Thread: What do you use for mic input?

I have been exploring the microphone front lately. I have found some good canidates in lapel/tie pin microphones used for presentations and stuff. The problem with these is they tend to require a battery and I don't want to have to switch a mic on and off.

My car has a built-in mic grille where the OEM cellphone kit goes, so I need something sort of flat to mount behind that. I was probably going to just end up tearing apart one of those standard beige boom mics that comes with every soundcard on the planet and hot-glue the element onto the back side of the grille. I suspect that it will function quite adequately for what I need!

At least it will be cheap.. I have tons of those mics. If it doesn't work, at least I didn't ruin a $35 mic

One thing you could check out would be those cheap PC Microphone with headphones setups, the mic is pretty small and is small enough to sit in front of your mouth attached to headphones, it just plugs into a normal PC Mic input as well. Wouldn't be very hard to modify the casing on one of those.

I have done that research in the past and you guys can probably find the following entertaining:

I have a autoPC from clarion and it came with a mic. It's pretty good and work very well. Upon further research, I found out that it's the same mic that auto cell phone installer use for hands free system (good ones). They can run you as high as 40-50 bucks for such a mic from people like Nokia and Ericsson. I found that in the past, you can walk into a alarm shop where they install hands free systems and they have an extra one lying around. I got one free. How well does it work? As well as the stock mic from AutoPC. Accuracy: 75-80% Cost: 0-100 USD

I wanted to look at other options. I went to microcenter (try any computer shop like compusa) and get a cheap desktop mic ( the small ones that sits on top of your monitor) and I found out that if you place them close to the person in the car -- ie near the visor, they will do a great job. Cost: 5-15 bucks Accuracy : 50-75%

I also look at the optional mic from autoPC but that mic alone costs 150 bucks and I do not work for FBI or NSA so I don't need that powerful mic. But I was told that that mic can pic up your voice while driving with the top down at 65mph easily.

Currently, I went to a local dollar shop (dollarmart, dollar deals etc) and I found a cell phone hands free set -- the one with ear piece and a small mic on a small boom with 3/32" out connector. I got me a 3/32=>1/8 connector and a splitter. Now I can listen and talk at the same time. Even with music on, I was able to talk to my car today and got accurate responses 100% today. So the cost: 1.08 including tax. I had the connectors sitting around. Accuracy: 100% so far.

I ended up chopping up a desktop mic and putting it behind the OEM grille for the cell phone mic. It works like a champ. I thought i had damaged it when I did a test recording with sound recorder, but it turns out it was just the codec or something (audio had all kinds of pops and clicks in it) -- it works fine for the voice commands I have set up, though!

Seraph:

Where do you place the mic?