Kurt B & Bill Verburg - please gentlemen!

[dickster]

guys - i have it on good authority that you guys are sound recording gods.

how do i get a reasonable quality recording of my car (for the benefit of the board - well two members inparticular)??

i've tried the simple windows recording device, and frankly, well, its *****.

thanks in advance

(sorry if i don't respond soon - on my way out!!) :

[KTL]

Don't forget your moderator, Jack Olsen. He got Bill's exhaust clip cleaned up for us to enjoy in another thread!

[Bill Verburg]

My original recording was with my laptops built in mic and software, it came out ok with little effort. Jack Olsen converted the wav file from my laptop to a MP3 for me. The MP3 file is better for general webuse. Since then I have been using Music Match Jukebox for recording and ripping the MP3s. It works well and only needs any old analog(or wav) signal, as from a portable cassette recorder. When the weather gets nicer i'll try some full digital recording on a Sony MD that I recently acquired.

[Kurt B]

I used a mini recorder taped to the driver's side door handle and recorded with the window down.
I also don't have much sound proofing + cab allows the sound to infiltrate the cabin nicely.


Once I had that, I recorded it into the mic using Windows Sound recorder, which is under accessories multimedia from the start bar. (Use the headphone out jack on recorder to go directly into the mic jack in on your sound card)
You'll have to fidget with your mic volume and so forth from your system tray to get it to record fairly well...takes a while to get it the way you want it so there's a lot of stopping and starting over.

Once you get a recording of the wav file, you can use Ace of wav from download.com, which I got for free (trial long enough to make your wav).

Although I don't remember exactly, I think I used noise reduction to get the wind sound down. You can pretty easily modify your files with ace of wav.

I downloaded another shareware/freeware program to convert it to mp3 after I was done with it. Dang I love free software.

[Saffs]

Richard,
You need a minidisc player or even better, a portable DAT player, for the best results - with a small mic. You'll just get hiss with tape, or the inputs on a laptop. Run the outputs in to the computer when you're done - that creates quality loss too, but it will be tolerable.

[autobonrun]

I recently purchase an Olympus C4040 digital camera. It not only records photos, but movies and sound. You can even attach sound to a picture. I tried it on my Porsche and it sounded very good. Once the salt is off the road, I'll have a friend use it to record a short run with sound and post the results.

79 SC with SSI and dual Dansk

[cstreit]

Has anyone experimented with using an external mic in the car somewhere?

I would like to be able to improve the sound quality of my videos and I thought an external mic near the engine might be nice.

[Zeke]

How bad have you got It?

[dickster]

thanks for all the advice guys .

i might try down loading some of that "free" software kirk - i like FREE

i haven't got fund for hardware at the moment so i'll have to make do with what i've got, unless i can borrow.........

Zeke914 - i have three recordings. with three different muffler combos. problem is that each sounds the same, you just hear lots of revving, but you cannot distinguish between the three.

saffs - you're right its a laptop with external mic that i've used. it picks up the wind noise, and quality is as you described.

at the moment the recordings are wav file format. i'm having trouble getting the file copied on floppy and downloading on to my pc. when i go to download i get a corrupt message. i tried different disks - no change.

maybe the sound will be ok on pc???

any ideas on how to transfer to pc??

[AirCooledExcellence]

Hi Richard,

I've just done this recording (working at home today ):

Tim's Exhaust

I used a recording Mini-disc with an external microphone. Once I'd made the recording I hooked up the md's output to the audio line-in on the back of my PC and used sound recorder to get it onto the PC. Once it was there I used a freeware compression utility (l3enc.exe) to convert it to an mp3.

By the way I have no pre-silencers or cat's, just SSI's straight into a 2 in one out SS muffler (not sure what make).

Cheers,

Tim.
____________
1983 SC Targa

[dickster]

tim

i'll check it out tommorrow, i have no sound at work and won't be home tonight

thanks

Wow that sounds like an old US car with a V8

Is that how SSI equipped 911s sound?

What do other's with SSI on their cars think? Do your 911s sound like that?

[adamnitti]

I've gotten awesome results using a portable dat machine with an external stereo microphone mounted inside the cabin right in front of the engine. no wind noise with the windows up, and the sensitivity of the mic i use gets just about everything except the low end. low end can be eq'ed in later, though. the stereo effect is N-I-C-E.

[dickster]

tim - just listened to the recording WOW.

thats the sort of quality i was hoping for. i'll try hanging a mic out of the window of my house tommorrow and record onto my hifi!!

can't afford a md at the moment