Just wanted to know from you who had lessons (or taught) through Skype or other software about what kind of mic to use.
I have this lousy headphone set with an attached mic, so it’s probably not a good option. I also tried to place the microphone next to the pipes to be more audible but the drones couldn’t be heard anyway.
For online lessons the drones wouldn’t matter that much anyway at the moment but is it normal that they can’t be heard? I know that for recordings people can use more than 1 mic but is there a cheap option for us poor home users?
These headphone mics that come with camera’s are not meant for high quality recording. They are merely to get sound from you to another user at voice quality. I have had reasonable luck using the built in mic on my laptop when using skype. I keep the volume sorta low (but still very much audible for me) so the listener doesn’t have to hear themselves - a very frustrating side-effect. I haven’t had trouble getting the sound of the whole set across though.
There are volume/level/sensitivity controls within the player so mess around with them… that is probably the issue with the drones. Mic placement is another but if it’s dangling from your ear that should be a decent spot.
Also, bear in mind that AFAIK Skype is still not fully compatible with Vista (if you have a newer computer). I tried running it to do some lessons with Bill Ochs, and could only get audio but not video to work. I haven’t checked Skype’s site (or other discussion sites) lately to see if maybe they’ve come out with a newer version since then (this was last November).
