Mobile recording studio.

I don’t take very many trips, partly because I like my voice-over work and don’t want to miss any. But I couldn’t avoid it last week, nor could I avoid working, because I have a client who needs narration work from me almost every day. So, I finally allowed myself to be dragged into modernity, and assembled a little mobile studio consisting of the following:

MacBook (can you believe I didn’t have a laptop until now?) - 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 160GB hard drive

MicPortPro

Studio microphone (I took my Neumann TLM 103, because it has a nice carrying case, and my permanent studio was sounding so good I didn’t want to touch a thing in it)

Vanderwall Collapsible Cube – I couldn’t find the right size locally but my friend Connie Terwilliger had an extra one that she sent me. Bless you Connie!

Sonex foam to line the cube (I had some leftovers that I took with me)

Mini mic stand (I removed the boom)

To state the obvious: the signal went from me, to the mic which was sitting in the Sonex-lined cube, to the MicPortPro to the Macbook. And no printing of scripts, I just read them off the client’s emails.

I recorded using a trial version of Twisted Wave, and edited in Audacity. I don’t like either of those as well as Adobe Audition, but since all of this was new to me, I really haven’t given them a fair trial yet. I’m not a gear head – I like this stuff and think it’s cool, but it’s a means to an end and I don’t have time to get all ga-ga over it. I just wanted it to work so I could get the audio to my client in a timely manner and get back to vacationing. And everything did work (it wasn’t the equipment’s fault that I had to stay up way late to record, in order to avoid the sound of lawn mowers and traffic).

For more about this kind of set up see Harlan Hogan’s website – he came up with the idea of using the collapsible cube for a "portabooth". The Vanderwall variety may be extinct (it was a special purchase last month at Aldi’s, which is where Connie picked up her extras), but there are other possibilities. Search on collapsible cube at Amazon. It just has to be 14”.

The MicPortPro is used by lots of voice-over people and was discussed in detail here and here. It’s simple and wonderful, measuring about 5 inches in length and with a user manual of about 2 paragraphs. For several days prior to this trip I had been trying out various other mobile studio configurations: a usb mic connected directly to the laptop, or a Zoom H4 recorder as an audio interface. Neither solution was satisfactory. I ordered the MicPort Pro at the last minute and had it sent to my destination. I love the Zoom recorder and even figured out all its buttons and menus (that is one complicated device), but I think I will get more use out of it as a stand-alone unit for recording bird song and human dialects in the field. I don’t think anything can beat the MicPort Pro for ease of use. You just plug it in, push the little button for 48 V phantom power and you’re in business.

I must say it is fun to travel with a laptop, especially one with an Extreme Airport card so I can get email and play on teh intarwebz and upload files and not bother with cables. And nice that it can do other stuff, like play DVDs in the car. Heh. Who knows - I may take another trip someday! My one regret is that we did not have time to stop and visit anyone along the way.