[HL0105]

At the bar where I do karaoke, I talked the KJ into making recordings
of our singing. So he
brought a (Gemini IKey Plus) Portable USB Recorder, and connected it
to the (RCA Record Out) on his (American DJ QFX Pro) mixer.

When we listened to the recording the next day, we noticed two
problems. One was that for some of the louder singers, there was
distortion. The KJ's theory on why this happened was that the gain
setting on the mixer (set at one quarter setting) was too high for
recording purposes. And that gain setting could not be turned down; it
had to be at least that high since this was karaoke in a bar
environment.

The other problem we noticed was that there was no background noise at
all to supplement the singer's voice; it sounded like a studio
recording. And without this ambient crowd noise, you heard every
imperfection in the singing. And since karaoke singers are amateurs;
well there were LOTS of imperfections.

So we tried a second recording attempt. This time without any input
from the mixer; the recorder's built-in microphone was used. The
result had plenty of crowd noise, so we accomplished that. The
problem: *too much* crowd noise. The noise of the crowd was at such a
high level, that in some cases you could barely hear the singer. I
couldn't believe that this tiny microphone on the Recorder was that
sensitive. Imagine hearing about 25 loud conversations at once - in a
phone booth.

So for our third recording attempt we placed the Recorder one foot
away from the monitor speaker, assuming that this would result in the
singer's voice being the loudest part of the recording, much louder
than the crowd noise. Didn't work. At all. Regardless of the fact that
the mic was that close to the speaker, it was the exact same result.
The noise of the crowd was at such a high level, that in some cases
you could barely hear the singer. Baffling!

(Now more specifically, the mic was situated closer to the woofer,
rather than higher up and closer to the tweeter...but I don't believe
that would be a factor here.)

So we're back to square one. How the heck do we get some decent
recordings?? If anyone has any insight on this, it would be greatly
appreciated. Thanks!

- Dave