digital recorders and recording, need help

[DieselDave]

My Father in Law is a pastor of a Church. He currently records to cassette and sends them out. I want to help him change over to digital and burn CD's, e-mail his message or post the file to his website.

The Church is very small so myself and a one other will have to buy whatever is needed. It will be a surprise to my FIL.

I will also need an external burner as their current PC doesn't have one even though it's only about 18 months old. He only makes about 10 tapes a week now and it will be less if we go to digital, so I don't need a stacked unit.

He has a nice cordless lapel mic already that I hope to be able to use with the new setup.

Anyone experienced with this sort of thing? I have owned a digital recorder but it was a super small unit and I did very little with it.

I live 685 miles from him so I won't be running over to his house to help him with a problem. He will need software that's SUPER easy to use as he has very limited PC abilities. I am going to see him in about a month and hope to take the equipment with me and install it while I am there.

 

[paulr]

Why not skip the cd's and just go with mp3's on the web site. Buy an mp3 recorder, simpler to use than a computer, sort of like a digital camera but for audio. You get an mp3 file on a memory card, that you can upload directly to a computer. My favorite is the Edirol R-09, but it is kind of expensive. You could look for the older R-1 on ebay for less, or the Marantz PMD660 (that's what I have).

 

[DieselDave]

Those are neat units but not all the members that currently get tapes have an mp3 player or a computer so we still need the ability to record them in wave and then convert them to mp3. I see you can record in wave with those units but then I have to ask why would they be better than say a Sony or toshiba unit for $200?

 

[Sigman]

I'd have to go back & search, but there was a member who posted some time ago about digital recorders & such.

I'm watching this thread for info as well and will try to find the other thread to see if it applies. My son needs one to record his guitar playing and when he jams with others. (yeah, he thinks he's in a band - actually he's pretty good!)

I'll not trash your thread Dave, but am hungry for info.

 

[DieselDave]

Doing a little research today I discovered the Edirol R09 has a flaw. It's reported that to download the unit you must open the battery cover to get to the SD card or USB cable port. I don't like that, just another step and something else to break. The Marantz cost even more money and I can’t figure out why paulr likes the Edirol better. I’m sure there’s a good reason but I’m a rock on the topic.

I've discovered that very few units actually record in wav or MP3 so you have to download amd convert them. (other than what paulr recommended) I've also discovered that my unstated goal of getting 2 hours of monural voice on a CD in wav format is probably impossible.

I'm not doing all that great so far. I hate the idea of spending $400-$500 for a stereo recording unit when I only need mono.


Does anyone else make a recorder that records in wav that’s not $400-$500?

Still need help.

 

[tiktok 22]

Hi Dave,

Is it possible to hook a mic directly to the line in on the PC and use a program such as audacity or Reaper to record directly to the hard drive and the burn to CD? The software is free and you can record in WAV format.

 

[paulr]

The PMD660 and Edirols record in mp3 and wav just fine. There are cheaper setups, but maybe not with such simple pushbutton convenience. I like the R09 better than the PMD660 because it's smaller and uses less battery power and has more choices of mp3 bit rates and stuff like that--basically newer technology. You should be able to transfer files from it by USB without removing the memory card, like a digital camera, if you prefer that method.

I didn't realize you only needed mono. Maybe you could use one of those ipod voice recorder thingies.

Two hours mono on a regular cd doesn't work, cd's are a 74-80 minute stereo medium. You can get cd/mp3 players for 25 bucks or so that play mp3 files directly. Maybe it's simplest to just get some of those for the listeners who don't have mp3 players, if there are only a few of them. Most set-top DVD players these days will also play mp3 files from cd-r.

You might have a look at some of these:

https://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/category/510/audio

There are some less expensive ones there that I'm not familiar with.

 

[creampuff]

My Father in Law is a pastor of a Church. He currently records to cassette and sends them out. I want to help him change over to digital and burn CD's, e-mail his message or post the file to his website.

He has a nice cordless lapel mic already that I hope to be able to use with the new setup.

Anyone experienced with this sort of thing? I have owned a digital recorder but it was a super small unit and I did very little with it.

I have some experience with the portable Marantz recorders that are in the $400 to 500 range, and their primary advantage is portability. Sound accuracy is not their strong point, and it does not take much to accidentally clip on your sound files. Seeing as how this is for church recording, and being portable may not be a neccesity, it may be better to add a quality sound card, sound editing software such as Sound Forge audio, and a CD burner. For single track recording, I have the Audiophile 2496 on my desktop, I use occasionally for some sound ingestion. I use Sound Forge, which can be expensive, but there is a consumer version called Sound Forge Audio(?), which will provide you with most of the functions of Sound Forge 8, without the big $$$.

The wireless mic, is it plugged into the church's sound board or is being used independently? If it is being plugged into the sound board, then you already have 1/2 of your solution. Simply use one of the board's aux. outs, and send it to the PC. If it is stand alone, then you may need to tweak the line out/mic out signals, before sending it to the PC.

 

[Sigman]

These aren't the threads I was trying to remember...but there are a couple tidbits of info in them here and here.

There was some positive talk about the Sony MiniDisc recorders. I don't even know if they're sold anymore?

 

[DieselDave]

There is no sound board. Currently he's using a pretty nice Shure wireless mic. sending audio directly to a cheap 10-15 year old portable cassette recorder. As you might guess the audio is not good in fact it's bad. For his purposes the audio quality is fine. The only requiement is the audio be clear enough to understand.

 

[jtice]

There are plenty of MP3 players that have builtin mikes now.
If you dont need to pickup everyone in the room they should work.
Look for ones with builin "voice recorders"

You can always make your burning software convert the MP3s to WAV as it burns them to the CD.
This way you are still storing the smaller MP3 format on the computer.

~John

 

[jtice]

Here is a list on Newegg that have voice recorders in them.
Newegg.com Voice Recorder MP3 Players

~John

 

[DieselDave]

Here's where I am.
I think I will try a Giffin italk for an ipod 30gb video we have that doesn't get used much. He has the Shure cordless mic that hopefully will work with the italk. If not I will get a plug in mic and he can keep the ipod in his pocket. Quality is not a real issue as long as it's not plain horrible. I will let yall know what happens. Now I'm off to the 3 page thread on CD burners.
Thanks.

 

[DieselDave]

Ordered from Newegg at 0630 today and got the shipping notice at 1330, I'm impressed.

Besides the italk I also ordered two new internal OEM DVD and DVD/R drives for my desktop. The ones that came with my Dell 8400 have been problems for the last year (2.5 year old machine) and now neither one wants to work. I would have waited but the OEM drives, got one NEC and one Lite-on are so cheap I had to do it. If I would have known I could replace the pair for under $60 I would have done it sooner.

As far as the external burner for my Father-in Law, it will have to wait.

 

[kc2ouf]

A colleague has the Griffin mic for her 20gig Ipod - she uses it for clinical notes on medical rounds - Sounds nice albeit it needs a little eq for the peaky low-mids.

 

[James S]

I'd have tried to upgrade the computer and gotten a cheap USB/Audio input device. I have setup several of these for people in similar situations. You can get used Mac's or PC's for cheap locally, anything that will run OSX or XP and has a USB port will almost work fine. The good USB input devices dont run more than $40 at worst. And a brand new high speed DVD burner can be had for about the same price. So for like $200 you can set something up with an old computer and all new stuff. Then if you want to burn to CD there is no quality loss and you can equally encode to mp3 or whatever other format you want.

The other positive thing about using an older computer that looks like it has taken a few licks is that people are less likely to install all their own crap on it rendering it useless for it's intended purpose 😉 If you get a big fancy machine the next guy in the room will try to install some game on it and mess up your recording stuff 😉

 

[greenlight]

If it's something people are going to be listening too, don't record mono, go stereo, it's much more natural sounding.

 

[DieselDave]

Re: digital recorders, Now Have Answers

Got the new gear tonight. For our purposes the italk pro works like a champ. It even picks up voices clearly from the next room.

I installed the new drives in my PC in about 20 minutes, including vacuuming the interior. Computer recognized them no problem and I'm watching a DVD now, it couldn't have been easier. All I have left to do is find some newer drivers. The drives come bare, nothing but the drives, NOTHING else.

Here is a 45 second music file in .wav. It is 1.95mb. It is recorded in 16 bit mono to keep the file size down. I held the ipod about 2' out from the front of our Bose Wave CD player. You can hear the TV in the background.
http://members.cox.net/dlh/italk test/italkmusictest.wav

This is a 45 second voice file I recorded with the italk in .wav. It is 1.95mb and recorded in 16 bit mono to keep the file size down. Again,
http://members.cox.net/dlh/italk test/italkvoicetest.wav