[BC] Re: Netbooks and Audio

[Vernon Kuehn]

At 10:46 PM 3/21/2009, you wrote:
>Anyone have any experience using one of the "mini" laptops, erm netbooks for
>capturing audio?
>
>Just had a hairbrained scheme pop into my forebrain. As a portable
>newsgathering device with extras (AND XP in many cases) this might be the
>ticket, as its approaching an ideal size.

I just bought one and I don't have full answers for you.  I keep a 
computer in a guest-room that my wife uses as a housewife's 
office.  I don't understand why, but the 9 or 10 year old computer in 
there began suffering from some kind of old age symptoms.  <big silly grin>

She asked:  why not replace it with a laptop so you can use it for 
special events, etc.  Enter one ACER Aspire from Walmart at 
$299.00  (everybody in town has them at that price!).

I already had an M-Audio TRANSIT which is an A/D converter that plugs 
into a USB port.  If I were buying the whole package at this time I 
would have picked one of the new USB external converters that would 
accept a MIC input and offer phantom power.  We had a 3-hour workshop 
at our church that I needed to run sound for so I took the ACER, the 
TRANSIT and loaded my Total Recorder software.  This package will 
break the recording every "X" number of  minutes  (X= your choice.  I 
chose 7 minutes)  Each track becomes a separate WAV file  (could have 
saved as mp3 but I wanted to check for quality.)  I also chose 
32-bit  (24-float?).   The audio feed came out of the portable mixer 
our youth group normally uses.   I was very pleased with the results!

If I were going to outfit a news person or a sales rep who wanted to 
record a clients voice for use in a commercial,  I would get a little 
zipper bag about the size you put shaving stuff in for travel and 
stuff the mic, and whatever little converter-USB device you choose 
and be off to the races.  I found that powered external speakers 
plugged into the built-in sound device/card gave good results.

Vernon Kuehn
Cumming,  GA