Group recording via LAN

schildwaechter · Post by **schildwaechter** » May 8th, 2006, 12:38 pm

Hi,

we're a group of german people who are going to record a play, everyone reading a different person plus the directions.

Since we don't have a mixing equipment but only headsets (one per person) and laptops we are not quite sure on how to record it. We plan on sitting side by side in a larger room, so that we can actually interact.
But the quality using skype or internet-based-conferencing-software is not as good a a direct recording using audacity or something like it.

So if anyone knows a program we could use in a local network (might produce some traffic, no problem there) to stream all speech to one pc and have it all recorded in one piece, rather than everyone using his/her own audacity to record the own voise and edit it together later on, we're quite happy to try it.

Carsten

http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2041

kri · Post by **kri** » May 8th, 2006, 1:15 pm

If you're going to be recording it all together, you might not even need to do that. You could perhaps all record your respective pieces into your own computers, reading together through the play. Then one person could take all of the files and effectively smush them together so that they are one file instead of many. Since you'll be reading together you shouldn't have to worry too much about the timing.

This may or may not work, depending on the level of background noise in each recording as well. It's worth a try. Otherwise, I'm not sure how else you'd do it.

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » May 8th, 2006, 1:56 pm

...or sit around a round table, use just one computer, and plug one of these:
SONY ECM-F8 Conference Table Microphone. It's build to record groups talking - shouldn't be too bad. Costs ~20 $/€

Where are you doing it? Anywhere near Cologne? I?d like to join you.

schildwaechter · Post by **schildwaechter** » May 9th, 2006, 2:01 am

The editing is the primary idea we have, just thougt maybe someone knew anything else.

Sorry Stephan, but its going to be in Goettingen.

Carsten

GordMackenzie · Post by **GordMackenzie** » May 9th, 2006, 5:31 am

I wish I had a good solution for you, but I don't.

I think you're right that any conferencing or "internet chat" software will not give you the quality you want, and I'm unaware of any networked recording software.

However, if you are all using USB headset mics, you might consider using a USB hub and recording to the same machine. I'm not sure how long USB cords can extend (or whether multiple mics would be an issue with Audacity...), but this might be a solution worth considering (although not exactly what you want).

The potential problem I see with your set-up is that multiple desktop computers in the same room can create a lot of background noise (Fans, etc.). If you've ever got together for a LAN-party, then you know what I'm talking about. If you are using Laptops, this might not be as much of an issue.

I would recommend noise cancelling mics for this at minimum.

In any event, please let us know how your experiment goes. Good luck!

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » May 9th, 2006, 9:31 am

Idea to help in editing:

You will be recording dialog, lets say on 3 laptops, something like this, right?

Character1:"But then we can't rush the killer..........................................................................................What now?"
Character2:"....................................................We never have discussed the second idea............................................"
Character3:".........................................................................................................................Thats true............................"

You can let mp3directcut split each laptops recording into numbered pieces with it auto-finding the silences:
Character1: c1_rec01.wav, c1_rec02.wav, c1_rec03.wav....
Character2: c2_rec01.wav, c2_rec02.wav, c2_rec03.wav....
Character3: c3_rec01.wav, c3_rec02.wav, c3_rec03.wav....

And you can also mark the script with pencil and give the dialog lines the same numbers. You will get a sequence of the dialog from the pencil notes:

c1_01.wav - c3_01.wav - c1_02.wav - c2_01.wav......

Sort of like a cuesheet.

Then there are lots of mp3-joiners out there that you can use to add the pieces back together according to the pencil dialog list.

After that you got the raw-dialog edited together pretty much automated and you don't have to do the cutting and adding of pieces manually.

Just one of many options. I am curious how in the end you did it. It will be fun anyway. Hope you don't get held up with too many technical problems (pfff LAN parties...) but get to recording soon. Too bad it's too far away from here.

JickBahTech · Post by **JickBahTech** » May 9th, 2006, 1:10 pm

You could also look at something like this:
http://www.alesis.com/product.php?id=40

One Firewire cable into one laptop, but in your recording software, you could tell it to record each person as a different channel.
Might be a little pricey though (especially rounding up mics).
It kind of depends on how many people are going to be working at one time.

If everyone is recording at the same time on seperate laptops, you could just line up each individual "track" later in a multitrack program (or even Audacity) and merge them into one file once they are all lined up. Of course the easiest way to line these up would be for everyone to begin recording at the same time, and then stay recording for the whole time.

HerrSchildkroete · Post by **HerrSchildkroete** » May 11th, 2006, 5:30 am

If you are daring you could try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Audio_System
It's UN*X based and after reading the man pages it might be a bit of a hassle to set it up, though. I haven't tried personally.

Edit: maybe it's available on Knoppix or some other live-linux

Regards, Felix.