Portable digital recorder recomendation

Endorya

Endorya

New member
I'm exploiting another possibility for portable sound recording. Originally I was thinking on having a DR-40 / h4n handheld recorder to record ambient sounds but now I realize that I prefer to invest on external microphones for quality reasons.

So, what good handheld digital recorders are there capable of 24bit/@96khz recording without having built-in mics as I won't need those. I need only 2 external XLR plugs on it and that is capable of recording the 2 inputs at the same time.

Thank you.
 
Again ... I would say the H4n.

Are you still looking for a shotgun microphone? I may have one or two that I haven't used in awhile - I would just have to dig through the pile.
 
+1 for sticking with the Zoom H4n. I could recommend some ultra-professional recorders without the built in mics but they're bigger, heavier and far more expensive.

By the way, for location recording I probably wouldn't bother with 24 bit/96 kHz either. The sorts of things that foley recordings get used for tend to have specific bit depths and sample rates that they require so you're going to end up doing a conversion anyway. (The H4n does the spec you want though.)
 
moresound said:
Again ... I would say the H4n.

Are you still looking for a shotgun microphone? I may have one or two that I haven't used in awhile - I would just have to dig through the pile.
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Just out of curiosity, why don't you recommend me Tascam DR-40? Also, what mics could you sell me? I was looking for a Rode NTG2 or similar product. I do like the sound quality and price of this one.

Thanks again.
 
Bobbsy said:
(...)By the way, for location recording I probably wouldn't bother with 24 bit/96 kHz either. The sorts of things that foley recordings get used for tend to have specific bit depths and sample rates that they require so you're going to end up doing a conversion anyway. (The H4n does the spec you want though.)
Click to expand...

When you record at 24bit you get more flexibility to pitch up / down a sound before the sound's quality begins to noticeably deteriorate. Most sounds I will capture for Foley will also be experimented with different pitch settings while at the same time mixed with other sounds. For example, a door slowly squeaking can be easily turned into metal squeaking by lowering its pitch a few octaves; with some extra work you can make a perfect WWII submarine environment by adding to it a bassy oscillator combined with water also pitched a few octaves down. Hence my need for 24 bit :)
 
Endorya said:
When you record at 24bit you get more flexibility to pitch up / down a sound before the sound's quality begins to noticeably deteriorate.
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The bitrate doesn't effect that.

The sample rate might, but even then I think I said this once in relation to time stretching and was proven wrong.
 
Steenamaroo said:
The bitrate doesn't effect that.

The sample rate might, but even then I think I said this once in relation to time stretching and was proven wrong.
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Sorry, I meant 24bit@96khz. And you are right, sample rate is the one thing that will dictate how "forgiving" the sound will be before artifacts can be noticed. Pitching suffers at all sample rates but the higher the sample rate the stronger the pitching can be applied before artifacts kick in. So, the 96khz sample rate basically gives twice the flexibility over the 44khz sample rate as far "bending" sound is concerned. I believe what you mean is not time stretching but Varispeed/pitch shifting/pitch scaling where the pitch is altered proportionately to amount of expansion or compression to the sounds duration. Time stretching works differently has it will either remove or duplicate samples to respectively reduce or increase the sound's duration.

Bitrate is basically the vertical line buffer. With a 24bit buffer, sound will have a more room to record a wider range of sound levels, decreasing therefore the chance of the sound suffering from clipping. It is also documented that a higher bitrate (like 24bits) tends to decrease noise and that is far more sensitive to sound level variation because it has 250 more sensitiveness levels, to be precise (24bit) 16,777,216 levels vs (16bit) 65,536. This will definitely let you record at lower levels with more headroom.

Don't get me wrong about this explanation, you might know this already but I do like to talk about this stuff. :D
 
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Endorya said:
I believe what you mean is not time stretching but Varispeed/pitch shifting/pitch scaling where the pitch is altered proportionately to amount of expansion or compression to the sounds duration. Time stretching works differently has it will either remove or duplicate samples to respectively reduce or increase the sound's duration.
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Nope, I meant time stretching.
I had a track that was recorded at 76 bpm (if memory serves), but 75 bpm was a much better tempo for putting the music to a slideshow working in fractions of a second.
It meant I could just have transitions every 4 seconds/5 beats, which was way easier in my simple video software.
A discussion about sample rate came up around that, I think.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Nope, I meant time stretching.
I had a track that was recorded at 76 bpm (if memory serves), but 75 bpm was a much better tempo for putting the music to a slideshow working in fractions of a second.
It meant I could just have transitions every 4 seconds/5 beats, which was way easier in my simple video software.
A discussion about sample rate came up around that, I think.
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Oh, I see what you mean.
 
Endorya said:
I'm exploiting another possibility for portable sound recording. Originally I was thinking on having a DR-40 / h4n handheld recorder to record ambient sounds but now I realize that I prefer to invest on external microphones for quality reasons.

So, what good handheld digital recorders are there capable of 24bit/@96khz recording without having built-in mics as I won't need those. I need only 2 external XLR plugs on it and that is capable of recording the 2 inputs at the same time.

Thank you.
Click to expand...

There are no small portable units without built-in mics that I know of. So few people want them that it's not worth making them.

Most people who want such things also have the money to purchase a proper professional recorder.

So - for a small portable I would look first at the Olympus LS-100 if you want a pocketable hand unit - you can also look at the Tascam DR100II and the Roland R-26. I would go for any of these over the Zoom. There is also the Marantz PMD661.

The Tascam and Marantz units also have digital inputs and can be used as "bit buckets".
 
John Willett said:
There are no small portable units without built-in mics that I know of. So few people want them that it's not worth making them.

Most people who want such things also have the money to purchase a proper professional recorder.

So - for a small portable I would look first at the Olympus LS-100 if you want a pocketable hand unit - you can also look at the Tascam DR100II and the Roland R-26. I would go for any of these over the Zoom. There is also the Marantz PMD661.

The Tascam and Marantz units also have digital inputs and can be used as "bit buckets".
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had that feeling such portable units would not exist as I didn't find any after some googling.

Can you tell me about the quality of the preamps of each of the devices you mentioned? I'm planning in future to use external mics on it.

Thank you for the information.
 
John, why do you prefer your shortlist over the Zoom?

FYI, I know of a number of sound professionals (including a sound designer who's been nominated for a Tony Award and won an Olivier award) who swear by (and use) the Zoom recorders when doing effects on location.

As for Olympus, I know nothing of how good the recorder is but I'd be wary of their products right now as the Japanese company is involved in a management scandal and huge financial difficulties. It's too early to know what the result will be but the collapse of the whole company isn't out of the question.
 
Phantom Piggy said:
After reading some reviews the conclusion I came to was the h4n has better internal mics and the r26 has better pre amps
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That was also my concern. But after hearing some audio clips of the R26 I think it actually sounds more natural. I will mainly use it to record ambient sounds and the R26's provides a bonus to achieve this, because it allows recordings with both its omnidirectional and uni-directional mics at the same time. That is very neat!
 
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moresound said:
Have you down loaded the manual to read it over thoroughly?
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Nope. I've only read over its specs and features about the things I need. It actually offers way more towards what I actually require as far as software goes. Would I pay attention to some aspect I might not be aware of?
 
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