COMPLETE Recordings on MP3 players - ehl

Solo or group recordings that are finished and fully available for listeners
Starlite
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Post by Starlite »

Great Plains That sounds WONDERFULL!!!! No noise cleaning needed with that!! I want one. hee hee.

Esther :D :D
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress,
therefore, depends on unreasonable people." George Bernard Shaw
Starlite
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Joined: April 30th, 2006, 2:17 pm
Location: Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada

Post by Starlite »

Anyone else? Think :hmm: mobile phone that records. :hmm: Think of your son or daughter's mp3 player.

One note about mobile phones is that they often record in .amr format and need to be converted to .wav in Switch first.

This is shaping up to be very interesting. Would anyone like to do some comparisons for me? I was thinking of doing this for a future podcast.

Just post notes on the equipment quality here and I can read them for the podcast (or you can).

Esther :D
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress,
therefore, depends on unreasonable people." George Bernard Shaw
Great Plains
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Post by Great Plains »

Starlite wrote:Great Plains That sounds WONDERFULL!!!! No noise cleaning needed with that!! I want one. hee hee.

Esther :D :D
Just for kicks, I tried running it through Levelator and Audacity noise removal, and it sounds amazing. It sounds much better than my Logitech USB microphone headset. I think I'm going to do all of my recording on my iRiver from now on.
Starlite
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Joined: April 30th, 2006, 2:17 pm
Location: Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada

Post by Starlite »

Great Plains wrote:
Starlite wrote:Great Plains That sounds WONDERFULL!!!! No noise cleaning needed with that!! I want one. hee hee.

Esther :D :D
Just for kicks, I tried running it through Levelator and Audacity noise removal, and it sounds amazing. It sounds much better than my Logitech USB microphone headset. I think I'm going to do all of my recording on my iRiver from now on.
That was the whole point of this exercise. I wanted to see if any of these smaller devices was able to produce the sound we want. I did some research and your model is not available anymore. I wonder if other iRivers are as good.

Esther :D
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress,
therefore, depends on unreasonable people." George Bernard Shaw
Great Plains
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Post by Great Plains »

Starlite wrote:That was the whole point of this exercise. I wanted to see if any of these smaller devices was able to produce the sound we want. I did some research and your model is not available anymore. I wonder if other iRivers are as good.

Esther :D
I guess there's one way to find out:

http://upload.librivox.org/share/uploads/ehl/writteninmarch_woodsworth_gp2.mp3

This was recorded on an iRiver T10 1GB. I don't know if this model is still being made, also, but you can tell there is a variation in the quality of the recording among the iRiver models. The T10 is a flash drive player with the factory default firmware. It automatically records into MP3, whereas the iHP-140 is a hard-drive player that records into WAV (or MP3 or OGG).

1) Imported into Audacity.

2) Deleted mistakes.

3) Added ID3 tag info.

4) Exported as MP3.

No noise removal, leveling, normalizing, or other such post-processing was done to the file.
Starlite
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Post by Starlite »

Thanks Great Plains! Yes some variation but still very good!

Esther :D
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress,
therefore, depends on unreasonable people." George Bernard Shaw
paulc
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Location: The Misty Moors of Northern England

Post by paulc »

chocoholic wrote:Here's mine, on a Creative Zen Nano Plus:
http://upload.librivox.org/share/uploads/ehl/writteninmarch_wordsworth_law.mp3
Amplified, noise cleaned, normalized, and fixed bit and sample rates in Audacity Beta.

I'm not sure the normalization changed the sound much. Both the bit and sample rates are wrong on this mp3 player. I changed the sample rate (lower lefthand corner of Audacity screen under "Project Rate"); the bit rate fixed itself on export and I wonder if the sample rate would have done the same.

This is a very interesting project. It has occurred to me that if I want to do more recording than I can work in right now, I'm going to have to do it away from the computer since it is smack in the middle of the house. From the sounds of it so far, I'd have to plunk down money for one of the "good" recorders. Bah.
Not necessarily chocoholic. I've got an old Creative Nano that I use to record speech as well as band rehearsals. Its got a digital Line-In port - has the Zen micro got one? Not sure...

Anyway, what I do is run a line from the line-in, through a Behringher PB100 pre-amp (cost about UK£15), then plug a full size vocal mic into the pre-amp. Bob's your uncle, in-car recording.

Though my mp3 settings are 160kbps it actually only records at 32kbps, but with a decent mic (assuming you have one) the sound can be good enough to up it to 128kbps on the PC (I use Sony Sound Forge to clean it all up).

I'm lucky to have lots of kit already available from recording music, and if you bought new it would be much more than buying a Zoom, but it works for me.
chocoholic
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Post by chocoholic »

Ooh, thanks, paulc -- the Zen nano does have a line-in port and I was wondering if there was a way to hook a better mic to it. Will explore further. :)
Laurie Anne
paulc
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Post by paulc »

chocoholic wrote:Ooh, thanks, paulc -- the Zen nano does have a line-in port and I was wondering if there was a way to hook a better mic to it. Will explore further. :)
It came to me one day in a flash of inspiration! Assuming that the recording bit rate is reasonable, the sound quality is completely dependent upon the quality of the mic and the pre-amp.

Saying this, I have a £10 karaoke mic that actually records speech better than a Shure SM58. Get out there and experiment... :wink:

I'll try to do an in car recording of the poem on my way home from work and post it later, so you can hear it.
chocoholic
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Post by chocoholic »

paulc wrote:I'll try to do an in car recording of the poem on my way home from work and post it later, so you can hear it.
Now, Paul, I appreciate your dedication to the project but do please try not to run into a telephone pole.
Laurie Anne
paulc
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Post by paulc »

chocoholic wrote:
paulc wrote:I'll try to do an in car recording of the poem on my way home from work and post it later, so you can hear it.
Now, Paul, I appreciate your dedication to the project but do please try not to run into a telephone pole.
:D


Here it is. Had to wait until I got home and wait for a quiet spot between the howls of cats and babies. It's a bit hissy, but I've not done my usual treatment, just adjusted for volume and left it as is.

http://upload.librivox.org/share/uploads/ehl/writteninmarch_wordsworth_pc.mp3


Recorded on Creative MuVo N200 on a full-size mic put through a Behringer PB100 pre-amp to boost the signal, and into the line-in port.

In Sony Sound Forge:

1. Changed from single-channel stereo to mono

2. Raised the volume

Usual clean-up for hissing not done.
Starlite
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Location: Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada

Post by Starlite »

Thanks Paul. I guess with a little clean up, this would be pretty good. There is a little high pitched "squeak". You have a nice voice!

Esther :)
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress,
therefore, depends on unreasonable people." George Bernard Shaw
Starlite
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Joined: April 30th, 2006, 2:17 pm
Location: Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada

Post by Starlite »

I added 5 more sections so please get recording. These are great!!

Esther :)
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress,
therefore, depends on unreasonable people." George Bernard Shaw
paulc
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Joined: February 1st, 2008, 6:04 pm
Location: The Misty Moors of Northern England

Post by paulc »

Starlite wrote:Thanks Paul. I guess with a little clean up, this would be pretty good. There is a little high pitched "squeak". You have a nice voice!

Esther :)
Thanks, Esther. Bit of a 1 a.m. rush job, but I was determined to get it in there.

:wink:
Starlite
Posts: 16548
Joined: April 30th, 2006, 2:17 pm
Location: Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada

Post by Starlite »

paulc wrote:
Starlite wrote:Thanks Paul. I guess with a little clean up, this would be pretty good. There is a little high pitched "squeak". You have a nice voice!

Esther :)
Thanks, Esther. Bit of a 1 a.m. rush job, but I was determined to get it in there.

:wink:
Wow you are up late!!! it's only 8:45 in Canada! :P
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress,
therefore, depends on unreasonable people." George Bernard Shaw
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