How good is my built in mic?

I've not tried the aluminum mb mic, but it should be much inferior to the edirol R-09. I borrowed a Microtrack II from a friend. Much better than my built-in mic on my macbook. What app are you using to record your voice?

If I had a choice I'd go for the r-09.

deej

I don't know Soundbooth. Maybe there are voice enhancer plugins, denoisers?
I can't imagine the cheap mic in a mb would stand up to a £250 Edirol...
Why don't you use the edirol?

deej

maccauni said:

Ive got to produce an audio report for a Uni assignment. We have Edirol R-09 digital voice recorders (£290 Dictaphone!) that we can book out. But before i travel in to get one i was curious how good the inbuilt microphone is on my Aluminum Macbook? It would be much easier for me to do this than book out the dictaphone.

So does the mic in the alu macbook perform well? ive done a couple test recordings and they seem pretty good, but my ears are rubbish.

Thanks in advance.

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Depends on how you define "quality". I'd rate the built-in mic right up there with the mic in your cell phone. You can expect uderstandable speech and not much more.

If you were to walk into our local Guitar Center and ask them for "the cheapest Mic in the Store", they point you ae the Sure PG48 for about $40.
Even that would be dramatically better, night and night, difference from the built-in mic. But then that mic will not directly plug into your computer. You need to spend more $$$ for an audio interface, The minimum budget for a decent setup might be about $150. So you have to decide yourself what you need.
http://www.guitarcenter.com/Shure-PG48-QTR-Microphone-with-Switch-270285-i1126549.gc

im hoping that the quality difference wont be vast.

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The built-in mic is at the bottom of the audio quality spectrum. It's about the difference between a cell phone and a CD player