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117 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
117 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 4461
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Title: HPR4461: Battle of the mic's
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4461/hpr4461.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:55:51
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4461 from Monday 8 September 2025.
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Today's show is entitled, Battle of the Mikes.
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It is part of the series podcasting how-to.
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It is hosted by Lee and is about 6 minutes long.
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It carries a clean flag.
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The summary is, Lee compares recording with some different microphones.
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Hello I'm Lee.
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Today I'm going to compare some of the different microphones I've been using to make
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computer-based audio recordings.
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Since I started recording episodes for HPR a few years ago, I've used quite a few
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different recording cell-ups.
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My training in Georgia came first from having experimented with 8-bit sampling on a 16-bit
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computer called Nataria ST in the 1990s.
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Much later I've volunteered for a few years as a recording technician for a local talking
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newspaper for the blind.
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Here I'd come into contact with near-professional-level recording equipment such as XLR microphones,
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a mixing desk, and high-end discrete sound cards.
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The studio there was not exactly soundproofed but the high-quality mics made up for this.
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The equipment I've used for recording podcast episodes has mainly been USB plug-in mics
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for a PC or built-in mics for devices such as an iPad tablet or a laptop computer.
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The results in terms of audio quality are varied considerably and it has been a learning
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process and progress has not necessarily been in the positive direction.
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Sometimes I've been hindered by recording at night and so speaking in a low voice.
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Other times there have been people moving around, I've been moving myself introducing
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little odd artefacts.
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My flat, both the current one and the previous one on the same estate, is near a police station,
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so often there have been frequent sirens in the background.
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Then when it came to editing and processing, I've sometimes manually adjusted the volume
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sentence by sentence quite painstakingly and tried to minimise breaths which were a normal
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part of the recording process.
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These often the courgettes prior to a sentence where the speaker would do a quick intake
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of breath.
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I never used the effect known as compression, not to be confused with data compression,
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before I heard it talked about during one of the talks I'll camp last year.
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This seemed to save me a lot of time once I knew how to apply it, although like any powerful
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tool I've come to appreciate that it's best used sparingly.
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In addition I've often used noise reduction.
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All these tools are available in my sound editor of choice called Audacity.
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Now data compression is a separate issue.
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This can diminish the quality of sound if the bit rate is too low.
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With lossless formats like FLAQ, being the best in terms of quality since they leave
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the original sound unchanged, while still making the file size smaller.
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You would think file size was unimportant on today's multi-terabyte computers, but sometimes
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wanting to share a copy with a collaborator on Discord where the maximum is 10 megabytes,
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as forced me to compromise on quality.
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After some recording software like VoiceMemo and the iPad introduce its own audio compression
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settings, and some more geo-editing apps will only save at a low quality, unless the
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paid for versions purchased.
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And while I'm usually willing to purchase software that is only available on proprietary
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platforms, if it's useful, I'm reluctant to do so if it's something I'm just trying
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out or intend to use only once.
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Anyway, I'll now come to the point of today's episode.
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That is, I've been finally persuaded to pay more attention to the kit I'm using to
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record, by someone you might know from this community podcast, who goes by the name of
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Elspeth.
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She knows me quite well by now, and recognises some of my reluctance to invest in things
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that I consider to be for myself, rather than for someone else.
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What I've set up and am using the first time today to make a recording is an AKG Pro
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audio liro mic, with a sensec boom arm and an AOKO pop filter.
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Bear in mind, it's the hot summer's day and I have the windows open, and I'm on the
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main road, the A232 that runs east to west across the southern tip of London.
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This is a bit of an experiment, I'll try and submit this as a flag, and trust it might
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go unmolested by any of the janitors, so you get to hear exactly what I've recorded.
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I'm now going to record a short clip on each of the series of different mics and devices.
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These will be not necessarily in this order.
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My iPad Pro using the software called Voicememmo, then for the rest in audacity.
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The MacBook Pro built in microphone, the Ancomi Co usually conference with on my PC.
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The headset link on my Bose quiet comfort QC noise cancelling earphones, the new AKG microphone
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on the boom arm with pop filter.
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This is the Bose headset microphone.
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This is the MacBook Pro microphone.
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This is the Ancomi microphone.
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And this is the AKG microphone.
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This is an iPad Pro microphone.
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My initial thoughts listening back to these are as follows.
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The Bose headset does the best job on cutting out background noise without me having done
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any noise reduction on it.
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The MacBook Pro has the loudest amount of background noise, although I feel it is the
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sort that might be easily amenable to noise reduction filtering without loss of quality
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of the voice.
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The Ancomi microphone does well with cutting out noise, but the quality of the voice is pretty
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low.
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I think the Ancomi is a conference mic, so maybe there has been a compromise between
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being able to pick up speech from all around versus the sound quality.
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The AKG microphone whilst containing a slight amount of background noise seems very clear
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and crisp to me.
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The iPad microphone is a good all round sound as well.
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My conclusion is for noise cancelling at all costs, I prefer the Bose, but for general
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speech recording I like the AKG or the iPad Pro, though those two have a slightly different
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characteristic, respectively, which is hard to describe.
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I'll play the clips again so you can make your own judgement.
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This is the Bose headset microphone.
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This is the MacBook Pro microphone.
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This is the Ancomi microphone.
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And this is the AKG microphone.
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This is an iPad Pro microphone.
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Okay, well that is really all I have to talk about today.
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I know talking about audio equipment, recording, editing and such is a common topic on this
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community podcast, so if you find this topic interesting I'd suggest doing a search
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through the HPR catalogue for other episodes on similar vein.
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Thanks for listening and bye.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio, and Hacker Public Radio does work.
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Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
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If you ever thought of recording podcasts, you click on our contribute link to find out
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how easy it really is.
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The hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the internet archive
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and our syncs.net.
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On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International
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License.
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