A low cost 'wireless' recording microphone...

[pippas]

A young family friend wanted to make a short video, to include an interview which used 'wireless' hand held microphones - "like the ones they use in the F1 Grand Prix TV reports"he said...

Having drawn his attention to the fact that the type of radio mic used for that - together with its associated receiver and audio recorder - was likely to cost him several hundred pounds, I suggested he might like to use a Zoom audio recorder instead (his camera doesn't have a mic input anyway!)....

No good apparently - doesn't 'look' right

So I suggested fitting a cheap small audio recorder into a 'fake' microphone tube ... That would allow the microphone to perhaps look 'right', and also solve the problem of handling and wind noise, that can occur when using portable audio recorders on their own...

And by selecting one of the Sony 'dictaphone' type recorders, you can keep the cost down. (Those little recorders are much better than you might think ---- Sony advertise them as mono recorders - in fact they are capable of excellent quality stereo recording as well!)

I made some notes on the project -- see HERE ....

I've submitted those notes to be considered as a guide as well - I'll have to wait and see if the mods decide whether it's 'video' enough to get posted or not

[Cornucopia]

Easy/fast/small ("looks good") vs. Cheap vs. Good/Quality. They'll have to pick 2...

Scott

[pippas]

Point taken Scott! ..

Although those little Sony recorders (the model I used is THIS ONE ) are a lot better than you might imagine.

OK, not quite in the same league as their M10 model - or indeed most of the linear PCM recorders - but I have the M10 and an Olympus LS5 (best made of any of the small recorders, IMHO) and the little Sony doesn't perform too badly against those 'pro' models used with high quality mics.

It's fine for anyone looking for a budget project like this. Dialogue recording is one of those 'diminishing returns' type situations... you can spend a lot more money for relatively little improvement.....and the number of folk who spend loads of cash - don't close mic their subject - and then blame the poor dialogue recording on the equipment....

[pippas]

Further to my comments above, I made a very short simultaneous recording - me just speaking a few words - using Sony's excellent little M10 PCM recorder, fitted with an industry standard Shure SM58 as the reference, and the Sony ICDPX333 which I describe in my project notes, fitted with a Panasonic WM61a electret capsule.

A short 'raw' extract from each file is attached (sorry about the British accent!). There has been no audio processing at all applied to either file.

Obviously the M10/Shure recording is better - as you would expect - but the little ICDPX333 gives a pretty good account of itself, IMHO. You can hear some slight MP3 artifacts (those little Sony recorders only record in MP3, sadly) - especially noticeable around the numbers '6' and '7'.

So - clearly not a fully professional result, but where the audio budget is tight, I think it's quite a useful alternative for about 1/6th of the cost?
Certainly OK for amateur 'vox pop' type clips for You tube...

And you can always process the audio (compression, EQ and de-essing for example) to improve the end results...