Can you Help a Newbie for Home Voice Recording? Advice Needed!

Fujisan

New member
Hi all! :)

My Name's Alex from Perth, Western Australia.
I teach people to start speaking Chinese in 58 minutes
without the use of pen or paper

As such I rely on audio recordings
to make CDs for my students. To date I've used a recording
studio but man - it's been quite a hassle organising, getting
the recording in good shape etc etc

Bottomline - want something budget
that does a good job recording voice.
(sadly, unlike you creative folks I can't play
any instruments so it's unlikey I'll have a band to record =P

Scenario Use

  • Recording 1 - 2 voices (ie English and Chinese)
  • POSSIBLY recording a small group of 4

What is your advice for computer software, hardware & equipment?
I'm currently using GoldWave to do basic sound editing- no Cubase highend stuff for me.

All I envisage doing is upping the volume of the recorded voice. Inserting pauses and cutting voices + remove background noise or hiss.

I've been trolling through the Forums and reading about the mixers, pre-amp
inputs, tracks and oh man...makes my head swirl.

Your advice is truly appreciated doods and dudettes.

with metta (compassion)
Alex (Fujisan)

P.S. Before I go, here's a quick Chinese lesson for you.
If someone dear to you shares something with you -

What do you say in return?



"Thanks" for sharing right?

So "share share" means "Thanks" in Chinese

"Share Share" all!
:)
 
do u have a computer u could record with? wat are the specs? u could pick up a dynamic mic (e.g. shure sm58) and plug it into the mic insert of ur sound card, but the built in preamp will most likely not be up to ur standards. also a condensor mic would probably be better to pick up voice more clearly, condensors require phantom power which most preamps give out. so u will probably need to get a microphone and a premp or mixer that has built in preamps.

sorry i dont know goldwave, does that record? u can get free recording programs, 'kristal' seems to be popular.

hope that was somewhat helpful
 
At the least, you need a decent-quality sound card, a small stereo mixer (4 inputs should be okay), and a couple of microphones. For microphones for the spoken word, 10,000 radio stations can't be wrong: Electrovoice RE20 or Shure SM7.

Oh, and some headphones.

Mics into mixer; mixer into sound card.
 
could also consider a firewire interface like the firebox instead of the soundcard/mixer combo. as far as preamp quality goes i think the firebox should be pretty similar to a cheapish mixer?
 
Thanks Leeking, Mick and AGCurry for your responses

so mic--> mixer --> Soundcard.
Sounds fairly simple =P

I need to check out my pc specs Mick - my bro is the technical electrical engineer =P

Leeking has proposed something very interesting though.

see his link (I dunno how to put his msg in here)

http://m-audio.com/products/en_us/M...k2496-main.html

Any other products like this you guys know of? Maybe a tad more budget =P

Cheers y'all

Alex
 
Thanks for that Chipster

After exhaustive research on the best solution for a portable voice recording
for my chinaspeak.com.au needs...*drums rolling*

I've just bought the Edirol R-1!

So looking forward to it arriving in the post this week

I found a very useful Edirol R1 forum going on which mentions the pros and cons of other flash recorderslike the Microtrack and Marantz 660

search for EdirolR1 at yahoo group forums

All the best to your searching endeavours for your home studio rec needs

And thanks to all the guys above who have been so kind to send some
links over!

internet help rocks!

:)
 
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