Another silly idea for the pile. I’ve been thinking about portable audio recording for a number of years now for various notions most of which are lost in the midsts of my memory, but I always stalled at the hardware stage. What little research I’ve done seems to suggest that portable digital audio recording is either incredibly expensive and professional or rather expensive and not much better than tape, but tape only lasts for 45 minutes or so and just seems a little archaic. Ideally I just want a small memory stick, say half a gig or so, with a mic socket and a record button along with a small mic I can either clip onto my clothes or tape to my body. Recording quality doesn’t have to be high as I’ll just be recording myself. To give you some idea of what I’m after here’s the latest notion.
I’ve been enjoying the Dubber and Spoons Buscast for a while now, where two chaps record their conversation on their bus home from work and slap it online, but it seems to have ground to a halt. What I liked about it, other than their good humour and repartee, was the background noise and sense of place. It reminded me of a Radio 4 program, the name of which annoyingly escapes me, where the presenter goes for a country walk with a local expert and just talks about stuff, occasionally stopping to let the sounds of the country paint an aural picture.
As you know I do a lot of cycling at the moment and when I do the endorphins get rushing around and my brain ticks over ten to the dozen. I want to strap a mic to my face and just talk. It might be a leisurely bimble around the canals or a hectic bomb through the rush-hour traffic of central Birmingham. I might give a detailed commentary or you might just get me panting and swearing at idiotic motorists. You might even get me singing as I do that sometimes – this morning it was Half Man Half Biscuit in the style of an opera diva. I sometimes get lost and have to consult a map, which gets terribly exciting I can tell you.
The other reason is after 21 episodes of Pete Radio I’m looking for a new challenge. Don’t worry, I’ll definitely continue to do music shows, but I feel I’ve gotten into something of a rut with them. It’s a good rut, but a rut all the same. Audio, and speech radio in particular, has always interested me so I really should start pushing the boundaries a little.
So, anyone got any experience with budget portable audio recording kit? Is a cheap dictaphone with a stripped down mic really the best option or is there something out there that will output mp3s? To give you some idea I’d rather not spend more than £50.
ha I just linked the buscast without reading all of the post.
Minidiscs arnt too shabby at recording, perhaps eBay might have a few going. Failing that, get a seriously cheap tape recorder a few c90′s and this bitch and your good to go!
Have you gone off getting an iPod? Cos the new one does stereo recording now right and would fit a lot more than 45 minutes on…
Similar viens….
I’ve been wanting to record the, well… you’d hardly call the sounds of our house ‘ambient’ – but for the sake of it – the ‘ambient’ sounds in our house of bedlam, & use these rather than anything quite so staged as me sitting in from of the computer trying to say something for my podcasts – the whole ‘staged’ quality of speaking in that fashion is …poop. Track information can be imparted in mp3 tags & links on your ‘radio’ site – so I don’t especially see the point which artists such & such was etc.
I’d also want a USB in – because my audio input seems to be somewhat shagged & I have to sort of lean up at the inbuilt mic on the imac – or shout – which isn’t good when the kids are asleep upstairs…
mind you, that firewire midi thing in the linklog looked good though, didn’t it?
We have one off these at college for recording voiceovers for film etc…
http://www.solidstatesound.co.uk/maycom-mp3-kit.htm
Its very good although outside your £50 budget. The problem you might find, and indeed we have found recording audio, is that most consumer minidisc recorders and MP3 players have a very poor (or no) input or mic pre-amps meaning that even with a good microphone it sounds shite as the audio is recorded at such a low volume. This kit comes with a preamp “tube” which is brill. If you are interested in having a look I could borrow it for a weekend ?
Re previous post….might not be Mac compatible, will check tommorrow.
Don’t forget the headset mike and windbaffle.
DId I just say that? Never mind.
On the way home I was pondering the wind effect as I’ll probably end up with half an hour of bwwwssshhhh. Speculation continued until I’d devised something resembling a paint roller attached to a mouth organ neck brace….
The Maycom is exactly what I’m looking for but it’s so expensive! For that money I could get an iPod and kill two birds, but I’m not getting an iPod, bse. I’m saving my money for All Tomorrows Parties.
One of these?
Are you really going to ATP ? Which weekend are you looking at ?
Not sure which weekend – I’m leaving it in the lap of the Andys (and Gareth). I think we’re looking at Weekend Two but don’t hold me to that.
Cool – thats the weekend I’m thinking of if you’re looking for extra people.
Ta daaaa!
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000567066520/
Are you thinking of Radio 4 Open Country? Good one from Ireland recently. Seems a tree in, I think it was, County Claire was not cut down at the time of new development. Site of the little green men apparently .
Yup, Open Country – quite inspired radio.
Vince – that ebay listing is pretty mental. The options seem to be dirt cheap kit with expensive postage from the far east or expensive kit with cheap postage within the UK. Still, either option tends to work out to less that £50 so thanks for the heads up.
The sound recording option on my camera’s pretty spiffy, how is yours? It’s one of those features you never thing to try until caught short (I needed something to make warped voices out of for an animation) but I’ve used it a lot to pick up ambient sound since — plus, you don’t have to carry any extra kit.
It did cross my mind but there’s no mic socket and it will only record movies meaning I can only do 15 minutes at a time (the lowest is pretty high-res which is cool for video but rather annoying in this respect…)
Well if you had told me half-an-hour ago I was going to spend the last part of my weekend listening to two blokes on a Birmingham bus talking amusingly about bees I would not have believed you. The internet, eh? You never know where you might end up. As for bike-casting I have no technological suggestions for you but I definitely think you should go for it as as the promise of hearing Half Man Half Biscuit sung in the style of an opera diva to a background of passing Birmingham buses (possibly with blokes on them commenting on this strange jibbering cyclist connected via wires to bulky cut-price recording equipment) is one that has me strangely intrigued.