Portable Recorder

[dickhauser]

Ok, so I got the question: "What recorder should I get?". If you've time, I'd appreciate suggestions. Here are the "specs"

This friend is into theater organs. Into like the basement is filled with four 4X4X2 cabs with processors driving the input from a three bank organ (think phantom) to the 35 or so speakers in the loft of the vaulted ceiling in his living room. (It's on sale now for $35,000 if your interested -- he's upgrading!)

So he is computer literate, but just barely. File transfer has to be simple - like mount, drag, burn. No possibility that he'll sit still for the process of playing it back in real time to some app on the PC and then cut and paste tracks. He is a PC not a Mac person. He'll use the recorder at theater organ conferences and contests around the country and to make his own recordings to share on email lists (mp3's).

[mhschmieder]

I have re-read this post three times now, but still am unclear on the specific relevance of the application at hand if the desire is to purchase a portable recorder, unless I am misunderstanding what you mean by portable recorder?

Are you referring to those new static memory devices, some of which are more or less in the iPod form factor but others of which are in the form factor of a field recorder (and a few others even in rack-mount form)?

If so, then I don't think the application itself is particularly important; just the ease of use and the quality of the portable recorder itself -- most of these can accept up to four simultaneous channels while recording, or two channels at a time of overdubbing for up to four channels total.

All suffer from only providing a stereo output, but can upload multi-channel projects directly to the computer via USB or in some cases Firewire.

There are several new devices in this category that were announced at NAMM a couple of weeks back, including new ones from Yamaha, Roland, and Tascam -- now getting down into the $300-$400 range.

[dickhauser]

Sorry I wandered off, and thanks for your perseverance. The portable recorder should:

Provide for simple transfer of recorded material to CD. Transfer has to be simple - like mount, drag, burn.

Be PC compatible

He'll use the recorder at theater organ conferences and contests around the country and to make his own recordings to share on email lists (mp3's).

For example, These might work:

Zoom H4
Edirol R09
Roland CD 2
Marantz PMD 670

[BradLyons]

Actually, the Zoom H2 would probably be ideal.....sonically, it sounds good and is easy to use. It actually sounds better than the H4 and is half the cost.

[dkalna]

I've got M-Audio Microtrack and spent many many happy recording hours...

[wheever]

I second the Zoom H2!

It's a great little device, and the quad mics sound surprisingly good. It uses SD cards and you can either transfer by plugging it in via USB to transfer, or using a card reader. It's great bang for the buck!

[mhschmieder]

Good, that's what I thought you meant.

I think the new products are arriving in February, and some are already posted at various e-stores. I recommend buying the newest model possible, as the bang-for-buck will be far greater in this category of equipment than almost any other.

I think Roland is the one putting out a new one that has a CD-burner built-in. There are so many new products in this category that I have now lost track. But if you visit Sweetwater's site, they carry most if not all of the brands and have them nicely organised by category.

My guess would be that audio quality would be of paramount concern, and that narrows it down considerably but still keeps you well within a $1000 budget unless you want to go all-out and buy one of the Studio Devices field recorders (we have several of those here, and they greatly outperform the Fostex that we had before at a ratio that far exceeds the price differential, but price is an absolute and not just a relative term, and Studio Devices recorders cost several thousand dollars!).

Although the Marantz recorders appealed to me ergonomically and because they also offered rack-mount models, they have consistently gotten bad reviews for audio quality when using musical content as opposed to speech for re-broadcast (which appears to be that company's forte when it comes to portable recorders). Fostex was probably first-to-market and gets good-to-very-good marks for audio quality, but reliability has not always been the best with that brand (although far from the worst compared to its historical reputation).

The Tascam portable field recorder that came out in 2007 has gotten the best marks for reliability, flexibility, ease of use and audio quality, alongside Korg's innovative digital stream-based recorders (one is hand-held and the other is field-recorder form factor, similar in shape to those of Sound Devices with which it is obviously positioning itself to be in competition with). Yamaha, and I think also Tascam, are now adopting this future-proofing recording format as well, and it is especially well-suited to classical music and other forms of music with lots of dynamics and which may have very non-linear data saturation.

As organ can have less dynamics than an orchestra or a piano but can also have the most dynamics of almost anything (considering some of the large installations out there with gigantic low-frequency pipes compared vs. just the flute stop on high notes), best to err on the side of needing maximum headroom and best audio quality for a reasonable budget.

Roland makes very good recorders but most of them are being tailored to one degree or another more towards the video or video production market (with the exception of the small handheld R-series and related models). Those are variably sold under the Roland or Edirol name.

All of these devices, except maybe the lowest-end micro-format handheld recorders, make it trivial to drag directly to CDr's to burn backups/etc., as they almost all have computer-based editors that ship with the product and many also have direct transfer functions available on-board the device.

I would specifically dis-recommend the M-Audio device as poor workmanship and also not even well-priced for its quality and functionality. In that range, the Zoom is a better bet overall and has also been updated more recently. You also have the testimony of several people on this forum that it has served them well in terms of reliability and quality. But I suspect that device would not be of ideal quality or ergonomic comfort for your clients, given the circumstances.

Especially for your application, you need long contiguous recording times, which is not supported by that many of the portable recorders. Some are battery-only and don't even offer an AC-adaptor option. Others can take mains power and some even have quality IEC cables (as options, at the very least -- except for the rack-mounts, all of these devices are designed with field recorder applications in mind, such as gathering sounds such as construction work or frogs in a pond for video post).

You will need to read the specs yourself to verify which recorders support non-battery power and also if they have limitations on maximum contiguous record time separate from power considerations. I recommend the Sweetwater site as a first pass at that data, then visiting the vendors' sites directly for the more detailed data (most also allow you to download the manual as a PDF in advance of sale).

Sound-On-Sound's website (http://www.sospubs.co.uk) can also be searched for reviews on most of these devices, except for the newest ones which of course are mere speculation at this point. And yet those are the ones I most strongly recommend, based on the track history of those manufacturers for delivering quality and reliability (notably Yamaha, with Tascam at least being very good at support in cases where there is a failure). Of the already-released stuff from 2007, the Korg and the Tascam consistently get the highest ratings for audio quality and reliability as well as ease of use and integration into the workflow.