Thoughts on our audio set-up, microphone question
Speaking of the 10th District and all things new media, I was on the panel for this month's GA Politics Podcast.
I think the discussion was great in this episode, much more conversational than it's often been. It was recorded at our place just by setting our portable recorder down on the coffee table (as was the newest episode of North Fulton Drama Club). It got me thinking about how to set up for audio recording in our new place.
I want to run with the sitting around the coffee table, forget-the-mic-is-there set-up. I think we can do this with one or two boundary microphones, plugged straight into the recorder or through a USB interface into a laptop. This would be less complicated and expensive than lapel mics, and I'm kind of over the novelty of having an imposing-looking sound set-up if it's going to be a lot of effort to deal with. I'm eying the Shure MX393. Anyone have any experience with this microphone or any others in the Microflex series they can share?
There are very obvious issues with echoes and noise in the new place. Some of that will be worked out when we install curtains sometime in the next few weeks, and I'm also planning to buy and/or make some portable freestanding noise-absorption panels and bass traps at some point pretty soon.
We toyed with the idea of making our vault into a studio, but that isn't going to work, at least not as a place for frequent recordings. There's not enough ventilation. The sound isolation is better there, so it may yet still be used as a place for voiceover-type stuff (ideal when making fake commercials).
But, the point is, I had a hell of a lot of fun not having to play sound engineer this time out. Thanks to Joseph, his panelists, the NFDC crew, and everyone else for making our first party in three or four months awesome.
I meant to mention ...
I had some initial concerns about our middle-of-the-table recording session. Not during the recording, of course, but later on when I was doing some editing and sound-checking. The recorder did well on the three girls, but my lower voice was almost inaudible.
However, after putting the vocal file through Levelator, everything evened out perfectly and brought my volume right in line with everybody else. So the recorder is picking up everything it should, but it takes some post-production (scripted or not) to make it work.
Posted on June 1, 2007 - 3:09pm
Yeah, we had that issue in the GA Politics Podcast too. Levelator rawks. I've been getting some ideas from a few people, and at this stage I'm hoping the weather will be nice enough for us to record on the roof for the next couple of parties while we work on the acoustics inside the apartment. The sound was pretty damn good up there, actually.
Posted on June 1, 2007 - 4:06pm