HELP: Audio Recorder alternative (Noob) Have I got this right? (noob)

[Reelkid]

Hi there, this might be my first post so hello all!

Totally new to filmmaking so expect nonsense but here's the meat: I've been spending days on the internet looking for 'cheap' audio equipment to use for a bunch of shorts I plan to make this year but here's the catch, I'm broke...sort of.

I have a budget of around £155 ($258) and the films I plan to make will take place inside. The ideal option would have been to get a Zoom H4N or a Tescam DR40 so I could feed the XLR cable from a shotgun mic into the recorders and get some high quality sound(?)

But I can't afford a Zoom H4N or a DR40, so I was thinking...as a compromise I could take my laptop on set, buy some long XLR cables and attach one to a shotgun mic and the other end to an Audio interface like the Alesis i/02 (which has XLR inputs), plug the Alesis in my laptop and record away!

My only problem is that, on paper this would be well in my budget, though I'm sure there's a massive con here. Will I lose audio quality if I use an audio interface that's connected via USB? And/or is there something else I should be aware of with my dirt-cheapskate plan?

PS
I'm aware that this sketchy plan well make the boom operator slightly less mobile on set (due to the laptop etc) but there won't be that much movement going on with the actors.

 

[Finn Yarbrough]

Go for it. No money is no money, and there's nothing you can do about that. Your solution may not yield the lowest noise-floor, but neither does the H4N.

 

[Strouty]

I wouldn't mess around with an USB audio interface when you can get a real recorder for a little bit more. Sure it could work, but sooner or later you are going to want a real recorder anyway because it will make life about 100x easier for production audio.

So there are bunch of things that you really should have (shock mount, wind protection, headphones, decent boom pole, etc), but you don't have money for any of that, so I'm not going to waste your time telling you that need to save up your money to get these things. Eventually you'll realize you'll need them, but that doesn't help you now.

When it comes down to it, decent audio is about 90% mic placement and technique. Aka, get that mic as close as you can. And if you're inside, that means a lot closer than you might think (hint: if the mic is more than about a foot and a half, it's too far!)

Personally, if I only had $258 to spend on audio, then I'd go with a used DR-40 ($130), a used cheapie XLR shotgun mic ($100) and a cheapie ebay boom pole or painter pole + adapter ($20) and a cheapie XLR cable ($8) and there's your $258. You really need heaphones to monitor the audio, but you can just use a pair of earbuds that you have around. You don't have a shock mount or decent wind protection, so booming is going to be extremely tough, so be prepared for multiple takes when the audio is unusable.