2 mics into a digital voice recorder-HOW?

I'm going to start doing a podcast using garageband. I plan on doing interviews with people who live in rural areas so I'm not going to be travelling with my laptop because many of these places will have no electricity. Therefore, I will not be able to record directly into my laptop.

I bought an Olympus DS 30 to do the interviews and the sound is good. There is an input for both a mic jack and a USB.

Here is my problem. I want to be able to interview groups of people and I am looking to use at least 2 microphones simultaneously. I am not sure if I should buy a mixer that connects to my voice recorder or an audio interface.

I was advised not to use a splitter cause the sound would be bad. Does anyone have any advice?

what kind of microphones are you going to use? The DS 30 looks like it has an ambient microphone to record whatever is in the room...

You could use something like this and it will give you 4 inputs. Your microphones would have to be "dynamic" meaning they don't need external power.
I don't know how much you know about microphones but some microphones get power from a mixing board (phantom power)... and some don't need to get power from the mixing board... these are called "dynamic." Obviously, something small like I put in the link doesn't have the ability of "Phantom power".. hence needing a "dynamic" mic. The most common one is an Shure SM58. That's for music, though. I'm not sure about interviews.

thanks

Thanks for the information

The DS has an ambient Mic but part of the problem is that I'm recording people who are reminiscing. So when I try to put a clip mic or the digital right up to them, they freeze up and get nervous.

What I want to do is to place a couple of mics in the middle of a group of people who are sitting comfortably around.

I can spend up to 200 dollars to get the extra equipment I need.

I also should clarify that I will have access to electrical outlets but still do not want to take my laptop along. So I can have power to whatever equipment I need.

I've been told that I can use a mixer and I've been told I can use an audio interface but I'm not sure which one will actually be best.

so... after a little thought and research it looks like you have a few options...

1. Just use the DS-30 with it's built-in microphone.

2. Use 2 dynamic microphones with some sort of "mixer" (like in the link in my previous post). You will have to buy converters to a "headphone" size jack so that you can go from the mixer which has a 1/4" jack to the headphone size (1/8" jack) in the DS-30.
You would also need cables that go from XLR female to 1/4" male... if you got the mixer I mentioned above.

3. Use 2 microphones to go into a USB audio interface (somewhat expensive) and then plug into the DS-30 by USB. Ths scares me a bit because I have a hard enough time getting USB stuff to work with a PC... much less a digital recorder. Who knows? It might work great!

I guess option 2 seems the most practical. As in my first post... The real variable is the microphones. What do you have? Do you have to buy some?

You really might have to go to your local music store and ask for their help... It's not particularly cheap to use "boom" mics or "shotgun" mics which are what you would need to get quality audio from more than a foot away from someone's spoken voice.
Take a look at this microphone... It could do pretty well for you if you set it up right. It actually has a headphone size output (1/8")...
If you used those microphones into something like this
using 3 adapters like this to plug the microphones into the mixer and then run a headphone jack cable to the recorder...

What do you think??????

Thanks again

Thanks again for the help.

Yeah, I think your suggestion about mixer with adapters might be what I end up doing.

I'm going to the music store tomorrow and I spoke with one of their reps today. He said it sounded like a mixer might be best. Possibly a USB mixer. I'm not sure about a USB mixer, however, because the USB port on the voice recorder is simply to transfer files to a computer, it's not for a USB mic.

The input line for the voice recorder is a 1/8 mic jack.