for helpfulness.
Alan (of the helpful answer above) Can you contact me at info@transom.org? then we can get your lovely transom tshirt in the mail.
thanks.
I’ll own up to being one of those people whose objective is to get my audio transcribed. I’m a social scientist and I do large numbers of interviews. The type of recording most social scientists do is a little more complicated than the Dictaphone approach that is common in applications such as medical transcription, e.g. a single person speaking into a microphone held at close range. Often interviews might be conducted in an office or a room in someone’s home. Typically the recorder and microphone would be placed on a table between the interviewer and subject. The recording needs to be fairly straightforward and unobtrusive. There is very little information on how to do this properly–it is not a topic social scientists discuss very much. Most of what I’ve learnt is from online sites such as this one (all the information here is much appreciated!) although there are some important differences between recording research interviews and recording documentary interviews for radio. The Recordings are obviously used differently and that affects the approach to making the recording, but they are both about getting ‘good’ audio and revealing something about people, what they do, the way they live, etc.
Most people who do qualitative research use quite primitive recording equipment. Typical gear might be something like a cheap $50 Sony portable recorder, maybe used with a external Sony business microphone, often not. The sound quality is usually dreadful, partly because of the gear and partly because the user thinks little about ambient noise, properly positioning the microphone, etc. The result is that parts of every interview usually end up being inaudible or unintelligible and transcription is made tedious and difficult. The transcription budget on a large project may be something in the $20K and upwards range so a "$50 recorder and no technique approach" to recording interview data doesn’t make sense. One could probably equip oneself with a $1500 laptop, $300 USB A/D converter, and $300 mics and still come out ahead on costs on one project given that transcription costs might be slashed by as much as 20% (quite aside from the data loss issue). Note that quality of the audio is important not merely for the purposes of verbal transcription. Analysis of the interview data may involve going back to the audio and listening to pauses, changes in pitch, in volume, etc. Quite subtle audio features might be important.
Some researchers have shifted to using either Olympus and Sony digital voice records or Sony and Sharp minidisc recorders. I’m not convinced that the digital voice recorders are good enough for this application but I haven’t used one. They are really designed for Dictaphone type applications. The sound is very compressed and saved in peculiar formats. Olympus has a new model, only available in Japan at present, that samples at 44.1kHz and saves the recording as 32kbps WMA files which appears to be a big improvement over earlier models. I might try it at some point although I like some display of and control over the recording level. I’d also miss stereo recording, which can also greatly aid transcription in some circumstances. At the moment I use a Sharp SR60 minidisc and SoundProfessionals omni microphones. I also bought a Sony MZ-B100 for a colleague– about as close I could get to a "push and forget" minidisc recorder. The sound quality is very good but I have to rerecord the audio to get a digital file for transcription (I use Cooledit 2000). The files are saved as mono 32kbps or stereo 64 kbps MP3s for transcription. If I’m interviewing by phone I hook the recorder directly up to my PC using a JK Audio Quicktap and then record directly to computer file using CoolEdit.
The main drawbacks of minidisc as far as I am concerned are the lack of a fast way to upload files to a PC and reliability. I always make a backup recording to tape just in case I have a dreaded ToC failure. My gear problem is finding a suitable recorder in the middle range between cheap consumer gear designed primarily for music listening or very simple recording tasks and expensive professional field interviewing gear. I want something that is fairly easy to use, unobtrusive, reliable, offers fast file transfer, good audio quality, and isn’t too expensive. I’m waiting for the Orban /Dialog4 Sountainer (around $500?) which I think might work very well for my particular needs but who knows when or even if it will be available.
Cheers, Alan.
Alan, this is completely untested and risky, but think about this scenario….
The new Nomad Hard Disc recorder, 20 gig drive, can record 16 bit 44.1kz wav files via a line-in or optical digital in. Most importantly, it has USB and Firewire out, for fast transfer back to a computer for editing.
Add a Zefiro Inbox(about $300) connected by optical digital. Both can run on batteries.
The Inbox has XLR inputs for a pro interface, and has individual mic trims. I don’t see any metering, and the Nomad isn’t great in that department either, but some practice and careful monitoring might get over that.
The inbox looks like a pretty hip front end for a little minidisc or DAT machine too, as long as they can take digital in.
Just thinking out loud!
Jeff, could you use a minidisc as a preamp/meter for the Nomad? When I put my Sharp (722) in "record" mode it lets me monitor and meter the sound coming in without actually recording anything (this is where I normally make my initial metering settings, you then have to hit "play" to actually start recording). If it would work, the drawback is that there is a beep when you change metering levels that only comes through on the monitoring output.
1) andy, i think you can turn off the beeps. i used to have a 722 and seem to remember finding this somewhere in manual.
2) alan, good point about the investment soc.sci.folk, also print journalists, oral archivists, make in recording and transcribing interviews, but not so much in recording techniques. i can see 3 advantages minimum for a soc.sci recordist to try to get broadcast-worthy sound:
a) clean digital recordings have a far greater signal to noise. the signal, the voice, is far above the inherent noise of the recorder/mic, so even low-levels signals can be turned up loud and still be pretty clear — e.g., for discerning what was said in a barely audible utterance.
b) another by-product of good s/n is a greater tolerance in setting proper recording levels. as long as you don’t set them too high and distort, good equipment will provide transcribe-able recordings w/in a wider range of input volumes.
c) you or someone may someday want to use your recordings in a broadcast. if the originals are broadcast quality, all is well. if not, they may remain forever unairable.
(of course, it’s not just good equipment that makes good recordings. mic placement. and proper level-settings are just as important. generally for a interview to be broadcast quality the mic must be w/in a foot or so of the speaker’s mouth. this might mean hauling more gear for you — mic stands, goosenecks, etc., but may pay off in long run, when you hear one of your tapes running on NPR.)
3) jeff et al, any word on the stability of these hard-disk recorders while in motion. e.g., can you record while walking — are they as motion stable as md and dat recorders?
Jeff,
Thanks for the idea. I’ve thought about using one of the harddisc recorders. There is obviously potential there. I guess my feeling is that this setup would be too complicated for what I need to do. I want to be able to get clean, well recorded audio, although it doesn’t need to be of the stellar quality that would impress a professional audio engineer, and I need to get it with a minimum of fuss using equipment that fairly portable and unobstrustive and very reliable. I’m really attracted to the idea of a small solid state recorder. Until a decent one appears I can live with minidisc even if uploading is a pain. I’m going to keep waiting for the appearance of the Sountainer. If I get tired waiting maybe I’ll try the Maycom Handheld Recorder. The most detailed information on this device is in a FAQ file here: http://www.raperandwayman.com/. It records stereo or mono, in MP2 or WAV (samples up to 48 kHz and has MP2 bitrates to 384kbps), has a level display, manual or auto gain control, has a limiter, uses CF cards, supports external mics but also has an internal mic that uses the same capsule as BeyerDynamic MCE-58, supports profiles, etc. More features than I probably need and more expensive than the Sountainer.
BTW There is a detailed assessment of the Creative Jukebox 3 on the laptop tapers board. Here’s the link; http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laptop-tapers/message/1817. There’s discussion of a lot of technical stuff that goes over my head but at the end the reviewer writes, "However, upon recording an entire show, I find there to be *audible* glitches from dropped samples in the recordings at both 44.1 and 48K. According to EAC’s wav compare feature, the samples were dropped in chunks of several hundred. I’m not sure why, usually with PC’s this is a result of a conflict where another process steals cpu or disk utility. With the nomad being a proprietaryrecorder, with nothing else going on, I cant imagine what would cause these hiccups. The one bright side is that since these are audible errors, I have some hope that creative will eventually fix them with a firmware patch. Till then, this thing remains unsatisfactory for digital recording, unless your a fan of big audible pops and clicks placed randomly throughout your recording…"
Here’s another interesting hard drive recorder: http://www.terapin-mine.com/. This one actually comes with a mic-in jack. Still no metering but apparently they are working on better audio recording features as they are developing a PCMCIA stereo recorder card to use with the device That would make sense as this product appears to be geared to professional field use. Apparently the device has a following with photo journalists as the device has a USB master and slave support so you can offload digital photos in the field. It also has built-in ethernet support and takes PCMCIA Memory Cards, WLAN cards, etc., and has built in and tcp-ip support for e-mail. This all comes at a price of course…
cheers, Alan.
Barrett,
I completely agree about using digital for this type of recording. I’ve gotten interested in the technology and techniques necessary to make decent recording but for most people doing social science research the interest is minimal. I’m not sure why because they end up losing data and their transcription costs are greatly increased. In my experience the tolerance afforded by digital results, for the reasons you list, in much better/usable recordings despite a complete lack of technique! I have a colleague who was using a cheap little tape recorder with built-in mic until recently and there would be recordings where the speech was completely submerged in hiss and ambient noise. I don’t know what the hiss is like on a decent tape recorder such as a Marantz but on a $50 Sony portable it is significant. If the mic/recorder isn’t close to the speaker the audio is awful. This person has since moved to using a Sony MZ-B100 MD recorder with that units internal mics and the recordings have been pretty good for our purposes. I’m sure her ‘technique’ hasn’t changed. The extra latitude also allows me more scope to fix any problems once I have the audio in Cooledit.
My mics are usually further away from the speakers than a foot. I generally shoot for about 2-3 feet. I just lay an omni on the table between the interviewee and myself. I would imagine other people here would never do this but I’m concerned about being intrusive. I really want the recording process to be very low key, I want the whole process to disappear into the background as soon as possible. That said I do have a set SoundProfessional Binaurals. This is a small stereo mic with each capsule on separate 6 foot cables that terminate in a single 1/8 plug. The mic is designed to work with minidisc recorders. Both capsules have clips. I haven’t tried it yet but if I felt the need I could clip a capsule onto each speaker (their shirt, tie, etc.). I would imagine that that would improve the quality further and I’d get the advantage of stereo separation at the transcription stage.
Alan.
Alan,
I’m normally not much of a fan of lavaliers, but your Sound Pro mics would probably work really well for your purposes. Once you clip the mic on, I’m sure people would forget all about it, and it will be much closer to the source, if not in an ideal position for beautiful voice sound. I’ve actually used some REALLY cheap Radio Shack mics that are similar: tiny electret mics, with a tie clip. They have a stereo set up for about $15 that will plug right into a minidisc. It’s not audiophile, but I have been amazed how good they sound for so little money.
For an intermediate step, you’ll be better off if you put your mic in a desk-top mic stand, there are little collapsable ones that don’t take much space. Sure, it’s an omni mic, but it will sound better if it’s pointed vaguely at the source, and not getting reflections off of a coffee table.
Or you can go the other way and get a boundary mic, and always lay it on the cofee table, you’ll be amazed how much sound you can get with a mic like that.
Big thanks for the link about folks having trouble recording to the Nomad. I’m much too trusting about things like that, I always assume that if they are selling a machine with certain capabilities, that it will actually do those things.
Of course i’ve encountered plenty of gear that doesn’t live up to its billing, but I’ve heard of a few folks trying to hot-rod the jukebox for serious field recording, so i just assumed it was working!
It’s always scary to be an early adopter. Thanks again for the heads-up! We’ll try to keep up with this issue here.
Jeff,
Thanks for the advice on mics. Maybe I’ll try using a couple of stands. I have previously thought about getting two small stands for the SP mics but I wasn’t sure that this would be worthwhile. (SP actually sells stands for these mini mics, see model SP-DTS-4.) My understanding was that by having the mics on the table the reflected sound would be coincident with the direct sound–in effect I’d be getting something like a boundary effect or at least would be less likely to have problems with reverberation caused by reflected sound (isn’t a PZM just an omni positioned very close to a hard flat surface?). My understanding of acoustics is rather limited so maybe I’m missing or misunderstanding important aspects of how this works. I have never used a boundary mic although I have at various times considered trying one of the cheaper ones, probably either a Crown Sound Grabber II or Audio Technica ATR97. There are people who do this type of interviewing who rave about a Radioshack PZM but RadioShack appears not to sell PZMs anymore.
I also have a question about attaching the mics to people’s clothing. Is clothing noise likely to cause any problems, e.g. if the mic is clipped onto the person’s tie and the interviewee changes position causing the tie to move against their shirt?
With regard to recorders, you’d think somebody would find it worth their while to develop a decent harddisc recorder in the under $500 range. For maybe not much additional cost and effort they’d add to their existing consumer base. Chris Carfagno at SP posted a comment on the minidisc discussion board recently stating that he’d had conversations with Creative about improving the recording capabilities of their products but he wrote that he felt his comments "fell on deaf ears". Given my needs I’d be quite happy with a decent solid state device in the $500 and under range but that may be a while as well. A reliable source has informed me that the Sountainer which was originally supposed to ship in May 2001, then early 2002, is now unlikely to ship before 2003. I ‘m not holding my breath.
Cheers, Alan.
Yes, noise from clothing rubbing against a Lav and its cable can be a big problem. It’s a bigger issue when hanging the mic necklace-style rather than clipping it. But with some care, you can often find a place that is not as succeptible to rustle. A tie is actually not so good, it moves around too much, try the lapel or pocket of the outer-most layer of clothes. The really small, light lavaliers will stay put a bit better than big, heavy ones. In a perfect world, "dressing" the cable down with another clip, or a little patch of tape will help too, but this might not be practical in many circumstances.
As for PZM mics, yes, in a way you are simulating their function, but just laying an omni on a table is a fairly coarse way of doing it… The PZMs are better at getting a clear sound, while an omni on the table tends to get some "smear" from reflections hitting the mic at a wider range of times.
I’m still amazed that we aren’t innundated with hard-disc recorders, beacuse all the technology exists right now. What we want to do (record analog sound-in) is not a huge threat to the recording industry, but perhaps not a huge market either. The kids want to do digital dubbing, and don’t care about the input stage. So we might get something by accident, but probably not a good, solid machine with mic inputs for a low price, at least not right away.
bummer.
Jeff,
Thanks. That was helpful.
Alan.
Over on the Laptop Tapers forum Jamie Lutch, who had previously posted a critical review of the Creative Jukebox 3 (see discussion above), just posted a message about a fireware update:
He was apparently involved in beta testing the update and states that the jukebox now:
* records flawlessly on the digital in (no more dropped samples).
* adds level meters and adjustable gain on the line in recording.
You can read the message here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laptop-tapers/message/2629
Here an excerpt from the Readme.txt file that accompanies the ver 1.20.06 update (see http://www.nomadworld.com/downloads/firmware/wma-jukebox3.asp):
2.3 Enhanced Recording Features
2.3.1 Audio Monitoring for Line-In and Optical-In. For Line-In and Optical-In Recording, you can now monitor the signal through your headphones prior to starting the recording.
2.3.2 Stereo Recording Level Meter. A stereo level meter which represents the strength of the incoming signal is now available on the recording screen. This meter is updated continuously before and
during the recording.
2.3.3 Recording Level Adjustment. For Line-In and Wired Remote Recording, you can now adjust the input level gain from -12dB to 12dB to decrease or increase the signal level. This adjustment can be heard immediately through the headphone or by looking at the recording level meter.
Alan.
apologies for this being so off-topic, but…
i’d like to record directly to my laptop with a dynamic mic (beyer m58), but i’m concerned about the input level – i’m assuming my soundcard has a mic level input, and the impedance matching concerns me – i’m not sure whether i need to increase the signal, decrease the signal, or leave the signal alone. i’ve been looking at the shure a96f cable, but i’m not sure if it’s appropriate or even necessary.
Hi Amy, I think you might need that Shure transformer, a dynamic mic doesn’t tend to have much output volume, and the less you need to make the computer’s own mic preamps work, the better…. ultimately an external interface would be best, giving better quality, more control, and less noise. But for a quick and dirty solution, the Shure a96f is a pretty good choice. I got one for $35 from B&H photo video, not that much more than a good cable.
I’ve just finished testing out the M-Audio MobilePre USB Preamp with my ibook.
The MobilePre is a box about the size of a really big paperback, like an English anthology say, with two XLR ins, two 1/4" ins, an 1/8" in, and a bunch of standard outs. As discussed above, the idea is that you can use your laptop to record while ‘outsourcing’ the preamplification and digital/analog conversion to a less electronically noisy environment. And I have to say, as far as I can tell, the MobilePre really, really works well. It seems to have been made for people like us. For once, I’m entirely satisfied with a piece of electronic equipment.
The pros: it doesn’t need to be plugged in, it sounds fabulous (to my ears at least), it uses balanced XLR connections, it has adjustable recording levels, it’s really easy to use.
The cons: it doesn’t work with Protools, it doesn’t come bundled with recording software (rather stupid IMHO), it’s rather bulky, it’s not super super cheap ($150 US).
A few comments generally: it’s a bigger pain than I had anticipated to use a laptop to record. I, and I know I’m nearly alone in this, really don’t like minidiscs, but you sure can’t beat them for size. I was trying to record a sumo match, and with the behemoths stomping around and a handheld cardioid mic, I really could have used a smaller device and fewer cables. Happily, with XLR connections, it’s possible to run really long cables because they don’t pick up interference. So instead of the 5′ one I started with, I’ll get a 20′ cable, and I figure I should be able to move around reasonably well.
Adam.
I’ve noticed that the a96f only has an "18 cable. Would adding an extension to this cable (say another 3-6 feet) reduce its effectiveness? I’m recording directly to a laptop with a griffin iMic.
go ahead and extend this cable, but do it on the XLR end. Adding a few feet of balanced cable with secure XLR connectors will be much safer than using an unbalanced mini extension.
any way to use the mbox and cool edit pro?
I lifted this from the MacWorld email newsletter.
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MAC 911 WEBLOG
By Christopher Breen, Contributing Editor, Macworld (mac911@macworld.com)
Recording laptop audio
Reader Elizabeth Kimball writes to ask how she might use her laptop’s built-in microphone to record the interviews she needs for her graduate studies. I reply that it can be done with the tools she likely has on her Mac or with a two-track audio editor affordable enough for even college students.
Step 1 is to launch System Preferences and select the Sound system preference. Click the Input tab and be sure that Internal Microphone is selected.
Step 2 is to decide which application you’d like to record with. If you have Apple’s iLife ’04 suite, you have two options — iMovie and GarageBand.
To record audio with iMovie, launch the application, click the Audio tab, press the red Record button, and start talking. Press Record again when you’re done. The recording will appear in the first of iMovie’s audio tracks. To save the file, choose Share from the File menu, click the QuickTime tab, choose Expert Settings from the Compress Movie For pop-up menu, and click the Share button. In the resulting Save Exported File As dialog box, choose Sound to AIFF from the Export pop-up menu and name and save your file. You can now open your audio file in iTunes or any other audio application that supports the AIFF audio format.
To record audio with GarageBand, launch the application and create a new "song." Click the Plus button at the bottom of the GarageBand window to create a new track. Click the Real Instrument tab in the resulting New Track window. Choose Basic Track from the left column and No Effects from the right column. Click OK. If Metronome is checked in the Control menu, select it so it’s unchecked. Press the red Record button and start talking. Press the Record button again when you’re finished. Save your file and then choose Export to iTunes from the File menu. Your audio will be saved as an AIFF file in iTunes.
If you’d like to use a dedicated, two-track audio editor for recording and editing sound, take a look at HairerSoft’s $30 Amadeus II.
For more Mac 911 goodness, check out my updated-when-I-have-something-useful-to-say weblog found at
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911.