I have been put in charge of finding some information and pricing on Audio recording equipment for a conference room. I am not sure exactly what they want as the people who want it are away from the office right now. I would like to know if anyone here can help me out though.

What I envision being needed is the recording unit (cd-recorder or maybe direct to pc digital recording) and some sort of mic setup. The room is a 30 x 30 room which is usually setup in a round table style but is often rearranged to have rows of tables. I am thinking some sort of mic in the center of the ceiling with a fool proof recording system setup for the meetings... maybe a computer wouldn't be such a good idea after all... hmmm...

Any thoughts?

Rene

How high do they need the quality to be? Does it need to be in digital format? What kind of budget are they looking at? Depending on their requirements, this could be solved by something as simple as a cassette deck to something as complex as a computer / digital recorder / CD-R / microphone array.

Quality doesn't need to be that wonderful afaik.

I am thinking digital due to the lower cost in the long run for media. With using a computer the audio can possibly be edited out to get rid of coffee breaks and the like and then converted to mp3 and archived to a cd-r. Pennies for many hours of recordings. Also cassettes just plain suck!

We have one quote here that has a tape deck for recording. Nothing fancy according to the specs but they expect us to pay $1240 for the deck alone.

Any ideas for a good quality omni directional mic?

Thanks!
Rene

$1240 for a cassette deck!??!?! <cough> <cough> <choke>

Okay...

I have always like the Shure conference microphones personally, but that is a matter of taste. Any musicians want to comment on audio rigs for voice?

I'm wondering whether a single microphone will work in a room of that size - people near/facing the microphone will be much louder than those far/facing away from it. It might work ok mounted above a round table, but when the room is reconfigured...

You might need to consider an array of microphones mixed together to get a more balanced audio image of the room.

Wish we had a system like this. Too many times we'd get a verbal promise from our boss, like, "You've got until August to finish the project" and then we get told it's gotta be done by June, and he denies ever saying August.

I think I found the perfect recorder...

http://tinyurl.com/5ym7t

Looks like I can have someone hit record and then stop when the meeting is over. After that I can simply burn to CDs.... I think. I am digging now but if anyone can offer any insight on this unit I would greatly appreciate it.

Rene

{edit} Will the Central do this???

I think that you are going down a blind alley here: "Quality, not that important" i.e. spoken word.
You could put four cheapish mics, around the room, connected to a mixer and feed the whole lot in to a soundcard, use audiotools at unrelatedinventions.com (which was originally conceived for a similar purpose) at a low bit rate, and you are home and dry for around 300 bucks, with a built in edit facility in the software.

Mixer and mics. from your local Radio shack, I would think.