Cheapest acceptable quality audio recorders?

[Edward Calabig]

I don't remember who mentioned this before but someone suggested to me to use a shure sm57 or 58 with a mic stand that's placed in front of the speaker. I cannot thank them enough as this SAVED me during a set of speeches last week. I had a soundboard feed and the sm57 plugged into my h6. Turns out the soundboard feed was completely unusable but the sm57 picked up the feed from the speakers very well.

Here is some of the audio from the speeches that starts at 3:48.

Kelsey and Kyle on Vimeo

It picked up sound so much better than my Zoom H1's that were placed on the table in front of the couple and where we thought the speakers would be.

[Adrian Tan]

Pretty sure that was me, because those are the mics I use! Another advantage of this method over DJ plugin is that it usually gets some nice ambient sound as well.

Mind you -- that system is not infallible; no method is, and that's why audio sucks. Problems I've had include: (1) the sound from the speakers is itself dirty; (2) random person decides to move the microphone out of the way (waiter, DJ, dancing guest); (3) if the speakers don't know how to use a microphone, and are waving it around at waist height, you're not going to get anything good; (4) you have to work out in advance which speakers are the relevant ones, and the DJ isn't always helpful; (5) setup time can be too costly when you're under time pressure.

Some other random tips for this method: (1) I tend to use two channel recording, with one channel set a little low and another set a little high... with your Zoom H6 you have this feature built in anyway, no XLR splitter needed; (2) in terms of positioning, I tend to aim it halfway between treble and bass, and, if I can, about 20cm away; slap on a pair of headphones and have a listen for yourself; (3) gaffer tape can help if the soundspeakers are in a tricky position; (4) if you can use both SM57 and SM58 at the same time, you have the option of a different quality sound out of each; (5) it's possible to build a mega microphone stand by cannibalising the parts from one to lengthen another -- useful for high ceilings.

[Edward Calabig]

Ah thanks that was you!

I'm lucky I didn't experience any of those problems but thanks for noting them and they all make perfect sense.

Yeah I bought that thing for my H6 that records the L/R XLR inputs with a backup recording and that definitely helped with some of the audio during the ceremony when the officiant's volume would blow out.

One thing I should note is that I have a person dedicated to adjusting the levels of audio on my H6 during the ceremony and speeches. Like Adrian noted, it might be a pain to run back from the camera to check the mic levels if you're running a 1 or 2 person team.

My advice to the OP would be depending on how much you spent on your camera, be willing to spend just as much on audio. So many things can go wrong with audio during a wedding and poor audio will definitely hurt your video.