Need better sound quality for piano recording

Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 3:53 pm

Hi, I'm trying to record myself playing the piano, but all I have is a Nikon Coolpix Camera, with 8-bit 7***hz mono sound. If you want to see what I did until now, check out DrAsik100 on Youtube, that's me.

I'm not too difficult on sound quality, but if at least I could record in 16-bit and get a 14khz range it would be a lot better already.

I have a computer with Windows XP, Pentium 4, 1GB of RAM and a P4S800 motherboard, no sound card. At the back of the computer you have the three standard sound adapters: green (where the speakers are plugged in), red and another one, yellow or blue I think.

The computer's not in the same room so I'd need a fairly long cable. Can I just buy a microphone and plug it in my computer and record away? If so, what's the best I could get for around 60$?

In my living room there's not a lot of tapestry and the piano's pretty bright so there's easily distortion in the high frequency, at least that's what I've noticed with my digital camera.

Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 5:51 pm

Good luck on this. I don't know of any mics in that price range that will do what you want that are any better than the gimme mics that come with a lot of computers, but maybe someone has an idea.

But at some point you might want to move up to the audio equivalent of you Coolpix camera. I'd put the current generation of flash recorders at that level. (I don't have the knowledge or interest to really push the photography/audio analogy very far.) I recently got an Edirol R-09. My daughter and wife have used it to record music lessons. I've used it for a praise band practice. It's dead easy to use, and it's embarrassing how good the recordings are. It is an excellent tool for the job you have in mind. You may want some software to edit the recordings a bit as well, but this is an option to consider.

Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 7:55 pm

Thank you for the advice. Unfortunately, those units seem to be well above what I can afford. The cheapest on eBay are 345$...

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:56 am

Check this out

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/07/24/zoom-h2-portable-flash-recorder-coming-soon-mic-design-delay/

They are suppose to be out in August. They will be selling for less than $200.

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:46 am

Yeah, As Tom points out, keep your eyes open. This seems to be a pretty active sector of the market. New products and price wars seem to be pretty common. Might be something that fits your budget in the not too distant future.

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:06 am

What about the Olympus VN-2100? That's something I could afford. But what's the difference between the sampling frequency (16khz on this device) and the overall frequency response (only up to 7.2khz?)

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 9:57 am

Dr_Asik wrote:

What about the Olympus VN-2100? That's something I could afford. But what's the difference between the sampling frequency (16khz on this device) and the overall frequency response (only up to 7.2khz?)

The theoretical maximum frequency that can be recorded is half the sampling frequency so with a sampling frequency of 16Khz the maximum possible would be 8Khz. With that constraint someone has to design an anti-aliasing filter and in practice this means the actually maximum frequency is slightly less than half, hence the 7.2 kHz in your case.

As well as the sampling frequency bear in mind what the recorder is designed for. If it is a voice recorder, i.e. designed for recording the spoken word it will quite likely use a compression technique that is fine for spoken voice but very poor at music.

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