I finally bit the bullet and shelled out for a decent audio system. I got a Shure SM58 vocal mic (with foam wind shield) and hooked it up to the Onyx Mackie blackjack 2x2 audio interface. I've got the mic sitting on a cheap boom arm (think old school desk lamp with spring arm) so the mic can be easily positioned in front of me (i.e. a few inches from my mouth).
The results have been extremely gratifying so far. I'm still exploring the system but I have produced several video podcasts for classes now, ranging from 15 to 30 minutes in length. The audio is clear with next to no background noise (despite being in a room with a computer fan and air con).
I'm still finding that I need to bump up the audio levels in post processing to get something that sounds ok over the built-in external speakers (but for headphone listening that isn't required). I'm not sure how many people will be using external speakers rather than headphones but it isn't too tricky to increase the gain (I've just been using a normalisation filter in bbflashback to do the job).
The only downside is that it would be a pain to move the setup, so if I wanted to use it in a lecture I would be carting quite a bit of stuff down with me. Everything would pack down reasonably small though, so at a pinch I *could* take it all to a lecture theatre if I had to. It would not be convenient though.
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