Good inexpensive microphone for recording your group?

[Vargo]

I'd like to do audio logs of my gaming group, but I need a microphone that can get everybody's voices. It can either be a separate solution, like one of the Olympus digital voice recorders, or something that could plug directly into the audio in jack on a laptop.

Any suggestions?

 

[Lanefan]

I'd like to do audio logs of my gaming group, but I need a microphone that can get everybody's voices. It can either be a separate solution, like one of the Olympus digital voice recorders, or something that could plug directly into the audio in jack on a laptop.

Any suggestions?

How many people are you trying to record, and over what kind of area? Also, how much variance is there between the loudest member of the group and the quietest?

Trying to record groups of people ain't easy. Ideally (and note that I say "ideally"; this'd be tricky to do and not everyone has the equipment) you'd want each person individually miked, with all the mikes led to a mixer where you could set input levels relative to the person's loudness (turn the quiet ones up, for example) before it all gets to the recorder. If your mixer had panning and your recorder was stereo, you could pan some mike inputs one way and some the other, to give the listener more of a feeling of being "in the room".

If you only have one mike, perhaps the best place to put it is to hang it over the center or the game table. Make sure it's an "omnidirectional" type (picks up sound from all directions equally) rather than "unidirectional" (picks up sound from only straight ahead). The little mikes in digital recorders are probably not good enough for what you want; they're designed to be spoken into at a range of about an inch. Your local Radio Shack will have a cheap mike that'll do, provided you have a recorder of some sort to plug it in to.

Lanefan

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Almost any Radio Shack or similar store will have inexpensive ($30 or less) mics that you can hook up directly to a walkman or similar recording device.

 

[Dragonbait]

A player of mine tried to do this with 1 audio recorder. She put in on the table by me, the GM. All she heard was the dice, my bombastic voice, and a bunch of mumbiling from the other 5 people on the table..

 

[Vargo]

Five people around a table with a battlemat. Guess I've gotta go looking for an omnidirectional mike.

I used to work at a place where there was a biweekly meeting that was recorded - the person had an Olympus DVR-3000 and a microphone, and picked up all 20 or so people in the room with a high degree of accuracy. I figure there has to be a product like that out there...

 

[Mean Eyed Cat]

I use a Sony Omni-Directional Conference Microphone like this:

Works like a charm. When I listen to the recordings through a good pair of headphones, I can hear everybody (6 people) at our games - no muffled voices. I paid $15.00 for mine. Here's one you buy through the internet:

http://www.partstore.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductSKU=1936566&s=youramigo

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I've got an I-River MP3 player that records pretty well. I just transfer the file to my computer after the session and convert it to an MP3 with Audacity. I imagine you could pick one of those up fairly cheap.

 

[Yair]

Ahh, I'm struggling with this too. I tried an old-fashioned normal recorder, but that didn't work well at all.

Thanks.

 

[Storyteller01]

Mini-tape record will do fine. Voice activated (saves on battery and tape life) and easy to pass around if needs be. It's also portable enough to take with you, in case you have to play someplace that doesn't have a recorder or jack for a separate mic.

We use them at work. The mic is good enough to record a conversation outside between two people at an average distance while stuffed in a shirt pocket.


Off topic warning/fun fact: If you're having a heated discussion with a security guard or cop and they hit their shirt or microphone, get ready for a fist fight with added legal nastinesslong. The sound's enough to justify self defense in court unless you have something better (that sound is when he struck me your honor).

Used to have a supervisor who bragged about doing it more then once.

 

[Imagicka]

Greetings…

So, does anyone here who records their sessions bother to post them on http://www.rpgmp3.com?

I too have dabbled with recording gaming sessions. I’ve met with limited success. I used a generic MP3 player that has a record feature. It works ‘okay’ when it’s place in the middle of the table, and no one is too far away from it.