Q: How do I record a phone interview

A: The real answer is: "It depends", but let me first break it down to A) is it an interview between you and another person or B) is it a teleconference?

What type of quality are you looking for? You will get the best quality when recording on separate tracks. You on one track and the other person/the conference line on another. This way you can "sweeten" the sound in postproduction.

The only real way to do this is to use a hybrid. A hybrid is a advanced telephone interface that will allow you to split the audio signal into two tracks - the outgoing and incoming signal. This was you have every editing capability you can have. Anytime I can I use a digital hybrid so I record the host with a regular studio mic and the person being interviewed from the incoming phone signal. And then you will need a device either a stand alone unit or use your computer with an audio interface.

A normal phone adaptor will give you both lines on the same track. This provides many issues. First of all if the signal of one side is weak you will have to increase the level which also will bring up any unwanted noise. If one line has hum and you want to sweeten it out by adding EQ, the EQ will be added to both sides of the conversation and so on. And of course the recording will sound like a conversation.

Another way to record a call is to use one of the many free teleconference services you can find on the internet. They all have the ability to record your call. They all do it at a low bit rate and sample frequency though. So during editing and possibly adding music to your recording you have to know how to deal with various sampling frequencies to avoid your conversations ending up sounding like chipmunks. But of course this is something we do address during our classes.

A third way to record a phone conversation is to use Skype. This will usually give you a better sound quality. At least your side of the conversation can sound a whole lot better because you use a microphone attached to your computer rather than going thru your telephone handset. To record a Skype call you will need an extra piece of software. There are quite a few options - not free but pretty inexpensive. I will only mention a couple. For windows you can get Pamela. And for the mac Audio Hijack Pro. These application are highly advanced and includes production features that are worth checking out. And of course you can do international interviews at no cost. But you might experice latency issues, which can be annoying during conversation.

As a recoding engineer I still don't have the control I have when working in the studio but with the software being upgraded all the time it's getting close.

My preferred minimal solution is the Alesis FireWire mixer/audio interface, a AT2020 microphone, a good pop filter, a Telos digital hybrid and the pair of Sennheiser HD280 headphones

There are so many solutions out there that I can't even write them here, I'd rather exncourage to give me call at 818.824.4407 so I can help you out.