Small portable recording device

[une]

I am new to sound recording and wanted a portable device to record family gatherings (storytelling), friends playing musical instruments and singing, children talking and various environments while travelling. I just recieved an Olympus WS310M digital recorder and ME51S microphone that I ordered from an online shop. Maybe it is just me or I am expecting too much, but the recording results were terrible! The background hiss that is apparent when recording in a silent room is horrendous, and there are faint little electronic noises (artifacts?) apparent in the background. This is at the highest quality recording settings. I can't believe the engineers at Olympus allowed this device to be sold in its present form. I swear my Dad's 20 year old portable tape recorder had less static hiss than this thing. Needles to say I am attempting to return these devices.
Can anyone recommend a device for me that won't create recordings that make a silent forest sound like a beach onto which waves are constantly crashing? I realize you get what you pay for and will sacrifice digital interoperability for quality if need be. I would spend around $US200 (I am in Australia). I wanted to go digital for archiving and editing purposes. Perhaps a little handheld tape recorder with a decent mic might be apt?

 

[Halion]

You can't really expect much from something like that. It's a consumer product and won't get you great results. 200 dollars is very little for what you are asking for. Want you really need are 3 things:
- Microphone. Something with a natural pickup pattern, and low noise. Your mic probably doesn't really have that linear a response and (more importantly) is highly likely pretty noisy.
- Preamp. This is build into your olympus. It's probably where they save money on (a decent low noise preamp will cost you at least around 100 dollars). Noisy.
- AD/DA converters and storage device. I'll bet it does this pretty good actually. Before you start noticing what your AD converters are actually doing to the sound you already have to use a decent mic and preamp.

The M-Audio microtrack is a similar device to your olympus, but with much better preamps (2) and it costs more.. You'll still need a decent microphone.

 

[SonicAlbert]

A guy I work with recently bought an Edirol R9, and he loves it. It's just what you need, but costs more than $200.

 

[Tim Gillett]

From a fellow Aussie.
This may be obvious to you but whatever recorder you use, try and get the mic close to the main person speaking. If it's a lapel mic, dont tuck it right under their neck but pin it lower down their chest. A loungeroom is much better than a kitchen to cut room echo, fridge noises etc.
If you playback only through the unit's tiny internal speaker it will sound thin and shrill, probably accentuating hiss etc. A half decent one lets you transfer to PC etc where you can hear it more faithfully. Again maybe obvious to you.

Pro Audio in Australia has a catalog, mainly directed to music recording segment but still some good digital recording stuff there that may suit.
An external mic was mandatory on tape machines which had whirring motors inside but with memory card based recorders it should be possible to get a clean sound even with an internal mic.
With this stuff the sky's the limit as there's gear for journo's and professionals which is fantastic but carries a hefty price tag. You have to find something that's in the middle somewhere. Sorry cant be more specific.
All the best, Tim

 

[Agent47]

Hi-MD. Records at 44.1kHz/16Bit uncompressed ('CD quality') and is dirt cheap.