steve wrote:

I may want to have a bash at making a recording of my wife's choir. I
realise it will not be remotely professional quality, but I hope I could
do better than a portable cassette deck!

I had in mind recording in two ways:
1. On my Sony Minidisc player
2. On my PC, creating a WAV file onto the hard disc, which I could later
put onto CD.

I have an old but decent (I think) pair of panasonic microphones which I
could experiment with. I assume I would stick them into my stereo
amplifier (circa 1975), and then feed the output into my Minidisc player
and into the sound card of the PC.

I know my home PC (Athlon 1400 processor) seems quite happy at making
decent
WAV files, using Musicmatch software. I haven't tried yet with my work
laptop (Intel 900), and I don't know what software I would use on that.

Thanks for any (polite) suggestions, or any pointers to web sites that I
would find useful.

Steve

I am not sure why you plan to go via the mini disk recorder to the PC unless
you intend to record on both just in case. However, as far as I can see
there are two potential weak links in your chain (and I have recorded a few
choirs in my time). The first is the microphones - do you know if they are
dynamic or electret types? What polar response do they have - cardioid or
omni. What is their frequency response. Are they low or high impedance
types? All these factors will affect the quality of the basic signal you
have to work with. The second potential weak link is the microphone
preamps on your 1975 hi-fi. These are not likely to be a particularly low
noise design and with a choir this is important as the mics need to be some
distance from the singers so the signal level is relatively small. if you
can achieve a decent signal level at low noise then recording on your
minidsik recorder will be fine. You can always transfer it later to your
PC and you avaoid having a noisy PC anywhere near the choir.

As for mic set up I usually use a crossed pair configuration at an angle of
110 degrees with the capsules about 8 inches apart. I built myself a
simple adaptor for this purpose out of two mic holders and a pice of
aluminium.

After you have doen the recording, you and the choir will notice two things.
First how different they sound from how they think they sound and second if
they hold any papers with the words on for example you will be amazed how
noisy they are.

HTH and good luck

Ian