Sound advice?

[dionysus1999]

I want to record myself reading for Librivox.  I discovered after a little experimentation that the microphones that just plug into the front of the computer with the standard (1/8?) jack are for crap.  I suspect, from the research I've done, it's the sound card, though I don't think the microphones I have are quality, either. 

From a bit of research, I found that a USB microphone/headset has its own built in soundcard, and will produce much better recordings.    According to readers from Librivox, the USB headsets that are designed for gamers usually have decent microphones. 

I have a few audiophile friends on my list, anyone have something that's just gathering dust I could take off your hands?     I'm willing to pay a fair price for used equipment.  

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

I don't know how high of quality you're looking to go for here, but if you want to get into it now and then have the option of making upgrades, i suggest modularizing into a separate mic and preamp. So this means a standard audio microphone (which will have a male XLR connector for use with a real mic cable), and then some device to serve as a preamp.

If you go this route, the world of microphones is open to you. If you want to save some money at first, you could start with something as simple as a Shure SM-58 or even similar knock-off. They're used more for live vocals for music, but for the price, they're pretty good even for spoken word. You may even shop around and find something a little better for spoken word in that price range, but i'm not familiar with any myself. What's nice is that whenever you're ready to invest more (a few hundred bucks up to a thou or more), you can upgrade to a large-diaphram condenser mic, which is what you ideally want for this job. I believe AKG makes some very nice quality vocal mics for reasonable prices that will work wonderfully for clear, crisp voiceovers.

For the pre-amp, you can use a lot of things -- a small mixing board, a dedicated mic pre, or even some stereo systems will work. Basically all you need here is a powered device built to take a mic input (XLR) and output a line-level signal. The output will likely be in the form of pin (also called "RCA") connections, but there are very simple converters to get you from there to 1/8" stereo. Alternately you could get really hardcore and get a unit to do both pre-amplification and A/D for you, but this is overkill at this point, unless you anticipate wanting to get into higher-end or multitrack music recording soon.

Now, granted, i'm coming at this from the pro audio side. I'm entirely unfamiliar with what's out there in the computer world -- USB and other direct-to-computer mics. All the software-based audio i've done did the conversion from A/D downstream of pre-amplification, be it with a dedicated offboard A/D or via the computer's internal jack. There may be some options there that are less involved, but i can't speak to those.

So, yeah... my $.02½, fwiw. :) If you do decide to approach this from the audio side and have any questions, feel free to ping me.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

I did try a couple test recordings with two different mics. Too quiet was the main problem, they need amplification. From what I learned reading on Librivox and other online sources, they do indicate that most standard sound cards in computers don't have what takes to get a decent recording.