Hey guys, I'm having a problem recording voices inside a moving vehicle. I have a small Sony Micro-cassette recorder model ICD-B500. When I record people talking, sometimes it records the sounds of the vehicle itself, for example, the engine, the brakes, etc, and the voices are drowned out. How can I improve the recording of voices?

Record them in a studio / booth / dead room. Record car noise separately. Mix.

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I'm All Ears.

Thanks, but I'm afraid these people are from the street, its a reality setup so I cannot take them into a studio. Any other suggestions?

you want a better mic..
I suspect the one in the recorder is an omnidirectional pickup pattern which is why it's picking up everything.

Ideally you want to be able to plug in a cardioid (unidirectional) mic and point that at the person speaking.. this will focus on one sound source and tend to reject the background noise better



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A car on the move is inherently a very noisy environment, and trying to capture usably clean dialogue is surprisingly difficult.

The preferred technique in TV drama and film work is to mount the car on a low trailer and have that towed around while filming/recording the dialogue. That way there's no tyre or engine noise, and reduced wind noise.

If you have to record the voices while the car is really being driven, then the only practical solution is to cloase mic each person talking -- either by using tie-clip (lavalier) mics clipped near the tops of their shirts or -- if the mics are to be hidden from camera -- then secrete the mics in the headlining, the sun visors, or the seat headrests (for the rear passengers). Obviously, the four or five mics will need to be routed to a mixer to be balanced, and then on to the recorder (or you coulod feed the channels of a multitrack recorder directly and mix later -- which is likely to give better, more controlled, results).

If you can only use a single mic -- whether a separate mic or one integrated in a recorder -- then you'll just have to reach around and place the mic fairly close to who ever is speaking... which won't be easy in a moving car!

Basically, your current technique and equipment is hopelessly inadequate and inappropriate if yu want any kind of decent quality recording. You'll need to change your whole approach, or the equipment, and cerrainly the way you're using it to improve on what you've been experiencing. The laws of physics and acoustics are funny about things like that...

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Quote coxmg:

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Thanks, but I'm afraid these people are from the street, its a reality setup so I cannot take them into a studio. Any other suggestions?

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Yup - as the others have mentioned - just need a big step up in what you're using and how you're doing it.

Surely you're not recording real street people are you? Filthy things. Prone to rioting.
Use actors dear boy.

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The good news is, the Sony will be fine for your purposes. You will however be forced to supplement it with this attachment http://www.lexus.co.uk/range/rx/index.aspx?value01=C3257SEM2010GEN04
DM

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Not much in life worth running for. Or from.