Questions about Recording setting on Tascam DR-05

A

AxisDrummer

New member
I just recently bought a Tascam DR-05. Basically the purpose is to record our band practices for listening/critiquing later and or possibly make a VERY basic demo CDs for bars. I'll be recording with it for the first time tomorrow night.

Our band plays rock and consists of the usual: vocals, bass, 2 guitars, and drums. We'll set the recorder on a tripod and try to get the best mix of sound through trial and error positioning and adjusting the recording level accordingly. I've read MANY reviews and there were plenty of favorable comments on recording this way.

My question lies within the recording settings: I have NO idea what the advantages/disadvantages are of each option.

File format: MP3 or WAV?

If WAV, 16bit or 24 bit?
If MP3, 32kbps through 320kbps?

Sampling frequency, 44.1k, 48k, or 96k (WAV only)?

I honestly have NO idea what any of this means and how it applies to our recording. I'm looking forward to learning though.

Thanks ahead of time for any and all help with this matter.

---Mike
 
WAV is uncompressed and MP3 is, so go WAV,
24 bit is a better bit depth and 96k is the best sample rate, but if your messed for space try 16 on 44.1 thats CD quality
 
I have the DR-03 and is fantastic for what you want. Jus make shure you adjust the Peak Reduction function, optimized for music recording, automatically sets the gain of while recording, Limiter and low-cut filter to help prevent distortion and Automatic or manual level setting.

Go to the manual a read through. If you don´t, you can end up with too much noise caused by clipping.

Read page 28 of your user´s manual.
 
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Thanks for the help everyone.

I did give it a whirl recording my drum playing along with guitar tracks through a speaker and it worked wonderfully. I did use the Peak Reduction function and it never clipped. Looking forward to using it with full band tomorrow night.

I do have an old Tascam 424mkIII but when just recording a 3 hour practice, this DR-05 seems so much easier than setting up mics, cables, etc...
 
If you use this to then burn CDs to send to bars as auditions, make sure you convert/burn in 16 bit format - most stand-alone CD players won't play 24 bit CDs.
 
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