Okay everyone. I’m finally releasing a quick video covering how I record cockpit audio. This is my most frequently asked question. The video does not tell the whole story, so I’m doing that here on the website as well in this post. I may make it a permanent feature on the site as well.
So take a look at the video, but here are some more details. The first thing to understand is that what you record to doesn’t really matter. I use a digital audio recorder, but recording to a video camera, an mp3 player, or even an old fashioned tape recorder is the same thing. The trick is getting the audio from the plane to a level that can be recorded by one of these devices correctly.
The Levels. Whatever your method of recording, you will likely be using the Microphone (Mic) input jack of some sort of recorder. The levels that a Microphone puts out are much lower than the levels that are needed to drive headset speakers, which is why just plugging a headphone output directly into the Mic input on a recorder will likely not work well. The audio will be overdriven and garbled. So, the first issue is to reduce the levels coming out of the plane’s audio system to a mic level that can be recorded. There are several ways to do this, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
The Jacks: The other issue is much more straightforward; you have to use adapters and cables that allow the different jacks for headsets and recording devices to be connected. This is a simple physical plug problem which can be addressed with various adapters.
The Solutions: There are probably many more ways to do this, and I welcome comments from readers/listeners for more ideas, but I’ll likely cover most of the common ways to accomplish the same thing; record audio in the cockpit. Here are various solutions in no particular order. I will list pros and cons for each solution.
Okay…there’s the rundown. For what I personally do, as I mentioned, most of the time a use the Barnstormer purpose-built cable for audio. As I record video, though, I’m trying different things, including splitting the audio coming from the cable to my audio recording device AND the video camera, or using the splitter cable for the audio only device, and using the lav mic solution for the video camera. This gives me the best of both worlds as far as audio goes (more organic audio with the video and more pristine audio with my audio recorder). This is an especially useful scenario if I have a passenger who is willing to put the lav mic in their earcup, that way it keeps the extra cable away from me and reduces the chance of it interfering with my PIC duties. The Barnstormer cable and other solutions like it are absolutely bullet-proof…I’ve never had a failure or forgotten anything, etc. There are no batteries to change, no extra cables into my earcups to deal with, etc. I just leave the splitter cable attached to my headset and carry it in my headset bag as if it were part of the headset. Works out well.
Hopefully this post and video answers this question for everyone. I’ve tried to be as comprehensive as I could, but I’ve missed anything or made any mistakes, please let me know through the comments (so others can see as well). Happy flying (and recording). Can’t wait to hear everyone’s cockpit audio.
