After doing some experimenting the other night, I was actually able to call out (and receive) over my land-line and cell phone!

I was listening via my monitor headphones, and talking through my mic, all through my mixing board.

The trick is, you'll need a phone with a 2.5mm stereo jack for connecting a headset.

It turns out that, on the stereo jack, the left channel is the mic, and the right channel is the speaker.

So, all you need is a 2.5 to 3.5 mm adapter (stereo), and then a 3.5 mm to stereo L&R either 1/4" or RCA coupler! (Or mix and match). The key is to make sure you pan each channel 100% Left and Right, respectively.

You'll only hear your guest in one year, but it beats trying to record with skype!

Here's a couple of pictures I shot of the setup, and the individual components.







I hope it's helpful.

Kurt

Excellent! I will give it a try here in a bit and see how I do with this. I have had a rough go at it with Skype. I am a Linux user and there just is not an easy way to get a good Skype recording. The best way I have found gives me no control of the incoming volume and it overdrives my recording program (arecord).

Here is my solution that I did for an interview this week.

I will give yours a try today if I can make it all work out.

Looks like we came close to the same method. I suspect that even with my method, you'll still have "phone" quality for the guest, but at least you'll be through your regular mic/mixing board, and it'll all get recorded on one spot.

And it can still be separated into L and R for editing purposes!

Soldering iron has gone through the heating and cooling cycle.

Ok, I have it working and it is much nicer to have the recording all in one spot. Thanks!

As I pointed out in the blog post, I still get my voice coming through on the telephone channel. Do you know of anyway to cut that out? Do you get that?

Each step gets me a bit closer.

Please save me before I put too much time getting my Asterisk PBX all set up.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

With the method I tried above, the speaker is the Left channel, and the receiver is the right channel (that's the way they set up the headsets). So I took advantage of this on my mixing board, and by panning the mic left, and the line in from the phone's receiver to the right, as long as I've got a stereo recording, I can keep meself and my interviewee on separate tracks (or at least R and L).

Or, one can take complete advantage of the setup, and record each voice on a different device (2 irivers, for example).

And since I've got the mic out from the mixer to the phone, I just lay the phone on the desk and use my mic/monitor-headphones for the conversation.

What I get out of the speaker channel in my phone is the caller's voice as well as my voice at a lower volume.

When you "unhook" your phone and talk into it (without dialing) can you hear your voice coming through the speaker? I do. That then gets fed back through the speaker line in my setup. So I cannot completely isolate the person on the other end. I am in both the left and right tracks. If I don't have the phone turned on, I am in just one track in the recording. So I know I have isolated my microphone in the mixer, but it gets mixed into the output of the phone inside the phone.

Maybe it is just a matter of getting a different phone to use for this setup. We are getting pretty close to where I want to be and would be willing to buy a new phone if this will get me there.

Thanks for posting this. It has been a help.

Now I see what you're saying!

Not sure how to aleviate that problem.

I'll have to do some further testing tonight.

Well, damn.

Looks like my phone had the "monitor" effect too. I suppose it could be edited out, but now, I'm just not sure...

http://www.mythoughtspot.com/recording-phone-interviews/

Here is my write up about it. I hope it helps someone else.

Thanks Kurt_eh. We will figure out something for the monitoring problem. Even if the soldering iron has to come back out.

Well, I was dissatisfied with that solution. I could not isolate the two channels.

Here is what I am doing now. I am using Skype and going out of my sound card into my mixer. I then go from the mixer into my digital recorder (iRiver 890).

By doing the same setup as above (using Skype instead of the telephone) and having my mic input panned left and the Skype output only going into the right channel, I am able to get a good stereo recording.

For me, this fits what I have needed all along. It means going into the iRiver which is probably not as good of quality as recording straight to Audacity, but Skype and Audacity conflict and I am not able to record while on Skype.

dude! props for the tutorial! i gotta try this out

I've never had an issue with Skype and Audacity conflicting.

I run my audio out into my mixer and run my mixer out back into my PC mic or line-in and set Audacity to record that. Then I just monitor the conversation using the PC headphone jack.

I don't know if you can isolate the tracks that way - never had a need - but you should be able to record that way.

I'm curious to know if anybody has recorded calls placed through a voice modem. You can get them for under $20 on Ebay and there is lots of freeware that will let you record the calls. I'm planning on trying it at some point but don't have an immediate need right now.

It's a Linux specific issue. It has to do with both Skype and Audacity needing to use the same resources. I am not entirely sure what the issue is, I have just read it can't be done.

I was very pleased with the sound quality of the latest recording I did with the digital recorder setup. Unfortunately the connection into Argentina was not that great and there were some dropouts. But as far as a better sounding interview, it was a great solution. That is what I will continue to do for the time being.

Phone interviews are always a problem, due to the audio going in the phone and the mic at the same time. One gadget with promise that I found was at Radio Shack. It lets you hook your cordless (cordless land line or mobile cell phone) up to a recorder. It's a little box with a jack on one end to go into the headset jack on the phone, and another that goes into the record input on a recorder (or in this case perhaps a mixer). There's also an input jack on the box where you can plug your headset. I haven't attempted it yet, but I've been wondering if I could plug a mic into the place intended for the headset. If I could still hear the other person over the handset, I could talk into the mic and the sound might be good. I'll report back if I get a chance to test it.

I've been using that Radio Shack hookup I mentioned, and the quality is pretty good recording the other person. It's phone sound but, honestly, listeners don't mind it. There is that problem of my voice looping through both channels, and that is an issue. About half of the time I end up re-recording my end of the conversation.

Here's the doohickey from Radio Shack:



While searching for better solutions, I found THIS:



Here' a link to more info. Basically, it looks like you plug you phone into it and it splits the signal, so you can turn down your half of the conversation. It seems to me that if you turn down your end, and run audio out of it into your mixer, that would work like a charm. Unfortunately the problem is that the thing is $240, which is pretty expensive. It might be something for the future for me.

I picked up my wires and connectors at the store today to make my own version of what Kurt described above. It appears to work better than the Radio Shack doohickey I pictured in my previous post. I was getting some static through that and I don't know why. Also, the sound in the new setup just sounds better both through my mic and from the phone. Finally, Kurt's system doesn't require batteries ... the Radio Shack thing does.

I'm curious -- can someone tell me the reason for panning the channels left and right? It didn't appear to make a difference in sound in my tests. I haven't conducted a full interview yet ... I just called my cell phone voicemail and left a message to check levels, make sure my mic was going into the phone, and make sure I could hear the phone output okay. All seemed fine.

I did a (now podfaded) 'cast through a modem. It worked well. In fact, I routed it through my cell phone via 3-way calling so I didn't have big phone bills. I just use Skype now. The old system did work, though. Just a pain to do.

The reason for the panning was to keep your direct mic sound on one channel and the phone sound on the other. With a little creative editing (as long as people aren't talking over each other) you can delete your sound from the phone channel, and keep the crisp mic sound in the file.

Interesting. I'll give it a shot.

After taking a week off from podcasting due to having family in town for the holidays, I *finally* got a chance to test out my own recreation of this new setup that Kurt described. As has been mentioned, it's not without its problems, however the sound is MUCH better than that Radio Shack doohickey I was using. Thanks for the tip!!!

I'm going to gush for a moment, so excuse me please. Kurt -- thank you SO much for posting this. I just did my second interview using my version of your setup and it's SO much easier than using the Radio Shack setup. The idea of panning left and right and then doing the "creative editing" has also improved the sound of my interviews tremendously.

Thanks so much, Kurt ... and god bless The Pickle for providing a place like this where people can exchange tips!!!

</gush>

I'm glad it worked out for you. Actually, I haven't had a chance to try it yet. So far, Skype has served me well.

Nice moves dude!

I have not used this set-up in a few months, but am going to get back to testing it probably this week. I have a couple of other ideas floating in my head to try too. If I make much of a deviation from this setup, I will post it to my site where I am keeping track of how this works. http://www.mythoughtspot.com/recording-phone-interviews/

It was brought to my attention today, that I didn't have my recording device depicted in my setup.

Although I replied via the PM I received, I thought it warranted cross posting here.

-------------------------------

Regarding how to connect the setup to a recording device:

Either your tape out or your main out (whichever isn't connecting to the phone) should go to your regular recording device.

In my case, I've got my tape out going to my phone, and my main L&R channels connected to a Tascam US-122L USB interface.

Alternatively, I could connect the Main Out to my iRiver.

I prefer sending it to the USB interface, because I can monitor the waveform in my recording software as I'm recording.

In fact, if you listen to the latest episode of the World Fantasy 2008 podcast (Link: Episode 14), you can hear an interview where we used this exact setup.

We had a "technical malfunction" and one of our monitor headphones wasn't working. So I let my cohost use my headphones to do the interview, and I monitored the conversation strictly via watching the waveform. Funny thing, now that I listen to the interview again, we should have explained that to her at the time!

There is a bit of extra noise at somewhat random intervals in the recording, but that was due to an external source, and has nothing to do with the setup.

http://worldfantasy2008.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=249324

for some reason when i connect everything as shown, I can hear everything coming from the phone, but they hear nothing ... any ideas?

Not sure, without a picture, just a few guesses:


I wonder if your line out is not putting out enough signal, is there a way to pump the output volume?

Is your recording software picking up your voice? If not check your mic's channel.

Double check where you've got your mic panned, and that you've got the line out on the same side?

Loose connection somewhere?

Or, your phone's connection might have a different configuration?

I hope one of those is helpful. Usually when something isn't working for me, it's because I made a mistake putting it together.

Other than that, I'm just not sure.

So here is what I ended up doing ...

I had a phone headset that i did not really use anymore so I broke it open to find four wires:

1 wire to the mic with a ground wire and 1 to the speaker with a ground wire. I then cut of the headset end so i had the 2.5mm piece on one end and the wires on the other.

So, I then cut off one end of an rca cord and sautered the white with the microphone wires and the red with the speaker wires. Taped it all up and she works great.

I threw rca ---> 1/4in connecters on the ends and plug the white into the main out left and the red into a microphone slot.

Also for anyone who has a FX Send out on their mixing board, you can connect the left(Phone out) to a mono in and the right (Audio to the Phone) to the fx send, and turn up your mic's fx send and keep the phone channel's fx send at 0, with the panning at 0 on both the mic and phone channels.This allows for mono out from phone and stereo out from the mic on both channels(We do an internet radio show so the conversation has to be in stereo), and there is no reverb on either side! This was a great tutorial thanks!!
-CH

ok when i do this i get feedback from **** you ****en ******** suck ***

[moderator]
I edited your post. Please do not swear.

trying to record with skype! seems to be a real pain in the b-tt ,thank you for the very helpful post want to do some interview with bands that are out on the road this might just do the trick !

Kurt Thanks, I tried this set up and seems to work half decent it will do for now. money is an issue and this the way it has to be for now, Thanks again, peace.