Built-in Mic and MS Word

[Seeker]

Hi there,

I was hoping to get some feedback from the newsgroup members concerning
what I hope to accomplish with my iBook.

I have an iBook G4 with the built-in microphone on the right-hand side
of the screen and am using the computer to take notes in my university
lectures.

When I first learnt of the feature in MS-Word's notebook layout that I
can record sound files directly into the word document I became excited
as the program time-stamps the audio recording for when each
bullet-point is taken. In this case if when reviewing my notes
something is unclear I can jump directly to that part of the recording
instead of sorting through the audio for an entire lecture again as
many of the other students I study with try to do.

My problem is that the mic is facing the wrong way!! The mic is facing
me the typer, not the lecturer.

My early experiments with this feature yielded muffled audio and the
sound of my typing completely drowned out voice of the speaker.

I'm not a very technically minded person so I don't know if this can be
compensated for by altering some of the recording settings, but if
anyone has any advice as to what I should try setting them too I'd be
very appreciative if you would share.

My other idea was to get a small external microphone that I could
Velcro to the lid of my laptop and remove while storing. Since the
iBook does not have an audio-in port that I can find I understand that
my options are limited to USB and Blue-Tooth (if such a microphone
exists) but I'm having a heck of a time finding something that fits
those criteria; all the USB mics that I've found so far are either
built-into a headset or are far too large for what I'm hoping to do --
many of my lecture halls don't even have small tables for the seats...

Has anyone tried using their iBooks in this way and how did you
accomplish it?

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

I did a google search and here is the first thing I found (no
endorsement implied - I never tired one of these):
http://www.dreamhardware.com/products/details.php?product_id=9174

There were over 5 million hits, so there is plenty of hardware to choose
from.

A simple funnel-shaped device attached to your computer might do the
trick. You could probably make one from cardboard or other rigid material.

-Jim

 

[Seeker]

Thank you for your speedy reply.... I'm unclear how the funnel would
work.... wouldn't it still be facing the wrong way?

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

You're welcome, of coure.

Yes, you would need to shape the funnel with a curve so that the wide
part faces the opposite direction of your microphone.

-Jim

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Recording sound in a lecture hall is always going to be a challenge. For
some years, I was a television sound engineer, so I have a certain amount of
experience (I used to do the sound for sporting fixtures and remote
broadcast events, including speeches and shows and things...)

1) Directional microphones are large. They have to be: it's their physical
size that produces the effect.

2) The iBook doesn't have a Microphone port: you're right. This post comes
to you from one.

One way out of this is a radio microphone that you could place on the
lecturer's lectern. Basically, the closer you get to the source of the
sound, the cleaner your recording. Sound attenuates as the square of the
distance, so to make a big difference you need to get *much* closer than you
are in the body of the lecture hall.

Buy the cheapest tie-clip microphone you can find! Good ones go over $500,
but for your purposes, the "worse" the microphone, the better the job it
will do for you! Your main problem is getting "too much" sound, not "not
enough". A low-price microphone will have no directional quality and poor
frequency response. The less directional it is, the easier it is to place,
and the worse the frequency response, the more of the speaker's voice you
will get compared to the amount of background noise you pick up.

A Radio Microphone comes with a receiver that will output "line level". So
all you need is a USB Audio input. One of these would do:
http://www.podcastingnews.com/items/Edirol/EDIUA1X.htm

The key is to get the microphone "close" to the speaker. In practice,
anywhere within about three metres will be fine. If you are recording a
speaker who stays relatively still, leave your mic on the desk in front of
him. If your speaker wanders around, try to put your microphone on a chair
in the front row.

A highly-directional microphone will only cause problems. It's difficult to
line them up and tape them down in exactly the right place, and if the
speaker moves you're hosed.

Of course, if this were someone else's money and time I were playing with, I
would rig twin shotgun microphones about ten feet from the floor and twenty
feet back from the stage, each about twenty feet to the side of the centre
line of the stage and pointed at the opposite rear corner of the stage. A
"shotgun" microphone is very highly directional at speech frequencies. The
idea of this "Modified Blumlein Pair" arrangement is that the further the
speaker gets from one mic, the closer he gets to the sweet spot for the
other.

I would be using several thousand dollars' worth of equipment and it would
take me an hour to set it up and get it right. For each lecture... Would I
get better sound than you? I hope I would. That's what I used to be paid
for. But would it be better for transcribing from later? No. And it would
rather exceed the resources of any budget *I* had when I was a student

Instead, I give you this, which I spent several years and thousands of
dollars worth of equipment learning: "Keep it cheap and get it close!"

Cheers

Hi there,

I was hoping to get some feedback from the newsgroup members concerning
what I hope to accomplish with my iBook.

I have an iBook G4 with the built-in microphone on the right-hand side
of the screen and am using the computer to take notes in my university
lectures.

When I first learnt of the feature in MS-Word's notebook layout that I
can record sound files directly into the word document I became excited
as the program time-stamps the audio recording for when each
bullet-point is taken. In this case if when reviewing my notes
something is unclear I can jump directly to that part of the recording
instead of sorting through the audio for an entire lecture again as
many of the other students I study with try to do.

My problem is that the mic is facing the wrong way!! The mic is facing
me the typer, not the lecturer.

My early experiments with this feature yielded muffled audio and the
sound of my typing completely drowned out voice of the speaker.

I'm not a very technically minded person so I don't know if this can be
compensated for by altering some of the recording settings, but if
anyone has any advice as to what I should try setting them too I'd be
very appreciative if you would share.

My other idea was to get a small external microphone that I could
Velcro to the lid of my laptop and remove while storing. Since the
iBook does not have an audio-in port that I can find I understand that
my options are limited to USB and Blue-Tooth (if such a microphone
exists) but I'm having a heck of a time finding something that fits
those criteria; all the USB mics that I've found so far are either
built-into a headset or are far too large for what I'm hoping to do --
many of my lecture halls don't even have small tables for the seats...

Has anyone tried using their iBooks in this way and how did you
accomplish it?

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410