Audacity Forum

kozikowski wrote: You're doing this with your desktop machine? The reason that's important is not that it wouldn't work, but you're immediately tied down to one location and that location needs to be next to wall power.

Unless you're on a stage or other performance area, putting your voice in the ceiling speakers doesn't work. That's a nightmare of bell sounding words and hooting feedback. That's the day I call in sick.
Koz

I'm aware of the constraints a desktop presents. A laptop too would in theory have to be near wall power as back up if a battery wasn't fully charged. My partner in this operation perhaps has a laptop, but for now I'm trying to design it around my own resources. I already did a google search to see if there's Audacity for Android, as I thought about using my tablet which I bought for the specific reason that it has USB outs on it. So that takes me back to the desktop.

The particular bar has a stage for a DJ set-up in place. I was thinking if the speakers (akin to a wedding DJ) were placed out bored of the stage area directional away, the feedback wouldn't be too ridiculous (but this is the novice speaking so I could be way off).

Again, back to my original post, I was asking if a head set like this one:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control ... &A=details

Was my only option. An xlr input.

I thought that was too easy.

4-pin female connector is compatible with Clear-Com and Telex bodypacks that have a 4-pin male connector

They're designed to plug into a communications bodypack that has the batteries in it. It doesn't plug directly into your 3-pin XLR mixer.

Koz

ahhhhhh. Ok, I was wondering, I thought I noticed the 3 vs 4 but I must have used my niavity to hope it would work out.

Thanks for the suggestion on the mixer though, I haven't selected one yet. I'm trying to figure out what best fits my needs before I spend a dime. Looks like I will move towards the mic + headphones set-up.

Thanks for all the help along the way the both of you.

If you get closer, let us know and we'll poke holes in it. If the holes don't matter to you, then you're good to go.

I think the mini-stage idea is terrific. Can you see where you're magically oozing away from the idea of the free-form, shoot anywhere podcast?

Jury's out on a battery powered mixer. Not that they don't exist. They do. Mine were in the thousand$. Probably out of your price range.

I have a friend who conducted a successful voice capture on an open cockpit I.C.E. boat racing around Biscayne Bay. "How the frog did you do that," I asked? "Easy, because I'm good," he said modestly. And then he told me how he did it.

I do have one real-world problem with headphones. I wasn't kidding about the interview before you had an ear infection or Leprosy. We had to scale back the use of "communal" headphones because of squeamishness. Stock up on alcohol wipes. Yes, we do. I'm not joking.

Koz

The other headphone problem is that most small mixers have only one headphone socket.
A simple "splitter cable" can be used to split the one headphone output between two pairs of headphones, but for more than two pairs you really need to looking at using a separate headphone amplifier. These need not be expensive - these are surprisingly good: http://www.thomann.de/gb/millenium_ha4.htm

Another question - is it really necessary for everyone involved to be able to "monitor" the conversation through headphones? In radio studio interviews (BBC) it is very common for only the interviewer to wear headphones. The interviewees will simply talk to the interviewer, hearing everything as in a normal conversation.

steve wrote:
You could use two hand held mics and a 2 channel USB microphone pre-amp. One mic recording to the left channel and one to the right of a stereo pair. Split the stereo pair to two mono channels to get the voices on independent tracks. Pass one of the mics if you nee to include a third person.

Str8sixfan wrote:As far as uncontrollably goes, obviously in a bar I'll be against ambient noise

Not just noise, but very difficult acoustics. Headsets or other "close" mics will help to some degree, but you are still up against it for getting good recording quality.

So if I went the route of a 2 channel USB mic pre-amp, I would still want to plug into headphones to be able to hear myself, how do I go about doing that, run a splitter off of my computer to two normal headphone jacks?

Can you explain to me what you meant by "close" mics? I'm guessing just situated "close" to your mouth is all you meant, but I wasn't sure if a certain model is better suited for that type proximity or not.

how do I go about doing that, run a splitter off of my computer to two normal headphone jacks?

Live monitoring has to happen on the mixer, interface, or preamp and sometimes on the mic itself. Anywhere before the computer. The headphone connection on the computer can be made to produce the show sound as you're recording it, but it's always going to be one computer late. Sometimes significantly late. Most people can't listen to that without going crazy.

We run into this with people who want to multitrack/overdub. Play all the instruments in their song themselves.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/ ... ctions.jpg

Koz

Can you explain to me what you meant by "close" mics?

This is the magic place where English is going to fall apart. I would be sending into a noisy environment to try to get a good, clean recording. There's nothing like the surprises you get when you try to do that with your own fingers.

Unfortunately, you're doing all this on your tower and it's not easy to do do a quick, temporary shoot to get a feel for how it works.

This is the kind of thing we're talking about. That's not a headset. That's just a microphone that mounts over your ear. She's using a radio microphone, but that's not important.

Ok that's what I thought, but the pre-amp I googled I didn't see a jack input (likely on the reverse face) so it got me wondering. I suppose a 2-channel pre-amp probably doesn't allow me to simultaneously put sound out over speakers like I mentioned previously in the (possible) bar setting.

The house feed comes from the mixer. You can't get it from the computer because of the delay problems.

We also use AKG C555L microphones. They work terrifically well. They do have a belt pack with the batteries in it, but they do plug right into an XLR mixer.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audi ... microphone

Koz