Mic me up!

January 3, 2009 11:48 PM

I would like to start to voice record my entire day because I think it would be fun to be able to chronicle my daily conversations (for reflection purposes). What kind of wireless/wired microphone/recorder set up would I need?

The three main criteria I can think of are:

1) The mic and recording device cannot be visible.
2) Mic should be able to be worn under tshirts, polos, button downs.. and be able to record both sides of a conversation I might be in.
3) Recording apparatus should be very portable

I would love your thoughts everyone!

posted by yoyoceramic to technology (14 comments total)

Sounds like a cool project but just a word of warning: some states prohibit taping of conversations without the consent of all parties involved. More info here.
posted by roomwithaview at 11:57 PM on January 3

Thanks for the resource - I just checked my state's law and it looks like I'm in the clear for this project!
posted by yoyoceramic at 12:07 AM on January 4

I've had a lot of success recording interviews with my iPod and this accessory from Belkin. It records as WAV files -- which are large but very high fidelity -- that you can convert to MP3 using audacity. You can also use an outboard mic and use it to record telephone conversations.
posted by quidividi at 1:04 AM on January 4

I use this DVR for taping interviews in the field (Vietnam) and have had great success with it.
posted by carabiner at 2:24 AM on January 4

Are you trying to record people's reactions to specific things you say, or are you trying to just record natural conversation without people getting mike-shy? I'm just saying that when you're aware that you're miked, you'll be "on stage". It will take a while to have that stageyness fade. That means you'll need a lot of memory space free to hold the chatter that will go on before you get to the more natural stuff.

If you have a symbian 60 phone (Nokia N series, for example), you can use this bluetooth device to use your phone as a mike, streaming to your PC. It looks pretty big, but I've been assured that it is relatively small.

There's also Bl@st, which would let you record on a PC, your symbian 60 phone, or on any old stereo with an FM receiver. It would depend on the strength of your bluetooth on your phone... but then again, you could also use your phone as the recording device.

I've seen insane amounts of memory available for cheap on miniSD devices. If you set up to record to your memory card instead of your phone memory, I swear by this device that converts miniSD phone memory into a USB flash memory stick
posted by Grrlscout at 2:57 AM on January 4

I would use a Zoom H2 and a pair of binaural microphones that are worn like headphones. Your audio quality will be much nicer than with other more hackneyed options. The disadvantage is cost, the Zoom H2 is $130, plus another $80 for the microphones.

But at the end of the day you are recording in surprisingly high quality with a real "You are there" effect when you listen later with headphones. Quiet American is one artist who uses this technique to make really amazing field recordings (although he uses much more expensive gear).
posted by Chrishartley at 6:50 AM on January 4

Just a word of advice: it may be legal, but secretly recording people is still unethical in many situations, and if I were your friend and you secretly recorded our conversations, you'd be out one friend. Are you prepared to piss off everyone you speak to when they discover this? Because they well might.
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:32 AM on January 4 [3 favorites]

PS -- the Zoom H2 is a piece of junk. In heavy use it will fall apart within a year. Tascam's DR-1 is a nice new machine for just a little more money. There have been several recent threads about the options for digital audio recorders. If you want to be James Bond, Nagra (the maker of the world's best recording gear) makes a hideously expensive pen-shaped recorder.

An H2 or any equivalent device needs its batteries changed every 2 hours or so, so remember to schedule those bathroom breaks. At a low bitrate, you can record dozens of hours of mp3 audio on any of them with a 2GB card.

Befitting the ethical sinkhole you're about to enter, here's a page listing several pen recorders (incl Nagra) at a spy gear supply shop.

And here's something else to ponder: *you* will know you're recording all the time, rendering the diagnostic value of the recording (or the naturalness of your own discourse) pretty suspect.
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:37 AM on January 4

I appreciate all the input, and I think I will heed the ethical warnings I heard here. I would definitely not like to be recorded by any of my friends without my permission. Much appreciated everyone.
posted by yoyoceramic at 7:48 AM on January 4

I think you could still do this project...what if you give your friends a heads up that you are recording before you start? You could also do a narrative of your observations during the day or field recordings of random sounds you hear.
posted by pluckysparrow at 8:01 AM on January 4

One word of warning aside from the technical and ethical proiblems: the scale of the job you're taking on. In my work, I record conversations and interviews (I'm a journalist) and then transcribe them or have them transcribed. You'd be surprised how quickly you rack up hours, tens of hours, or audio, which is nearly impossible to index and impossible to search. Transcription is a tedious and horribly time-consuming job - and transcriptions of spoken conversations, although they are seachable and easier to handle than the audio itself, are still vast, unwieldy, things. I recently completed a 2000-word feature that was based on interviews of varying lengths with 10 people - a maximum of four hours of audio, probably less. The master transcript was more than 20,000 words. All for fewer than a dozen quotes in the final piece.

It's a big job.
posted by WPW at 8:26 AM on January 4

I used the same setup as quidvidi to record my daily life for several months. I made some cool sound collages, but after hearing some of the idiotic things I said, decided that it would be better not to continue with this practice.
posted by solipsophistocracy at 12:08 PM on January 4

In Response to roomwithaview, one party consent and two party/all party consent laws are related to taping phone conversations, not merely taping those in your physical presence.
posted by gryftir at 2:05 PM on January 4

Ha. As an anthropologist, I've recorded and transcribed literally thousands of hours of field recordings of interviews, conversations, performances, and ambient audio.

WPW is exactly right. It's unbelievably slow and tedious, and any pipe dream that you can keep up with even a few hours a day without a dedicated transcription department (as MDs have) is going to run aground on the shoals of reality.

But if you are serious, get a copy of ExpressScribe and a USB foot pedal when you buy your recording gear.
posted by fourcheesemac at 3:53 PM on January 4