wrote:

Hi, My organization is considering making recordings of
conferences/lectures that we do and one our people attend (Our main
thing is disseminating information relating to aquaculture). I am
trying to get them into it but since they barely have a concept of it
they aren't willing to put much money into it yet.

So. I am trying to track down an easy (I am the "techy-est" here,
kidna sad), cheap recording solution which I thought would be something
like a Mic and mp3 player/recorder (like some of iRiver's). But i
wanted to get some input from people that knew what they were talking
about (unlike me). The settings are usually such that putting a mic
right by the speaker isn't an option (I've tried, its always something,
either they don't want it by them, they walk around when they talk,
etc) so any suggestions of Mics that can pick up voice from a slight
distance (say i am sitting in the front row) and an MP3 player that can
store anywhere from 1-5 hours of reasonable quality sound. These
recordings don't have to be professional (those wanting to listen to
seminars about Shrimp in South East Asia etc is pretty small) but they
do need to be discernable.

Any help would be *greatly* appreciated!

A PDA or dedicated MP3 recorder in the guy's pocket is the obvious solution
to me.

As for putting a microphone by the speaker, consider a wireless lavalier
mike. Not cheap for a decent one though. If you know what one looks like
and watch closely you'll see that almost every talk show uses that solution
these days. Check the battery life, make sure that it's long enough or
that there will be someone there with a stopwatch to change batteries
before they die.

A couple of other options are conference microphones (google that--again
good ones aren't cheap) or a shotgun mike and a technician holding it.

Cheers

-Gaiko

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
wrote:
As for putting a microphone by the speaker, consider a wireless lavalier
mike. Not cheap for a decent one though. If you know what one looks like
and watch closely you'll see that almost every talk show uses that
solution
these days. Check the battery life, make sure that it's long enough or
that there will be someone there with a stopwatch to change batteries
before they die.

At work we use Shure lavalier mics and they are great. The tiniest little
microphones you have ever seen. The have a little pack that the speaker
wears clipped to clothing, that transmits the audio to our recording gear.
The batteries last quite a while, we can get several days use out of them
(actually a 9V battery IIRC).

--Dan

im with John on this, PDAs are excellent... i was pleasantly suprised
at the quality of the onboard mic when the recording type is increased
to 16bit.

something like resco recorder http://www.resco-net.com/audiorec.asp
works well - as you can adjust the gain. you can save direct to SD
cards also which can be easily transported to a PC for any editing
work.

cheers

Luke