On Apr 4, 2009, at 12:30 PM, Mike VA3MW wrote: > Hi Larry > > The dongle will be your only way to go sadly. You can't use your > basestation microphone, but you could use a USB Headset or a Mic on > your > computer. > > You can find information about the dongle at > http://dvdongle.com/DV_Dongle/Home.html. > > Mike VA3MW > Why couldn't he feed his station mic into something like the M-AUDIO devices that go in via USB or Firewire as an additional audio input to the PC? He'd still need the Dongle, but choice of microphone on a PC isn't limited to the shoddy electret mics on (most) USB headsets...
I feed an excellent XLR type studio mic into my PC and Macs all the time. Rather easy to do, and relatively cheap, actually. The M-AUDIO device I use to do this also provides so-called "phantom" power to the mic, and can accept 1/4" musical instrument type inputs, as well as has an optical SPDIF input, RCA-jack line-level inputs, etc. All in a little box about 5" long and a couple of inches deep. My particular one is older and feeds these into the PC/Mac via Firewire 400, but there's others that are USB-based today. (Personally I'd rather have it separated from the other devices and not on USB, but instead on its own Firewire input, but that's a preference, not a requirement.) Now... whether or not you NEED anything other than a crappy electret mic for highly compressed digital 2-way radio communications, is debatable. A cheap USB headset is fine for Dongle use. But if he wants a fancier mic, there's nothing stopping him from using his station mic connected to the PC with the Dongle also attached... he'll still have to hit the on-screen PTT, though. No code/interface in the Dongle software to remotely key it... -- Nate Duehr, WY0X [email protected]
