Tascam mic for use with Zi8.....

[fitness1]

Here's my first YT upload attempt (man, that was an adventure in itself!!)

I think it's still a little guitar heavy, and a little bright, but I think a lot of that is the room I'm in. I think the next one will be done in a "softer" sounding room.

I had the Tascam about 3 feet from my mouth and the soundhole and the input gain on the Zi8 1 click up from center.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7eyYk2dEBM

[Brent Hutto]

I'll say two things about that YouTube clip. For starters it's a nice piece of work, a fine performance and the recording does it justice. The other is that as I mentioned before, you are certainly getting maximum performance out of that microphone. It would be easy to get a really thin, unbalanced recording but you found a way to make it work well.

And in this specific case, it's going to be mangled by YouTube anyway. That kind of puts a ceiling on how good you could make it sound in a million-dollar studio. A critical ear can tell it's missing that close-miked quality that modern listeners are used to but from what I understand, half a century ago that wasn't even considered desirable in the first place.

Good one.

[randysitz]

I thought it sounded very good. I liked the song, I play Bluer than Blue. I thought the nylon string came across very well. Voice was natural and very good. It would be neat to hear a steel string. This is just mic and recorder?

[fitness1]

Originally Posted by randysitz

I thought it sounded very good. I liked the song, I play Bluer than Blue. I thought the nylon string came across very well. Voice was natural and very good. It would be neat to hear a steel string. This is just mic and recorder?

Yes, just the Tascam mic (set to 120 degrees) into the Zi8 with the gain setting one click up from zero or neutral. I'll try to post something with the Mcknight soon....

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by fitness1

Hmmm......not been my experience so far. Maybe you got a bad one. Did you adjust the gain on the Zi8 accordingly?

Hi f1…
You may be right (about a bad one)

Yes - I do understand gain settings.

[ferg]

Originally Posted by fitness1

That's way more than I want to get into......old school, and this video thing is all new to me.

It may seem like it is - but just setting up a small recorder for the audio, then syncing it with the video before you render for youtube is not as complicated as you might think.

[fitness1]

I'm happy with the results I'm getting like it is. As someone said above, no matter what you do, the quality is going to be degraded when you upload it to some extent anyway.

I'll continue to be much more picky about my audio only recordings....the video thing is just for kicks to me.

[ferg]

Originally Posted by fitness1

I'm happy with the results I'm getting like it is. As someone said above, no matter what you do, the quality is going to be degraded when you upload it to some extent anyway.

I'll continue to be much more picky about my audio only recordings....the video thing is just for kicks to me.

True - the quality of what ultimately ends up on youtube is almost always less than the original source. It's one of the reasons I greatly prefer Vimeo. The same is true of Vimeo, but (to my eyes and ears) to a lesser extent. However, the better the quality of your source, the better the quality of the original. It's not like youtube boils everything down to the same quality, but I get what you're saying.

[dancingdogmuse]

sounds real good...would like to see more...great playing..enjoyed the JT song too....The mic is a good buy at 31 dollars...thanks...