Maybe I’ll have time to post more, but so far I’m finding the Zoom H2 to be insanely flexible, now ships with a 1GB SD card, a mini tripod that attaches to the standard tripod thread socket and a plastic handle that screws in there as well so you can hold it like a traditional hand-held mic.
Zoom H2
Ran across some interesting news yesterday. Alesis is touting a soon-to-be-released product called the ProTrack, which makes an iPod into a portable field recorder. Supports 5G and Classic iPods and 2G/3G Nanos. Sounds exciting, key is $$$ ?
Here’s a good thread on Macintouch on the subject as well.
Alesis also has the IMM8USB 8 channel mixer with integrated iPod Dock, using the iPod as the final destination for the mixer.
Here’s another, taking a very unique approach to the matter – integrating it into a hand held mic. Way too rich for my blood though.
The HHB DRM85.
And I’ve enjoyed the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo as well.
Using this mic for direct speech recording, the AT ATR35S.
I concur with IHR’s analysis that the flash-based Nano’s provide much better results in regards to disk fragmentation (as it causes ’skipping’) with hard disk based iPods. I experienced the same with my 5G Video iPod. Also, for sound effects recording, or recording ambiance, you can hear the hard drive spin-up, so the Nano rules. And the processor feels faster on the (3G) Nano, more quickly going in and out of the dialogs for the voice recording screens.
Here are some recordings of thunder and ambiance using the TuneTalk Stereo on a 3G Nano. One, two, three, four.
Bill Fitzmaurice is the maestro when it comes to DIY horn-loaded speaker systems. He’s got designs large and small, wedge, sub and tall. I’m seriously considering one of his designs for our new church location (I’m entertaining a single copy of the dual 12 version.)
My last DIY project served us well, but I’m looking for something with a little more projection and defined dispersion. The high SPL of all his designs are an added bonus. I’ll probably recycle my existing sub, after that I think a couple of these loaded with dual 12’s would do nicely.
Our previous PA “tops” (times 4). Those are dual Vifa 8’s (same as used in one of the older Mackie self-powered studio monitors), Audax Pro (PR series) 6 inch mid (used by EAW for eons), and Audax PR series tweet.
Vifa/Audax Cabinets
The sub, those are the venerable Swan 305 woofer from Madisound, now “out of print.”
Swan 305 X 4 Cabinet
Bear in mind, this is all in a 40 X 40 room with 10 foot ceilings.
Episode 19 of the FaithTools podcast is up and ready for download.
Mike, Van, Daniel, Brad and Colin talk about building credibility, decibel levels, volunteer appreciation ideas and more.
I’ve never been so excited about Windows. The de-facto standard free speaker building (mainly woofer/subwoofer cabinet calculator) application, WinISD is only available for Windows. There is a free online version, but now with an Intel based Mac you can run WinISD on a MacTel for free using Darwine. This screen shot is a bit “Beauty and the Beast” as far as GUI’s, but it works!
Episode 18 of the FaithTools podcast is up and ready for download.
Brad, Van, Colin, talk about Google Apps, Twitter in the Church and our favorite podcasts. And Brad gives a peak at some upcoming ProPresenter features.
Episode 17 of the FaithTools podcast is up and ready for download.
Mike, Van, Colin, Josh and Rick talk about Wireless White Spaces, Set Design and more Twitter.
Episode 16 of the FaithTools podcast is up and ready for download.
Van and Colin talk with Mike Sessler about Twitter, Digital Audio Consoles and more.
Church Podcast Guide – Create a Sermon Podcast for your church
I’ll add one omission I see in this article and that is that your podcast does not need to be stereo, mono is fine, it’s speech… there’s nothing to pan. Every software (and iPod/MP3 player) knows to put the mono signal in both speakers, no worries. And it cuts the file size right in half – free lunch! Don’t be duped into doing stereo just so your intro music (if you use any) is in stereo… the message is the important part and mono will get it done perfectly fine. Another omission from the getting good signal section is dynamics compression, simply put; you need it like you need air if you’re going to do a podcast (of any kind involving speech) that will be tolerable to listen to in a variety of listening conditions/environments. If I remember I’ll append a photo of my (hardware) compressor setup to this post. See this article of mine on software [dynamics] compression.
As promised, see below photos of my compression settings on a Behringer Autocom Pro for our main speech mic (LX series Shure w/SM87 head), and a wide shot showing the 15 band graphic EQ channel that follows it in the signal chain (a Rane ME-15.)
I was finding my MDD G4 to be so noisy when monitoring during audio editing. I changed some things in my setup that brought it to a head and I sought out an inexpensive audio interface option just to get away from all the digital hash being created by my jam-packed MDD.
