Mobile recording setup for interviews?

Trojan

I'm looking for advice on a recording setup for podcast interviews when out and about.

These could be taking place in noisy locations like hotel lobbies or cafes, or echoey meeting rooms, etc.

Must be fairly easy to use.

Podcast quality - doesn't need to be broadcast quality, but as good as possible within reason.

I've been looking at external mics to plug into smartphone or laptop, as well as things like the Edirol and Zoom H1. Not sure what the sound pickup will be like on these.

I had a massive improvement in recording quality in the office when I switched from condenser mic (AT2020) to a cheaper dynamic range mic (ATR2100), are there such things as portable recorders with dynamic range pickup?

Relatively low budget, under €200, ideally under €100 if possible.

Any suggestions?

TwoLeftFeet

If you can stretch your budget to get these I would highly recommend the following:

Olympus-LS-12-2GB-Linear-Recorder

And a few cheap tie clip microphones. I got a few in believe it or not, Eurogiant recently. You'll need two, one for yourself and one for the person you are interviewing. To use two microphones at the same time you will need a Y connector as the audio recorder only has one mic input socket. Or you could just use the mic's on the recorder itself. A windshield large enough to cover both mic's on the recorder would be a useful addition aswell.

Trojan

TwoLeftFeet wrote: »

If you can stretch your budget to get these I would highly recommend the following:

Olympus-LS-12-2GB-Linear-Recorder

And a few cheap tie clip microphones. I got a few in believe it or not, Eurogiant recently. You'll need two, one for yourself and one for the person you are interviewing. To use two microphones at the same time you will need a Y connector as the audio recorder only has one mic input socket. Or you could just use the mic's on the recorder itself. A windshield large enough to cover both mic's on the recorder would be a useful addition aswell.

TFL, thanks for your reply. Can you recommend any specific tie clip mics? I bought a cheap Speedlink SPES and got a lot of hiss on the background (looks like it's hit and miss - saw some good reviews on YouTube).

Do you know if the Zoom H1 compares with that Olympus recorder?

The Codemaster

I got a Boya Omnidirectional Lavalier 1/4" adapter 3.5mm Condenser Microphone on Amazon UK.

Can't post link as I'm a new user, but works perfectly with my Galaxy S7 when recording video. Great reviews on Amazon too.

Trojan

The Codemaster wrote: »

I got a Boya Omnidirectional Lavalier 1/4" adapter 3.5mm Condenser Microphone on Amazon UK.

Can't post link as I'm a new user, but works perfectly with my Galaxy S7 when recording video. Great reviews on Amazon too.

Thanks for the reply. I ended up getting a RØDE SmartLav+ which is iPhone compatible - sounds great actually - and a RØDE SC3 Adapter jack (TRRS to TRS - aka iPhone to everything else) and a 2 metre StarTech extension cable.

The SmartLav sounds awesome when recording off the iPhone, but picks up a load of noise (like the gain is super high) when recording off PC.

I should probably get a TRS to TRRS adapter too - my guess is the Speedlink SPES lav mic I have is better than I think, it's just not great when recording directly to PC because of gain settings.