newbie questions - mono recording; battery use

[Murray101]

Hi - after previously using a microcassette player to record interviews etc I am quickly falling in love with my MZ-RH1! But I have a couple of questions ...

I ended up getting the ECM-DS70P microphone - a stereo microphone. Is there any advantage to recording speech in mono (I will be using the sound files in Audacity for a podcast) and if there is an advantage can I record in mono using the microphone i bought? (Hopefully the answer will not be 'get another microphone', but if this is the best option do you have any suggestions on a microphone that would be good for one and one interviews and for distance recording at press conferences/seminars?)

Also, if I flick the hold switch on when not using the unit does this drain the battery in any way?

Muzza

[A440]

With the unit off, turning on the Hold switch does not drain the battery. Make sure it's definitely off before you put it on Hold.

For a podcast it's not going to make a great difference whether you record in mono or stereo using the DS70P, since the two elements are so close there's not much stereo separation anyway. For doing interviews the glimmer of spatial separation between you and the interviewee might help a bit. If for some unknown reason you find the stereo problematical, you can convert tracks to mono in Audacity, through a pop-down menu from the track's title (just put "mono" into the Search box of Audacity Help for complete directions).

Mono was once useful because you could get double the recording time on an MD. Now that there are 1GB MDs and Hi-LP compression (which is probably fine for speech, but even Hi-SP will give you nearly 8 hours per disc), saving the space isn't that important.

You can also get a mono lapel microphone, but make sure it has a stereo plug (or you get a mono-to-stereo adapter)--otherwise you'll just end up recording on the left channel.