Portable Sound Recording Hardware Question

John Froton

John Froton

Well-known member
I have a client that has an interest in doing some narrative/ audio book style of voice recording, most likely from a conference room at his business.

My question is, would I be better off recording to a portable recording device such as the Samson Zoom H4 field recorder or would I be just as well off to hook my mic into my MIXPRE preamp into my Beachtek XLR to mini plug adaptor and straight into my PC laptop?

Any recommendations? Are there better solutions for portable audio recording out there that don't cost too much more than what I am looking at as far as cost here?

Thanks
 
Im guessing Zoom AD converter might be better than PCs, but that is just a guess. I think more important might be mic placement and mic choice. A shure 58 on a table gets you a nice slap echo. also, might have to treat the ac/heater vent if no separate control for the room(common in NY)
 
DOnt forget the Zoom is an audio interface to your PC. And since there is no way to record in mono, use two mics, and then blend them or choose whichever you like the sound of best.
 
The Zoom will give you convenience and portability, plus great sound. You can slip it in your pocket when you're done (if you have a fairly big pocket.) A 2 gig SD card can give you nearly 3 hours of recording time at 48khz. And although I haven't used them, I'm told the built-in stereo mics -- when used with the internal mic modeling -- are quite good. So you might not even need to bring any other mics. Transfer of your recordings to your PC is simple. If your PC has a card reader, then just pop the SD card in and go. If not, the H4 comes with a USB cable to connect to the PC.

For what it's worth, if it were me, I'd use the Zoom H4.
 
As already alluded to, you biggest hurtle will be the conference room. Getting the room quiet and killing the reverb can be trickier then it sounds but will make a much bigger difference in the listenability of your tracks then the quality of your A/D circuits.

A friendly tip; have the speaker standing up instead of sitting down. People standing up tend to deliver more from the diaphragm and standing up tends to increase the energy of the delivery. Sitting down people will move in the chair, creating noise and randomly changing their distance from the mic.

Don't forget a pop screen and to keep him hydrated.

Good luck
 
In addition, most laptops have piss-poor sound cards unless you install a better one yourself, definitely go zoom.
 
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