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What kind of mic should I use to record lectures in a large classroom? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Sterile_Technique to c/asklemmy

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Nursing student here. I record lectures so review them at high playback speeds, and to share with classmates who aren't able to make it to class.

I've been using the small clip-on battery powered mics made for doing interviews, but last semester revealed a few weaknesses: The profs don't like to actually wear them, so I just clip them onto the lecture podium - works fine while they're standing at it, but they don't have good range, and most of the profs move around a lot as they lecture, so the volume of the recording is all over the place or completely silent if they stray too far away. Also 99% of the time a student asks a question, the mic doesn't capture it at all, so I just get a few seconds of silence followed by some random info with no context. The battery is also only enough to get through about 2/3 of a class period - fine if I remember to swap them out during a break, but not ideal.

Going forward, I'm hoping to find an option I can just plug into my laptop, sit near the front, and record. A normal desktop conferencing style mic stands out as a decent option, but thinking of the range issue I'm having with the portable mics, I suspect a conferencing type product will have the same issue since it's made to record sound coming from like two feet away from the mic.

I've seen like giant fuzzy mics used on movie sets - should I look for something like that?

And are there specific product recommendations you'd make that are on the less expensive end of the spectrum?

Thanks all!

Edit-

Thanks for all the feedback folks! Time to dig through reviews.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Can you, ehm, involve some psychological tricks?

Say beforehand that you are recording and explain how to turn the mic off\on to get their attention to the audio.
Test it with each of them to double down on that.
If that place is big (even if it's not), use speakers to send there all the inputs to amplify the volume. They subconsciously get used to hearing themselves from the back and losing that feel makes them a little uncomfortable so they walk back to the mic. Just be careful not to launch a feedback loop of mic-speakers playing a human centipede to the eeeEEEEICK sound deafening everyone.

That is possible with (some splitters? and) a laptop.

But if you want to turn it into something basic but more fun (that your department may later use for more than lectures, so you can even ask for some funding), for a good cheap setup for nice recordings you'd need a laptop, a pair of headphones for yourself, a basic audio mixer you can get second hand with usb, a pair of dynamic mics (condensed are more specialized and too precize, that's the next level) and a bunch of cords for them and said speakers. Mixer is important to take in multiple inputs and level their volume independently, turn them off at will, all in physical buttons\sliders.

And if you want to go superfrugal, fing a way to grab multiple audio channels with your laptop, use OBS for recording, add each channel and level them here, and use stupid ass webcam-tier mics aimed in a general direction where a group of speakers (teacher, students) appear, then right click at every input audio channel and play with it's built-in filters for noise cancellation and compression, but be careful, because it can easily cancel out everything spoken (that totally didn't happen to me a couple of times, lol).