QUESTION · AUDIO Q&A

What's a usable wireless battery-powered self-contained microphone with noise cancellation and recording built in?

ASKED BY · Paul Walhus · AUSTIN, TEXAS · 28 OCT 2026 · ▶ 00:57:44

THE PANEL'S ANSWER
Mickey Macachor

Effectively answered 'none'; questions wireless and self-contained as contradictory; microphone with built-in noise cancellation and recording not viable for professional work.

Summarised by AI from what the panel said. Watch the moment for the full answer.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

From the transcript.

Machine-transcribed, so it may contain errors. Every timestamp opens the episode at that second.

57:18that you wouldn't think you can change. And let's go to the last question. Last question is coming in from Paul Valhus in Austin, Texas. What's a usable wireless battery-powered self-contained microphone with noise cancellation recording built in? Mickey, make it brief. What is it? yeah um i i'm gonna assume that by usable you mean like decent enough quality to uh put out there

57:44i would say none i don't really understand what wireless but self-contained means um a microphone with built-in noise cancellation no thank you never never never no thanks but recording built in no thanks all right that's that for this episode so i'm doing a little math here uh just wanted to say you know it's interesting we've been doing this for so long it seems like old hat but

58:07this is 2 409 episodes of uh office hours that we've done here you know there was a day when hitting 2400 we would have had a cake and candles and stuff like that but here we are 2409 and just plugging away uh if we had gotten on the uh the bus today and gone around and answered all these questions it would have taken us 35 000 miles of driving that's a lot of diesel fuel and that

58:32could also be measured in kilometers 57 000 kilometers or 279 is that million million bananas for scale so thanks for being with us uh we've enjoyed chatting with you we'll see you next time later later let's hear some more of those gunshots mickey come on so did anyone use this board as i did in my college radio station when talking about knobs

59:02this is so this is the first the first mixer that i used in the first studio that i worked i had one of those gate is that a gates or a um i can't see it close enough i don't know even if i find the i don't remember the exact one but it was just the giant loser collins we had a collins board

59:19oh thank you mickey hey mickey can you explain that i don't understand why one is deep and bassy and one is crackly she can't hear you over the fireworks so the um what the audio um

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT →
ALSO IN THIS EPISODE

12 more questions
from Melbourne Instruments Roto-Control Motorized Knobs.

The whole episode →
▶ 00:00:22What does the panel think about the new Roto-Control from Melbourne Instruments?▶ 00:04:33Frequently having our Gen 3 2i2 Scarletts stop sending out audio to mixer. They still will bring audio into the PC. Output setting in Windows never changes. USB unplug and plugging in fixes it. Never have issues with the same units on Mac. Any ideas why?▶ 00:08:25Do you work at higher sampling rates (96kHz, 192kHz, etc)? Why or why not?▶ 00:18:51When is AV2 coming?▶ 00:22:29When do you decide it is a good time to update the software on your mixers and stage boxes?▶ 00:31:30What does everyone think of the rumors of touchscreen MacBook Pros? Would touch still be useful even if you're stretching your arm across the keyboard to use it? How would you keep an OLED screen clean of fingerprints?▶ 00:40:54I've been looking at the new iPad mini with OLED, but it doesn't have ProMotion. Would the display be jerkier without ProMotion, or is ProMotion an improvement on conventional Apple displays?▶ 00:41:48What's new with the MacBook Pro M6?▶ 00:42:45What is your main DAW and why?▶ 00:50:07Found a Tascam HS-2000 in the e-waste bin, tested it, and works. Should I rescue it or let it go?▶ 00:51:17For field recording, what are the key workflow advantages of a dedicated recorder like a Sound Devices MixPre over a high-quality USB interface and laptop? Why make the jump from an interface to a dedicated unit?▶ 00:56:30Have any of the vibecoders been using REA to explore firmware? It made an NDI-HX codec for OBS, created an audio-video sync for my Rodecaster Video S that can monitor and auto adjust, and a few other things. Curious what others have built.