When I record audio interviews, I usually choose between 2 hardware setups depending on the situation.
The first setup is for ultra-light portable field recording without any power nearby or audio mixer to plug into. This comprises primarily of a Olympus LS-10 digital audio recorder, 2 lavalier/lapel wired microphones with 1/8 mono connectors, and a Y connector which connects each mono connector to the right or left stereo input on the LS-10. Click on the image to see a larger version.
The second setup is also for field recording that gives me more options to either plug into an existing audio mixer, or use higher quality phantom powered wired or wireless microphones. It’s made up of a Marantz PMD661 digital audio recorder and paired with a couple Shure Beta58A microphones (as pictured) or a couple Shure PGX wireless lavalier/lapel microphones (these require AC power nearby).
One of the more important points about recording interviews is microphone placement. I prefer to use the lavalier/lapel microphones when I can because it allows me to place the microphone at a consistent distance from the mouth of the person talking and there is little chance for handling noise. With hand-held microphones, moving of the hand on the surface of the mic can cause audio noise to be picked up by the recorder.
One tip on using the devices, the Olympus LS-10 can be setup to use Auto-Gain or Fixed-Gain, the gain applies to BOTH left and right channels at the same time, there is no individual gain for each channel. On the Marantz PMD661, each channel has it’s own gain and can be adjusted independently depending on the person’s speaking volume.
Once I am done with the recording, I take the WAV file from either recorder, run the file through the Levelator, and edit them using Audacity (remove parts I don’t want). Once all the editing it done, the audio is then rendered (or produced) into MP3 format.
Below is a video I made of the production process using Audacity & the Levelator (the audio used was recorded using the Olympus LS-10 setup):
Enjoy!
– Dom
Here is the video link for those who can’t see the embedded viewer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxR2Jik8oHM
Here is the MP3 file so you can hear it outside youtube:
Here is the direct link to the MP3 file: http://tribalgrowth.com/files/DomJo.output.mp3
The video was made and rendered in 720p using Tech Smith’s Camtasia Studio 7.
Dominic Pruitt 