Microphone recommendations for voice banking

[Peanut]

Dear all,

I've signed up to Acapela to get voice banking started, but the built-in microphone of my old laptop is terrible. Can anyone recommend a suitable external microphone?

All the best,
Peanut

[Barry52]

Hi Peanut,

I used a Senheiser headset microphone when I recorded my voice. You can get them from amazon for around £35.

Best wishes,
Barry

[Doug Carpenter]

Hi Peanut

I bought a Sennheiser PC36 call control headset for about £50 for the same purpose. Very good headphone sound and microphone. It's been very useful since.

Doug

[Peanut]

Thanks Barry and Doug, I'll look into those options!
Cheerio,
Peanut

[David R]

Hi Peanut,
Sorry about your the diagnosis. Regarding voice banking I was referred to our local speech therapist who pointed in the right direction and lent me a microphone. Have you not been referred to your local speech therapist? I did the voice bank on line with “Modeltalker” an American based company. It’s definitely worth doing it asap if you still have a good voice. Mine was a little bit too late and isn’t very good unfortunately. It was hard work repeating 1600 phrases which takes many hours, when I say hard work I mean for me particularly as I had to really work hard repeating them as my voice had already deteriorated a bit.
Regards
David

[Peanut]

Hi David,

thanks for the suggestion! My voice is still ok, so I've not been in touch with any speech therapists yet. I decided to buy a microphone rather than borrow as I'm doing a lot of online teaching/meetings at the moment, so thought the investment would be worth it.

All the best,
Peanut

[Peanut]

Just a quick update: the affordable Sennheisers were sold out everywhere when I was looking in April - I guess everybody was setting up their home office at the time. So in the end I got a pair of Sony noise cancelling headphones with built-in microphone for £50, and they worked fine. Recording in Acapela was pretty straightforward as well.

Peanut

[Doug Carpenter]

Oh good!

Thanks for the update peanut.

Doug