USB Microphone for about £40 ($65) for Singing Recording

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katieunderpants

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I run a children's drama group and we wanted to record the songs the kids are singing for their Christmas show and make a CD for the parents to buy at the show. It needs to be reasonably good quality so that it's not painful on the ears!! But tbh I've not got much money to mess about with lol.

Any help? I've got about $65 (£40) and I'm in England...
 
You need to hang mics over the kids to get a reasonable recording because kids usually don't sing anywhere near loud enough, unless this happens to be a trained children's choir. I would ask if any of the parents can volunteer to do the recording, these days it's likely somebody has recording gear. If not, go to local low-budget studios and ask for a discount rate, if they can come in and do the recording start-to-finish in an hour then $60 might be tempting for someone, especially if they got free advertising with all of the parents in exchange--it won't be too many more years before these kids will want to have recitals, auditions, etc. recorded. But don't pay anyone until they deliver a master CD.

And everybody wants video these days too . . .
 
katieunderpants said:
I run a children's drama group and we wanted to record the songs the kids are singing for their Christmas show and make a CD for the parents to buy at the show. It needs to be reasonably good quality so that it's not painful on the ears!! But tbh I've not got much money to mess about with lol.

Any help? I've got about $65 (£40) and I'm in England...
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I presume this *is* a wind-up.

You can't get anything for that price - and if you could find anything at all, you would be ripping off the parents by trying to sell the CD.

If you really only have that amount of money, the best solution it to give it for beer money to someone who already has the equipment and would come along and record it for you.
 
John Willett said:
I presume this *is* a wind-up.

You can't get anything for that price - and if you could find anything at all, you would be ripping off the parents by trying to sell the CD.

If you really only have that amount of money, the best solution it to give it for beer money to someone who already has the equipment and would come along and record it for you.
Click to expand...

he he... I like this John ..... will record for beer. :D

I stand on the off ramp of the highway with a sign ..will mix for food .. works pretty good so far. :laughings:










:cool:
 
moresound said:
he he... I like this John ..... will record for beer. :D

I stand on the off ramp of the highway with a sign ..will mix for food .. works pretty good so far. :laughings:
Click to expand...

Well with a zero budget like that, the only real chance is for a local amateur recording it for the fun of it and the beer money. :D
 
Well this thread was a let down, I was hoping there was a reasonable mic for that price too. I make electronic music in the box but have recently experimented with using vocals and other sounds.

My ********** will have to do for now.
 
OP's requirements are more difficult than perhaps yours are. Recording a choir is a lot different than solo vocal on top of electronic backing tracks. I don't know about $65, but I suspect you might be happy with an AT2020USB or similar.
 
Zoom H1 for $100-ish USD. But that's like 2 million UK right? Probably closer to (L) 160.

But it really depends on what you call reasonable quality. You might coax a father of the kids to do the recording for that cash. IF he was going to record it anyway. But his standard of quality and yours might not be the same. i.e. Placing his mic 3' from HIS kid and no less than 6' from everyone else.

For that cash you might be lucky to RENT some gear, but I wouldn't expect to own any. Baring some sort of tax write off donation. Or charitable community. Not that brits are that renowned for their charity work.
 
A zoom just might do it, just might do it indeed. ;)







:cool:
 
Without a doubt, I'd pick something like a Zoom instead of trying to record a choir with a computer. Doing live sound in the field is a sheer PITA even if you know what you're doing and have done it for years. An all-in-one solution like those is much, much easier to deal with, and generally should produce a decent recording. Zoom, Tascam, and several other companies all have products in the $100-125 (USD) range. I know that's about double what you wanted to spend, but to do it with traditional computer-based gear as most of us would normally suggest doing it (with a decent 2-channel audio interface and a pair of good mics) is going to start at double that.
 
zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom


Sorry it was just my mantra for the day. :D







:cool:
 
The at2020 usb got good reviews on several sites I searched.
Many people stated you definitely would need a pop filter with it.
After looking at the zoom it seems that would be a much better choice,mainly because of its many
Possible uses, and my love of gadgets.
 
An AT2020USB would be a terrible choice for choir because a choir should always be miked in stereo and it isn't capable of that.
 
John Willett said:
I presume this *is* a wind-up.

You can't get anything for that price - and if you could find anything at all, you would be ripping off the parents by trying to sell the CD.

If you really only have that amount of money, the best solution it to give it for beer money to someone who already has the equipment and would come along and record it for you.
Click to expand...

no........
 
If you did want to do it with a single mic then I would go for an Omni-Directional mic as you will get much less proximity effect .....
 
Minion said:
If you did want to do it with a single mic then I would go for an Omni-Directional mic as you will get much less proximity effect .....
Click to expand...

You would not get *any* proximity effect with an omni (pressure) microphone.

Proximity effect only happens on pressure-gradient (directional) microphones.

But a single mic. would be mono and not really suitable for recording to make a CD like the OP asked.
 
CD specifications are 2 channels (stereo), 16 bit, and 44.1kHz. Trimmed to the nearest 1/75th of a second per track. I just trim to the full second duration otherwise my older stand alone CD players wont play the disc. Plus all those big endian and iso9660 stuff that your burner software mostly takes care of. Note that the equivalent WAV file format is little endian.

If only my car supported DVD-A format, I could so get rid of those dam blank CDRs that are mostly useless and lower quality / higher failure rate / yadda yadda yadda. Optical media is so over rated in this day and age. And yet so cheap.
 
dgatwood said:
An AT2020USB would be a terrible choice for choir because a choir should always be miked in stereo and it isn't capable of that.
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Lenoh is recording studio vocals, it was OP katieunderpants recording the choir.
 
Shadow_7 said:
If only my car supported DVD-A format, I could so get rid of those dam blank CDRs that are mostly useless and lower quality / higher failure rate / yadda yadda yadda. Optical media is so over rated in this day and age. And yet so cheap.
Click to expand...

Make sure you only use Taiyo Yuden blanks (now owned by JVC I understand).

They invented the CD-R and they are still the very best. I will use nothing else.

Ideally also burn slow - I found the best quality was at x8 on my Plextor drive tested with PlexTools - slower or faster and the errors increased.
 
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