Recording a meeting room:

[rtrose]

Hello all,

We are recording meetings with several participants. We have a dedicated classroom for these recordings.

For audio equipment, we are using:

2 desktop mics with preamps
several (5-10) shure "countryman" mics with wireless transmitter body packs and receivers (link: http://www.countryman.com/)
tascam MX2424 hard disk recorder

For the audio signal levels, we have noticed that the desktop mics give good levels, while all of the countryman mics record at a low level. We have been told to purchase a mixer with built-in preamps to control the audio level of the countryman mics. In addition, we have read that using a compressor for each of these mics can help.

My question is this:
Can we buy a mixer with a built-in compressor? Will a mixer's preamps alone help us solve our audio problem? Is there a mixer (with or without compressor) that anyone can reccommend us to try for our recordings?

I'm looking forward to getting definitive answers on this issue. Thanks in advance for your feedback!

 

[Giganova]

I've recently recorded a meeting with approx. 50 people using three Shure 58 mics (all on stands; one for the speaker, one left and right facing the audience). The signals went to a Mackie powered mixer (who powered HUGE speakers left and right off the stage), and from there into a MD recorder (which provided 4hrs of continuous recording). The audio recordings were top notch.

 

[rtrose]

What about this Behringer mixer?

Hello all,

I did some more digging on the meeting room equipment issue (see above).

I found the Behringer DDX3216, which looked like it could help solve our audio level problem.

http://www.americanmusical.com/item--i-BEH-DDX3216-BSTK.html

I would be glad to know what others think about this.

P.S. Giganova, I just read your post; I've heard good things about Mackie in the past.

What we want is fine control over individual speakers (hence the close, countryman mics). We are then going to send what is hopefully "high quality" audio to an automatic speech recognizer. So, we need separate, high quality audio tracks, and has led me to post to homerecordin.

 

[Giganova]

The mixer would do the job, but you don't need an expensive digital mixer. Any 12ch analog mixer with direct OUTs would do. If you want the audio in separate tracks, make sure you have a multi-channel interface to your recorder.