Affordable Music recorder that takes external mics?

[andrew00]

Hello!

This is my first post, so hey and all, and what better way to start than with a question!

I would like to buy a music recorder, prob mp3 recorder, into which I can plug an external mic (prob 3.5 wired lavalier lapel mic) and record to the mp3 player.

What I want to do is hook the mic up to a musician, clip it into his/her lapel, and connect direct to the music recorder. I then want the musician to walk around and play (prob acoustic guitar) and sing, the idea being the mic picks up both the instrument and voice and the recorder gives me a nice mp3 I can sync to video I want to also take.

I already have a Zoom H4, which is great, but 1) it's large and 2) it's expensive.

What I want to do is get, perhaps, 5 mp3 player/recorders and then hook up a full band. Naturally if I get multiple Zoom's/M-Audio's/Edirol's this will cost a lot of money. An alternative is to mic the musicians up wirelessly, but again this would cost a bomb and I don't have that.

I've been searching on google for a couple of days now, but most 'voice' recoders record to bad quality - like 32kbps.

I'd like to record to decent quality - i.e. minimum of 128kbps - because we're talking music here, not a lecture or whatever, so I need good quality. It'd also be great if the recorder would have either auto gain or let me set levels etc.

Please can anyone here help as I don't have the cash to get billions of zooms or wireless, so my only hope here is to record from a cheap (20 quid) clip on mic to a mp3 recorder.

I've seen some people here recommend the discontinued Iriver, but naturally it's discontinued! My budget is prob £300, but I'd like to buy 5 mp3 players with that if possible, so really £75 max max max per recorder, pref less of course!

I also don't want to use the Zoom H4 because I want the band to have the freedom to move about and not worry about being 'out of sound'. I want to record with the wired mics so I can guarantee to record each with decent quality regardless of what's happening and where I/they am/are.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm sorry if this is a really long first post, I just really really want to do this and I've been searching in vain for days!

Cheers,

Andy.

[eviljohn2]

Plugging lav microphones straight into recorders generally isn't going to work. If you really want to record a band wirelessly you need to give them wireless microphones (as you suggest) although the pickup characteristics from a standard lapel will struggle to get vocals and an instrument. The output from the wireless receivers will need to go into a mixing desk so that you can mix it down roughly as you go or take a multi-track recording from the microphones ideally through the desk first anyway so that you can get the gain structure right.

There are plenty of USB/firewire audio interfaces that would enable you to record multiple channels straight to a computer for mixdown later.

I'm afraid it boils down to:
you're really not going to be able to do this on your limited budget I'm afraid. Saving up and getting some time in a studio and taking a video camera or hiring the equipment may be a better option.

[andrew00]

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the advice, but before I give up, here's what I was thinking of doing, perhaps if I break it down it might magically before feasible!

My inspiration is - http://www.blogotheque.net/takeawayshows/ - where the dudes film various bands in Paris. I was lucky enough to meet for an hour or so the guy who films them and he told me he uses a Zoom H4 also wireless mics. I can't afford a wireless system at the moment, unfortunately, so my thinking is 'Can I still record the music in the vein of those videos without spending the earth.' After all, if he can get decent audio with clip on mics then why can't I?

My plan is as thus:

For each musician give them a clip on lav mic, e.g. Audio Technica ATR35s, which is decently priced at about 20 bucks.

Then plug each mic into a seperate mp3 player, which is what this thread was about. In the last few mins I've seen http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/...423&in_merch=1 the Toshiba Gigabeat which has a line in and at $55, so about £30 (baring taxes) and seems ok. It can record to 128 kbps.

So, each musician would have a clip on mic going into an mp3 player which each musician themselves would wear in a pocket. I'd get them all to play their song and at the end I'd collect all (e.g.) 5 mp3 players.

My thinking is it's a ghetto work around. I can't afford a full wireless system of transmitters and receivers and all that unfortunately.

At the end of the sessions I'd then take the mp3 players home, copy them to the PC and bring them into my video editor, sync each of the tracks up to the video and from there I'd effectively have 5 tracks of audio - one for each musician. I could then mix each feed in an audio editor to pull out the lead singer, quieten the inevitably loud drummer etc.

It'd mean 20 quid for the mic and 30 for the recorder per person, so 50 quid total. If I got, say, 5, I could spend 250 quid and be able to record 5 tracks at 128kbps mp3.

Do you believe that wouldn't work? Am I just being hopelessly optimistic!

[eviljohn2]

I genuinely think you'll struggle to find a portable recorder with a mic input at that price. It's important to understand that mic and line are different and that when using microphones you'll need quite a lot of gain available to get the levels right, they may also require phantom power. Please also bear in mind that I'm in no way an expert in the field you're experimenting in and certainly not with this level of equiment!

In principle what you're trying to do is achievable (Marantz make the excellent PMD671) but you may struggle within your budget. I'd recommend trying it out on one musician first if you can find compatible equipment before shelling out for the whole lot - I can't imagine the results being spectacular either way though but if it's just for playing and archiving then it may be just fine.

Do the microphones have to be wireless? You could do quite a lot with static mics within your budget although again you'd struggle to mic 5 musicians including a drummer.

[andrew00]

Ah, here's where my absence of audio expertise lets me down.

What you're saying is, line is one type of signal and mic is another. In order to succeed with the clip on mic I want to use I need a device that can digitally process a mic, i.e. it has a mic input. In this case it will also need decent gain controls as the mic will probably be v. quiet, and will also need to give it phantom power. If the mic can output in line format then the player can record it, but it's unlikely to. Is that right? E.G. This is the mic I was gonna get - http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wi...3ec/index.html - which appears to use a battery but I can't see any line info there!

I know that I can use static mics, and it's an option, but really I'd like to allow the musicians the freedom to walk around, run around, jump up and down etc. I'd also like the freedom myself as the guy filming to follow whatever is interesting, even if it's not, in that moment, the band.

The combination of my and their personal mobility negates static mics unfortunately.

That's the problem, in a way, that wireless mics were invented for that very reason, for personal mobility and freedom of movement, but they come at a premium. In essence I'm trying to achieve the freedom of wireless without actually using wireless devices, hence recording to the mp3 player, as I'm impoverished!

For example, I could get a Zoom H4 for each musician, but that's 200 bucks to shell out each, which is crazy talk, hence my desire for a cheaper solution. Did you take a look at the Blogoteque videos? I don't know exactly how he does the recording, I know wireless is involved but unless there's serious hardware behind the project, he himself must use inexpensive equipment.

[lazymatt]

You could try recording to a Network MD recorder. They are portable, and are often designed with mic use in mind.

[andrew00]

Yeah, but the problem is that minidisc is a technology that is totally alien to me, I don't even know how it works. For example, have they got to the stage now where the files are recorded as data files, wav/mp3 etc, that you can easily edit on your pc? Last time I saw it was checking in this and atrac that, all of which confused me.

[andrew00]

I reckon I might get one of these - http://www.offtek.co.uk/item_detail....92e985b5abd65d they seem to support usage of an external mic and say they can record at 44khz and 128kbps, which whilst not amazing I'm hoping will be decent enough.

I don't know if they're exactly what I want, i.e. my understanding is that line inputs don't boost the mic signal enough to make it loud enough for a good recording, which is why you need a preamp or a dedicated mic in or something!

But, the Audio Technica ATR35S I know comes with a battery so perhaps the combo will work?

[spl23]

Have you seen these? http://www.roland.com/products/en/MICRO_BR/index.html

About £150, and designed for multi-track live and studio recording - uses SD cards for storage. It ought to be able to take a mic directly, I would guess.

[alhambra_c]

The iRiver X20 have voice and line-in recording. A very small player packed with a lot of features.

Check out the review!
http://reviews.cnet.com/portable-vid...-32465593.html