[nfb-talk] Recording State Convention Sessions

[Steve Jacobson]

Tina,

Here in Minnesota, we have not gotten into streaming our convention, but we have been recording conventions for almost forty years so we've had to take a lot of 
approaches.  There are the ideal circumstances, and then there is the real world.  Unfortunately, you will most likely find that you have to record in the real world.  
<smile>  In my thoughts below, please don't take any of them as being absolutely the only way to go.  I want to throw out several of the approaches we have taken 
to try to give you some options.

First, for recording conventions, having your own sound system works the best because you have full control over everything and you know where to connect and 
you can place the microphones as you need them.  However, there are many reasons that having your own sound system may not be practical in general.  If you 
move from place to place, someone has to hall it around.  If you have meetings in multiple rooms such as a student and parent meeting, you may need multiple 
systems and you might still be stuck with needing to use that of the hotels.  Sometimes they charge you more to use their systems for a short time than simply using it 
all the time.  Some hotels may not permit you to use your own sound system, although this seems rare now.  If something failes, you have to be responsible for any 
backup plan.  Finally, someone has to always be concerned with setting it up, and a backup person needs to be trained in case that person cannot attend a 
convention.  If the meeting is in one room and a luncheon with a speaker or the banquet is in another, that person has to be ready to move it quickly to not hold up 
the program.  None of this has anything to do with recording, but rather is simply food for thought when considering the use of a sound system, and of course there is 
the cost.  I know that some affilliates do have a portable sound system.  We will be buying one for the building that the NFB of Minnesota shares with BLIND Inc. for 
meetings there, but our approach is to not buy a portable system for now.  However, hotels do charge a fortune sometimes to use theirs.

Occasionally you can connect a recorder to a hotel's sound system but this is usually not something you can count on.  The system itself is sometimes in a separate 
room which is locked.  Sometimes their sounds systems are inside portable podiums or in a corner of the same room and you can access them.  Generally you will 
need to have a "line level" input on your recording device which some devices have such as the BookSense, or some means of attenuating the level of the sound 
so it won't overload a microphone input.  

Another approach is to not have the complete sound system but to have one's own microphones with a microphone mixer.  The output of the microphone mixer can 
then feed into the hotel's sound system and provide you with a place to connect a recording device so that you have access to microphones on the table, at a 
podium, or in the audience.  However, it is not always easy to anticipate what sort of a connection you will need to make.  Most built-in systems use balanced line 
microphone inputs, but there are exceptions.  Sometimes microphone cables in a hotel's system go to connections in a wall, but they may go through or under the 
wall into another room.  Occasionally they now use wireless connections.  While the job is easier than setting up an entire sound system, you still need someone who 
is somewhat knowledgeable to set it up and someone who will always be at your conventions.

There are several lower tech solutions that will work all right and provide you with more flexibility.  Getting a small microphone and attaching it to the main podium 
microphone will often do a more than adequate job.  You can either get a clip-on microphone, or use a rubber band or several short pieces of wire to attach it toward 
the back of the main microphone, perhaps even to the cord.  By attaching it toward the back, you avoid the problem of your microphone adding weight that might 
tend to cause a microphone to move down.  This is particularly true if it is on a goose neck type of stand.  The second reason to do this is to avoid the loud popping 
of consonants if you get the microphone too close to the speaker with an inadequate wind screen.  The very thin computer microphones sometimes have very nice 
audio quality but are very, very prone to popping "P's".  The third reason for moving the microphone back a little is that it permits it to pick up audience participation 
better.  You would need to experiment, but sometimes recorders have multiple modes of recording, one of which provides automatic level control which will permit 
you to pick up the audience.  The down side is that you will also pick up more extraneous noise when a speaker is speaking.  

Reasonably good recordings can be made by getting a microphone near the sound system's speaker.  Some will laugh at this approach, but if the speaker is good 
and the microphone is good, the quality will also be surprisingly good and let's you take advantage of access to all microphones if the system is using multiple 
microphones.  A recording made in this way may not be quite as crisp, but if it allows you to get access to a podium microphone, a table microphone, and a 
microphone in the audience, the trade-off might be worth it.

I hope that this gives you some things to think about.  There really isn't any one correct answer because there are so many variables, and there are yet other 
approaches that will work.  Still, coming up with an approach that works consistently for you so you don't have to rethink things for every convention is a good idea.  
Having a collection of commonly needed cords and extra batteries and a microphone with which you are familiar makes sense.  Good luck.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:00:42 -0700, Tina Hansen wrote:

>I have just received a Book Port Plus from APH, and I thought it would be a great tool for recording our affiliate's state convention. Yet, I know that recording state 
conventions can be a challenge.

>I was thinking seriously about recording our next state convention, with the OK of my state President, and if the recordings were good enough, they could then go 
on our state's web site.

>Since I know many affiliates are trying to record their state conventions, I'd be interested in hearing what others have done. What equipment have you used, and is 
is necessary for the affiliate to have their own sound system? Is it possible to just use the one at the hotel?

>Besides the Book Port Plus or other digital voice recorder, what equipment might I or the affiliate need?

>What have other affiliates done to record their state conventions, and how good have the results been? What about recording from the audience of plugging the 
voice recorder directly into the sound system?

>If anyone has tips, thoughts, or ideas, I'd be happy to share them with my state President. Thanks.
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