Loscon: recording on the go

[mdlbear]

I'm going to wrap up what passes for a Loscon con report with a few notes on my current mobile recording rig. This consisted of the Edirol UA25 that I mentioned buying in this post, and a Behringer C2 matched pair of condenser mics. The latter were surprisingly cheap -- on sale for $50. They came in a plastic carrying case with a bar for holding them in the right position for stereo recording. To these I added a mic-stand threaded clamp, which I attached to the handle of my rolling tote, and a Macbook Pro running the beta version of Audacity 1.3. (I tried the stable 1.2, but it hung with the UA25 in place.)

I also tested the UA25 on my DeMuDi laptop, but although ALSA recognized it just fine, I wasn't able to get Audacity to see it. Something in the alsa-oss package configuration wasn't right, and I didn't have time to mess with it. It appears to work with my desktop machine running Debian Etch, so I'll try that in the future.

The rig performed well, though I could have had the gain up quite a bit higher. Fortunately, with a 24-bit interface, there's enough headroom that it doesn't matter much. I still picked up the gamers in the room on the other side of the airwall.

For next time, I want to have something that I can just roll into the room, adjust the gain, and forget about. The rolly isn't really stable enough, and I had to sit the laptop on a chair next to it.