calling all cars - any thoughts on this mic?

[earlgrey]

I need a mic for my conversion from cassette audio books to CDs. I bought a cassette player from someone on ebay and he is offering this mic as follows:

"We have one Gigaware USB Desktop Microphone. Cord is right at 6 ft. Model is 33-124 and you can see features on Radioshack site."
1) I can't find a review on it at the radio shack site
2) he will sell it to me for 25 smokes (shipping included)
3) only thing I question is the cord length - it will be close as I have to go into the back of my tower computer

thanks

[thor21344]

OK, Are you asking if you should buy that mic. if so, why not just go to Radio Shack or some place else and buy one. Of course the better the mic the better you will get, but also a mic is a mic as far as that goes. you do not need a special mic just to record with, and if you want to use ot to transfer your CD's to computer then you need to get a program that comes with hardware for that. Like a Plug to USB conection, trying to use a mic to transfer is not good. to much background noise and things like that.

Hope I have answered your question

Marty

[DVDdoug]

I need a mic for my conversion from cassette audio books to CDs.

No... You don't want to use a microphone for that. You should use a direct connection. Hopefully, the cassette player has a headphone output or RCA line-level outputs. Just get a cable or cable with the appropriate connectors and connect the cassette player's output to your soundcard's line-in.

If you record with a microphone, the sound quality will be degraded by the speaker, the microphone, room noise, and room acoustics.

If you want good quality recording of voice or music with a microphone you need a good "studio" or "performance" microphone. These generally start at about $100 USD and go up from there. And, you should avoid your soundcard's mic-input. Mic inputs on computers are generally low-quality and it's simply the wrong interface* for a "pro" microphone. You can get a USB audio interface with a built-in mic-preamp and XLR connector, or you can get a "studio" USB mic such as the AT2020 USB.


* Regular "computer mics" and consumer soundcards use a high impedance unbalanced (2-wire) connection, whereas pro mics use a low impedance balanced (3-wire) connection. Studio condenser mics also require 48 volt phantom power, which is supplied by the preamp or audio interface. Electret condenser computer-mics use something similar, but it's only 5V and wired differently. (Dynamic mics don't require power.)

[thor21344]

I Agree DVDdoug, Thanks really, for the tech. reasons for not using a mic to transfer(Convert) from cassett to computer. Not that techy but know you can not properly use a mic for converting. Learned that back in the 60's when copping from REEL to REEL music to another REELto REEL, had to use PATCH CORDs.


Marty

[earlgrey]

thank to all but I did not make myself clear at all. Here is the deal - 1 CD will not hold side A and Side B of a cassette but it might hold around an hour of recordings. So I plan on putting Side A and Side B on the computer via direct connection and then get Audacity to peel out 60 minutes of what may be an hour and a half. So I need to talk into Audacity or Cassette Player/recorder and say "End of Disc 1" at time 60min. Then peel out the next 60 min to create disc 2 and voice in "End of Disc 2", etc. With that in mind do I need an expensive mic? TIA

[steve]

I don't think you need an expensive mic for that. A $20 USB desktop mic should be quite adequate.

[thor21344]

Now i might be wrong but if you import the files from the cassett to Audacity (both sides) you caqn then export the file out as one .wav or MP3 and then you should be able to put both sides on one CD

[Trebor]

... I need to talk into Audacity or Cassette Player/recorder and say "End of Disc 1" at time 60min...

Could use Text-to-speech ...

''end of disc 1'.wav

(54.04 KiB) Downloaded 142 times

https://www.google.com/search?q=text+to+voice+online