Phone-mic

From Madwiki

I wanted to conduct speech recordings of lots of different kinds of people in Tamil Nadu, India. For good quality recordings, its best to have a quiet environment and to put a microphone close to the mouth of the speaker, but off to one side of the mouth so that air leaving the mouth in bursts during the production of consonants doesn't hit the microphone. I knew it would be difficult to explain this given that I don't speak a word of Tamil and I wasn't sure how familiar some people would be with microphones, so I created the phone-mic. I assumed that most people would have used or a phone or at least seen a phone being used. When you use a phone, you place it in a perfect place for recording: slightly to one side and close to the mouth.

Basically, with the help of my really handy brother, I gutted an old phone and glued a computer microphone (with microphone jack) and an old airlines speaker (speaker jack) on the inside of the phone casing, then ran the wires out of the plastic casing and into speaker and mic jacks on a laptop or handheld device. The phone mic worked really well in the field. I got great quality audio recordings without having to communicate any details about how to hold the mic or without the need to fix any weird equipment (headsets) to people who are not very familiar with computer technology and might be uncomfortable with such a setup. I still use the phone mic today to talk to people on skype cuz it feels like a real phone and I like that.

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