Long distance battery powered mics

shung421 · Post by **shung421** » 24 Jul 2007 05:04

It appears I have some new neighbors who are making a bit of racket! That's the good news. The bad is that they are on the other side of the apartment compound from me...and there is a video cam pointed near the area that would make for the best recording. And with the miniature sizing that is being achieved these days, I have often wondered if there are other personal cameras present that I haven't spotted. In our age of technology, it has become easier for us audio voyeurs to indulge, but it has also become easier to get caught at it!

Anyhow, my current plan is to place my digital recorder on voice activation mode and plant it in my car. The parking lot of my apartment compound is close to the source! Still, I'm not sure how well the recordings are going to turn out. Obviously I'm going to get a lot extraneous sounds I'm not looking for. Does anyone know of a battery-operated, long distance microphone I could buy for this purpose? I am mostly interested in one that would capture sound coming from the direction in which I point it.

Post by **yeppie** » 24 Jul 2007 12:41

Hope you donÂ´t mind that I have moved this topic to the hardware forum - to me it seems to fit in there and might get more attention.
Sorry that I donÂ´t have an answer right now but here is a (German) shop that got some nice tools:
http://www.gutzeit-gmbh.de/html/richtmikrifone.html

sc0tt-uk · Post by **sc0tt-uk** » 24 Jul 2007 23:30

Hmmm... I've seen a battery powered shotgun mic. One of the film students was using one at uni... big ugly thing... the mic that is not the film student lol. Might still have her number or something, if I do I'll ask.

If you need a hand going through the hours of footage then I'm ya man Shung. For some reason, I consider that to be one of the best parts of our little hobby.

Post by **yeppie** » 25 Jul 2007 00:22

sc0tt-uk wrote:If you need a hand going through the hours of footage then I'm ya man Shung. For some reason, I consider that to be one of the best parts of our little hobby.

me too, count me in.

shung421 · Post by **shung421** » 25 Jul 2007 06:02

No problem with moving it, Yeppie. I even thought of that later myself.

I'm not sure I'm going to hours of footage. Last night yielded almost nothing time-wise...I don't think the mic is sensitive enough to catch much sound, even with the window cracked open a bit. I changed the positioning some for tonight, so we'll see how much recording I get.

mjj9994 · Post by **mjj9994** » 25 Jul 2007 11:52

Hi all.... sorry I haven't been on the board more often... part of 'being on the high seas' I suppose. Anywho.. just wanted to mention that I own a battery-powered shotgun-mic. Picked it up on ebay for around $55 (US). Works very, very well, however, the raw sound is not very loud, so you may have to amplify it before recording (my best results were using the shotgun mic and directly inputing the signal to my computer and amplified through the coumputer (20db boost function). This method seemed to work very well... but you probably do not have a computer handy. Another option is an external ampifier (available through radio shack for $25 (US) or... to try and amplify the sound after recording. I have not tried this method as the software I am familiiar with does not have this function... but I would guess the results would be okay.

Anywho... the battery on the shotgun mic will last around 6-12 hours, and you may need an adapter to use it on some MP3 recorders (the shotgun mice I have comes with a 1/8" stereo connection). Good luck!

- Mark

shung421 · Post by **shung421** » 26 Jul 2007 05:31

Don't know if you'll be around to answer this, Mark...but do you have the brand and model number of the mic you own?

As far as my current recording success...all I got today was the sound of closing the car door last night and opening it in the morning! LOL...guess it was a quiet night.

mjj9994 · Post by **mjj9994** » 26 Jul 2007 14:49

Well... all my gear is packed up in storage until probably next Feb/Mar.... but if you just do a quick search for 'shotgun microphone' on ebay... look for some around $50-100 and they will more than likely be similiar models. I mainly picked it up just to see the quality... and it works EXCELLENT... would be great for applications such as your situation. I used it a few times to listen to neighbors across my courtyard (30 meters or so), and coupled with the '20 db gain' from the computer microphone input, it worked very well.

Sorry I can't be much more help.

- Mark