Thanks Spot. My plan would be for it to be used only for voice. I'll rely on the ambiant mics on the cameras for the other music/noise. :)

MIchael

Wireless mics work pretty well and without any issues such as sync. Not to say you cannot resync in Vegas just that it's one less issue.
We use the Sennheiser mics exclusively and into one channel of the PD150 it works a treat for weddings. Come with good quality mics as well and more channels to choose from than NASA would need.
I'm certain there's better out there but these are good value for money. Have about 5 kits of these for a few years now and apart from people slamming the lid shut on the mic itself are pretty hard to break and unlike a camera they don't go out of fashion.
If you cannot afford to buy one or can't justify the outlay I'm certain you'll find someone nearby who hires them.

Bob.

Can't think of a better way to describe the problem and until I did a bit of late night reading I'd never thought about it. Having two recordings made from separate sources but spaced apart can be problematic if you mix them together.
At certain frequencies (actually makes more sense if you think in wavelengths) you end up recording the signal out of phase. When mixed you end up with the equivalent of a notch filter in the mix!
You might not hear it without careful monitoring or the frequency maybe too low to matter or else by rolling off the bottom end on one track you can avoid it.

Bob.

Consider an mp3 recorder if you're not going wireless. Much better quality than digital voice recorders, many hours of record time, and of course you can record and store music. Many have an OK built-in voice mic and a direct line-in input to which you can connect an amplified stereo mic. The iRiver 700 and 800 series also accept a non-amplified external mic.

MHampton,

Ya, i was one of those trying to ditch the wireless for a digital audio recorder.
I have a nice wireless solution, (senneheiser Evolution 100 Series - not the BEST by far, but $500 is about all i could spend)

But.. I still get some static, and it only works really well when camera i have the wireless receiver plugged into is really close to groom (up on altar somewhere)... just kinda of a pain to have to bring an extra camera just to record sound - and have to go set it up.

I thought the voice recorder in the pocket was just an awesome idea.. however, problem i quickly learned was voice recorders sample at like 12khz tops... which makes for AWFUL sound (like recording a phone call)

I did find this little guy recently though, SOny Digital Voice Recorder
ICD-BM1VTP (sonystyle.com) - specs say it records at 44.khz.. which
should be good for recording vowes.. also has external mic in.

Pricey, like $300+ though...

As farass, mentioned, the Iriver MP3 800 series does offer mic in recording.
A feature which i have long awaited.

Bought one the other day.. $145 .. only tried it briefly.. it DOES work :)
Problem is.. I am not sure of the quality in the mic-in PreAmp.

I am planning on doing some more experiments this week (trying out with different mics etc) .. i'll post here with the results.

Good luck with the wedding!

I picked up the Panasonic RR-US361 at lunch. At "high quality" it does 22khz at 16bit. It also has a mic plus and comes with an external mic to boot. It was only $129 and it came with dragon naturally speaking. If it doesn't work out I can take it back. I'll post results of my tests.

Michael

I'm surprised your having problems with range on the Sennheiser mics, we tested ours to around 1000 metres, clear line of sight though. But in reality no one has been able to get the talent far enough away from the camera for it to be an issue.
In fact several cameramen have earned additional income from these things:
Fit mic to groom early in the morning, park outside his house and record what is said to best man etc. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.....

Sometime if there's other RF gear on the same channel it'll limit the range, try another channel and check that the aerial isn't damaged on either the Tx or Rx unit.

Bob.

Well I just bought an Olympus DS-2200 from
. You can find the specs at the Olympus Web page for the DS-2200

Key specs:
44.1 KHz sampling frequency.
300 to 8000 Hz response in SHQ mode
Olympus supplied external stereo mic.

For voice, this unit looks pretty good to me. It comes with 128 MB memory card and can handle up to 512 MB

Well I can't seem to edit or delete the previous message for some reason so here is the link to Nextwave Solutions:

http://www.next-wave-solutions.com/oldsdivore.html

Sorry about that.

Tadpole,

Bought one the other day.. $145 .. only tried it briefly.. it DOES work :)

Can you elaborate a little more on this...? I hadn't thought of using an MP3 recorder for capturing commentary at our wrestling events, but this seems like an excellent idea...! I'd like to know how it all works in the end ...

Jason

Well - pictures worth a thousands words..
Here's a pic of my Iriver Mp3 player and Sony mic i used.

http://www.angelfire.com/film/otvegas/iriver.html

Ah yep but I meant, did you end up with decent quality stuff you could use?

(Edit: And then I scrolled down and saw the text... Do you think it would do alright if it were to receive a signal rather than a mic input? I'd be sitting this in the sound booth at the shows, hooked up to an output from the mixer)

Jason ,
I too have an Iriver 890, I havent used it for Vegas voice recording ,other than verbal notes,but here are other things/features that it has you might be interested in.
The input can be set for line level or mic level.
You can turn off AGC auto gain control :) !
Can be set for stereo or mono recording.
you can adjust the input value , but you dont really know what your levels are till you play em back say in Vegas.
you can monitor the recording via the headphones though.
you can set the sample freq from 11k to 44khz and bit rate from like 8kbps to 320kbps (128kbps@44.1 khz)
I have used it with a cheapo condensor mic, for vocal notes on some projects it also has a built in mic that's fair.
the recordings with the small ext are very quite as far as noise goes.
although its plays multi-formats it only outputs files as MP3's.
actually as a .rec file that you convert to mp3 with-in their software.
unfortunatly, when you plug it in via usb its not seen as a drive.
you have to use thier software to move files. and you actually cant upload an MP3 thats in the player to your computer,© deal.
the only other thing i dont like is the battery cover Su#ks ! it comes off VERY easily, I took the first one back thinking it was defective, the second one was just as loose.
But I like the little guy,
4 hrs of recording if you dont have it loaded with tunes, i could see it coming in handy for some projects.

Hope some of that info helps
Eric

Does help a lot, thanks :)

Well, I took back the panasonic voice recorder and picked up the iriver 780 with 128meg ram. I can already tell that it sounds much much better and give the ability to plug in an external mic and set the record setting to a much higher bit level than the panasonic. I think this is going to work out just fine.

Nuther little tidbit,
I noticed you can import the .rec file that comes out of the i river directly into Vegas. It allready recognizes it as an Mp3 file . No need to use their convert wizard.

MHampton,
I think you made a pretty good choice. The musicians I hang out with all have mp3 recorders and use them religiously.
BTW, you should get about 2 hrs. record time at 128 kbs with 128MB memory.

A little anecdote: I hired a pro to shoot a live performance on DVCam. The main stereo mix from the board went right to the cam. Knowing it would be a very dry feed, with little ambience, room echo, or audience response, I set up my little mp3 with a stereo mic in the last row of seats.

The plan was to record a stereo ambience track at 128 kbs, time stretch to match the DV audio (by lining up snare drum hits near the beginning and end), and blend it with the dry track just enough to give the feel of being in the hall, which btw has very nice acoustics. That part worked very well.

During my first minutes of post I discovered that the DV audio during the first two numbers (approx. 10 minutes) was horribly clipped and distorted. It got corrected for the rest of the show. My only choice was to use the mp3 recording as the only audio track for the first ten minutes. With some EQ and careful gain compensation, I was able to make it work well enough that no one except me knew the main audio was missing from the opening.

Moral #1: Always have a backup audio track, even if it's a room mic.
Moral #2 These little recorders ain't bad!

So far so good. I was checking back in to talk about how I discovered that I could use the .rec files directly from the iriver, and epirb beat me to it. I noticed that when it was saving the file it said "sony format" which got me thinkin... Hey Sony ownes Vegas now... Yep, went right in without conversion.

Yep, so far so good. Much better quality than the digital dictation machine. :)

Thanks for all the feedback.

Michael

I have the iriver IHP140 40 gig h/drive, I have used this for Weddings and the quality is excellent even with the provided tie mic.. Also the built in mic does a great job, but sometimes to great.. you could hear a flea fart with it... it records mp3 so no probs with import of the sound..



Flack...