Recording Phone Interviews

[venkatesh]

Hi,

I saw this mentioned in another post but it didn't quite answer my question.
What I want to do is to be able to conduct phone interviews but instead of using the handset to talk to the person on the other end I want to use an external mic hooked up to a mixer. I also want to send the phone conversation through the mixer to record it.

Does anybody have a solution for this...relatively cheap?

Thanking You.

[frakingah]

I'm assuming that you're planning to tell the people on the other line that they are being recorded, right? If not, that's highly illegal.

[sljaxon]

You're going to need a telephone hybrid. These are pretty expensive, usually going for around $300.

Seeing as you don't want to talk in to a phone, and want to integrate it with a mixer, you're going to need a more expensive hybrid.

For $495, the JK Audio Broadcast Host will probably do what you need. http://www.jkaudio.com/broadcast-host.htm.

Here's another page from BSW that has a list of the telephone hybrids they sell: http://www.bswusa.com/searchresult.asp?searchType=category&subcat=telco-hybr

If this is too expensive, you might want to consider a Skype-based solution.

[iampaulie]

Use Skype. The program is free, and Skype-to Skype calls are free worldwide, for starters. You can also get an Unlimited Calling package for less than a hundred dollars for a yearly subscription which will give you a phone number people could call, with voicemail and call forwarding, and gives you the power to call any regular phone number in your country for free. It's awesome, I use it all the time.

Skype also has a call recording function. I don't use it, but I hear it works well. I actually use Cubase to record all my interviews. You could use any audio production software if you want, even freeware programs.

If you have a separate, external USB or firewire microphone interface, you could go the extra mile and record each of your incoming and outgoing phone/skype signals on two separate tracks for extra flexibility in editing.