[numanchris]

Hi all, normally post in the camcorders/editing section so hope this is in the correct place,

here's the situation, I compete in motorsport, rally driving in particular and have just bought an in-car camera mount to have my Panasonic SD60 camcorder mounted on the rollcage of the car, but it doesn't have a mic-in facility. so in order to pick up the audio of the intercom between the driver and co-driver I was planning on buying a small, reasonably audio recorder without a microphone on it but just a mic-in socket, which I would attach to the rollcage mount just below the camera, but I cant find such a product?

if anyone knows of such a product that would be great

[bow79]

An old minidisk may do but it has moving parts. Digital dictation machines usually have external mic inputs. Cheap to expensive depending on sound quality.

[KUBBY]

An old mini tape recorder would do what you want,I suppose.


This isn't the correct forum for this question,even though its participants would no doubt, have their own suggestions.

I'll move this thread. Good luck.


K.

[jdat]

the only recording units that don't have mics included are expensive units from brands like Fostex, Marantz, Sound Devices, Tascam and the likes, and they are big and heavy.

There are also some recorders designed for doing multi track recording(Tascam etc) and that have no mics, but they are ill suited for your needs and not really convenient for a click and go type of usage I would imagine, and they're not exactly "small".

Now on the other hand, most if not all the digital recorders on the market will have some form of mic/line input.
You could get something like a Zoom H1 and plug in an external source( in this case the intercom). There are just too many models to pick from, and I'm sure if you look on motorsport forums you'll find specific discussions relating to what you are trying to find and that will better recommend, especially given the needs and wants of the sport.
There's also some nice little Tascam and Olympus units in the small price range which are also quite compact.


I personally use a Zoom H2N on a near daily basis for recording sound when filming. It's a four microphone recorder and can do multi track recording.
Why do I mention it?
The nice thing about the unit is that you can record an external source and also use 2 of the onboard mics at the same time, which produces two separate stereo wave files, one for each source(the external input and the internal mics).
I think that could be something nice for your use, and because of the split files you're free to choose what you want when you edit the footage.
The lacking feature with the multitrack on the Zoom H2N is that there is no separate recording level control for the external source and internal mics, so everything gets recorded at the same volume(so if one source is louder than the other ... well you have to reduce the overall level ... ).

[numanchris]

thanks a lot for the replies, will do some research over the weekend then

[michaelkenward]

Originally Posted by numanchris

without a microphone on it but just a mic-in socket

Why this odd requirement?

If you want to add a microphone, then plug one in and the socket goes to sleep.

The idea of using a minidisk or tape player seems odd. Moving parts. Biug and clunky.

To interview people I use portable mp3 recorders. They can cost from a few £ to £XXXs. I usually pitch around £80 to get the features that price brings. For example, at that price you could get stereo and that would allow different left-right inputs.

I usually buy Olympus, but there are plenty of other makes.

The advantage of this approach could be that you can simply match the audio to your video and create a sound track.

[numanchris]

Originally Posted by michaelkenward

Why this odd requirement?

If you want to add a microphone, then plug one in and the socket goes to sleep.

The idea of using a minidisk or tape player seems odd. Moving parts. Biug and clunky.

To interview people I use portable mp3 recorders. They can cost from a few £ to £XXXs. I usually pitch around £80 to get the features that price brings. For example, at that price you could get stereo and that would allow different left-right inputs.

I usually buy Olympus, but there are plenty of other makes.

The advantage of this approach could be that you can simply match the audio to your video and create a sound track.

okay I suppose now I have done more research the idea of the device having an external mic also is no big deal. I just assumed this would make the recorder both cheaper, smaller and better suited to my purpose but I now see that this is not the case.

A portable mp3 recorder would appear to be the way to go, providing it has a mic input, I wouldn't necessarily need a stereo recorder as the intercom feed is from the amp unit itself so the signal coming to the device wouldn't be split into stereo. (sorry if I'm using all the wrong terminology, audio is definately not my area of expertise...)

[numanchris]

this should do the trick I think:

ICD-PX312 (ICDPX312, ICDPX312.CE7) : Portable audio : Sony