Tell me about iriver

[Grant Harrington]

Originally Posted by David Payne

Grant, how do you clip the mic/ipod onto the speaker then? Also re: the lavalier, obviously I assume the mic you get with it is unidirectional and therefore possibly useless on a top table unless I move it between speeches?

EDIT:
having seen that the lavalier is a cheap tie clip mic.. do you think it would be a good idea to buy 4 of these, mic up all the speakers before the speeches, then simply unplug the ipod from speaker a's mic and connect it to speaker b's mic and so on.. would the recording stop? This seems simpler than trying to get the tie mic disconnected and re attached, as this took some time on the one and only occasion I have used it...

Disconnecting the mic from the base unit stops recording. You have to start again.

I used the lavalier mic in a training seminar where the room size held 200 people, and it picked up the presenter (20 feet away from me) and people asking questions 30 feet away. I had the iPod and the lav mic sitting on an armrest in the auditorum. It was quieter further away, but the main speaker was clear as could be.

When using the MM at a wedding, the groom had the iPod in his front jacket pocket and the lav clipped to his jacket and the bride's vows were almost as clearly audible as the grooms.

Grant

[David J. Payne]

Grant,

I have been mainly thinking about speeches, but i'll certainly get the groom to drop the ipod into his pocket during the ceremony, he can take it off just before the register photos and no one will have known!

This little product is quite the find. I'll be getting mine monday hopefully and will test it extensively before I use it at a wedding.

[Richard Wakefield]

David etc,

as i say i should have mine by the end of the day or tomorrow, to use at a wedding on Saturday so i'll let ppl know how i get on

and i'm only allowed to use the camcorder at the back of the church, so it will be a great test for it!

then also too on the head table during the speeches with supplied stick mic.

fingers crossed

for now here's another review and test clip to play:
http://www.ipodobserver.com/story/27964

geez, Grant must be on commission for recommending this toy :)

[Grant Harrington]

Originally Posted by David Payne

Grant,

I have been mainly thinking about speeches, but i'll certainly get the groom to drop the ipod into his pocket during the ceremony, he can take it off just before the register photos and no one will have known!

This little product is quite the find. I'll be getting mine monday hopefully and will test it extensively before I use it at a wedding.

The last one I was at, he kept it during the receiving line which was outside the church and with all the people, I couldn't get close enough to pick up much ambient audio with my VX2100, so it was a nice bonus to have their comments from friends and family. It just kept recording after the ceremony.

Grant

[David J. Payne]

ok mine arrived today seems excellent, but can somebody tell me how to export the voice memo from itues to a wav or mp3 onto my pc? I have never been able to export from itunes.. indeed i didnt think it was possible short of browsing hidden folders on the ipod in which the labelling of songs is all mixed up..

[Richard Wakefield]

David, check out the new thread i've posted 'more on the Micromemo for the iPod'

really easy, when u sync to itunes, it puts the .wav into your 'my music/iTunes' folder.

on the iPod, it puts it into a Voice Memo Playlist.

[Grant Harrington]

Originally Posted by David Payne

ok mine arrived today seems excellent, but can somebody tell me how to export the voice memo from itues to a wav or mp3 onto my pc?

I sync my iPod music and movies to my XP machine, but edit in FCP on the Mac. I just connect the iPod to the Mac (disk mode is enabled from my setup on the XP machine) and the files are in a folder called "Recordings". I'm sure the same applies on the XP as long as you are in disk mode with the iPod. Your iPod should show up as a removable disk under My Computer, using Explorer, you should see a Recordings folder. That is where your files are with a date and time stamp as part of the filename.

Grant

[David J. Payne]

thanks guys. I went through all the trouble of looking in ipod control/music hidden folder and searched for them there.. for some reason I totally ignored the My Recordings folder staring me in the face..

I think its a great gadget (although my speaker doesnt seem to work..) but I am having trouble with consistency when using a lapel mic I have designed for use with a wireless pack. It seems to only record any audio 50% of the time. It has a strange screw contraption on the 3.5mm socket so I have ordered one off of ebay without this connection to see if i get more consistent recordings.

[Grant Harrington]

Originally Posted by David Payne

I think its a great gadget (although my speaker doesnt seem to work..)

You need to press and hold the button on the front of the MM for about two seconds to activate the speaker.

Grant

[David J. Payne]

ah so you do.. thanks grant.

Now I just hope the new clip mic works more consistently!

David

[David J. Payne]

ok i have used the new clip mic for a wedding yesterday but when listening to the wav file in full i am finding that there are regular skips/jumps in the file.. has anyone experienced this before?

[Grant Harrington]

Originally Posted by David Payne

ok i have used the new clip mic for a wedding yesterday but when listening to the wav file in full i am finding that there are regular skips/jumps in the file.. has anyone experienced this before?

I can only report my experiences, and with an 80GB iPod, fully charged before event, and the MicroMemo, with optional lavalier mike, I've gotten complete audio with no other issues. I used the audio for three segments of the wedding video, synced it once, cut out what I didn't need, and when I went down the time line in FCP the audio was in sync where it needed to be.

It could be an issue with the iPod. Which type/size are you using?

Grant

[David J. Payne]

its a 30gb video. Used it at another wedding today, will check results and get back to you tomorrow. I hope it was just a one off..

edit: yeah, same problem again. its a right pain. happens every 30 seconds of so.

I have about 10 gig spare on the ipod but im considering formatting it and trying again.

anyone got any ideas?

[Rick Steele]

anyone got any ideas?

Get the right tool for the job at hand. :)

I know this isn't much help but this is the surest solution. The frustration alone should make you want to do this.

[Eric Gan]

Looks like the iRiver 7xx/8xx series may have been revived as the iRiver F700, now with 4GB of memory. I'm not sure if the mic level input feature has made it since I can't read Japanese (Japan only player). Anyways, I'm not really interested in this player since there's no need for that much memory for our application, and the old iRivers are great because they're cheap, and this new one costs a heck of a lot more.

I do find it incredible that a small flash based player with a clean mic-level input doesn't seem to currently exist. Too bad....they're very useful for weddings.