Professional, Portable, Live MP3 Encoding

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Developed by DIALOG4/ORBAN the unit is called the Sountainer, a fliptop portable about the dimensions of a cell phone. Emphasized as an audio field recorder, the unit was designed for broadcasters, journalists, and artists who wish to record a live feed of their performance off the mixing board."

Comments

we are talking "live" recordings

[night_flyer]

128k is more than enough for live recordings, considering background noise, proximity of the source of the recording (loud speakers, etc)

anything over 128 is overkill... it just depends on how well it records in the first place.

I chalenge even "golden ears" to tell me the difference in a 256 rate Megadeth concert and a 128 rate one...

Re:we are talking "live" recordings

[seanadams.com]

128k is more than enough for live recordings, considering background noise, proximity of the source of the recording (loud speakers, etc)

Actually, I've found the opposite to be true. The kinds of "noise" on a live recording include clapping and cheering, as well as quiet bits of background din. Sounds such as these, which either use a wide chunk of bandwidth or are much quieter than the music, are very difficult for an MPEG encoder to capture at ANY bitrate - in fact, this is exactly the part of the signal that MP3 is *designed* to lose. As a specific example, try encoding the sound of an audience clapping in unison.

I have found that studio recordings almost always sound as good as the original CD with 256K+/VBR encoding, whereas live albums can have a significant amount of distortion/loss.

I'm neither a musician nor do I have a "golden ear", but this stuff is quite audible when you're used to listening to the original CD and then you go to your MP3 player.

Nix to MP3, please

[Anonymous Coward]

why would I record anything I gave a damn about in a proprietary codec? For that matter why could I record to a lossy format? As a musician I'm dying for portable, one-piece, handy digital recording devices I can plug a mic into and use in the field, but not to make low-bitrate recordings in MP3.

Re:Why this instead of MiniDisc (or DAT?)

[yrn1]

At the Essential parties (Breakbeat, in Brussels, Belgium), we record with a minidisc, straight from the desk. Sound quality is better than mp3@128kbps.

Check the mp3'd encodings at www.submedia.com/audio

Microphone Connections / Alternatives

[stereoroid]

Another reason why this is definitely not a professional device: the microphone connection is a stereo 3.5mm jack. I would expect to see at least a 1/4" balanced jack per channl, ideally XLRs with phantom power.

There are better alternatives out there:

• Sonifex Courier (as used by BBC and NPR - serious kit.
• Marantz PMD600 series (semi-pro, good connectivity).
• MiniDisc systems (some of them), as you know.

And, in the Vaporware corner, the Shine MP3 Recorder for Handspring Visor!

Re:Why this instead of MiniDisc (or DAT?)

[Shelled]

Minidiscs are recorded in Sony's proprietary ATRAC format. No easily available computer drive bays or audio editors/software codecs exist, meaning a reporter would be required to re-record the entire interview in real time to .WAV for computer editing.

Due in April, $475

[ChrisCampbell47]

I volunteer for a non-commercial radio station. Our Marantz wandered off so I'm in the market for one of these.

I just got off the phone with the U.S. distributor (Harris Broadcast) for Orban. The Sountainer (great name guys) will be available in April at an MSRP of $475. The distributor said that Orban is still tweaking the design.

This was developed by Dialog4, which was purchased by Orban last week.

Also, for the folks who are whining about bitrate, please note that the primary market for this is the broadcast industry, for field recording use. "Field recording" means a single mic pointed at someone's face or perhaps a stage performance, not a multi-mic studio mixdown. 128 kbps is more than adequate for this, especially when you consider that the broadcast medium (e.g. FM radio) usually ends up being the quality bottleneck (spectral bandwidth, stereo separation, etc.).

Re:What it's missing: 802.11b

[sphix42]

Live acts have been offering soundboard patches for years. The Grateful Dead being the most famous.

http://db.etree.org/shncirc/ has just some of the bands and their shows that are in circulation and http://btat.wagnerone.com/ has a list of just bands that allow taping.

While some of the bands do not allow sbd patches, many do. Those that don't allow sbds do allow audience recordings.

Archos Jukebox recorder has done this for a while

[scum-o]

Try the Archos jukebox recorder It has a 6 Gig drive in it, batteries last for ~10 hours, records directly to mp3. Has USB and works with linux. What more could you want? There's also a 20 Gig version. Url here

Re:Professional ???

[fleener]

If journalists are the target audience, they'd be better off with something like the Archos Recorder (or the 20GB version coming soon. Far greater storage and useful for recording notes or radio sound bites.

I think I can shed some light...

[andaru]

I used to work at Orban as a software engineer.

The company used to be owned by Harman Int'l and was part of their broadcast group. They made equipment for radio and TV stations. They did not try to sell into the pro audio market, nor the consumer audio market. Harman has plenty of other companies which specialize in these other (and very different) fields, and they didn't want Orban products competing with Lexicon products competing with Harman/Kardon products.

Orban has since been sold. It is still primarily in the broadcast audio field, so its focus is still on the radio and TV markets, but it no longer has this specific incentive not to compete in other fields.

Here's what I think happenned: Soundtainer is really nothing more than a really snazzy device for recording voice only in the field in two situations 1) recording voice with the intention of transcribing what is said to text, and 2) recording voice with the intention of broadcasting to a medium (AM/FM) which is already so compressed that the low quality makes very little difference. Orban decided, "hey, as long as we are selling this MP3 recorder to the broadcast market, let's try to sell it to musicians and consumers." This is not something that would have happenned in the old days under Harman, when Orban had a strict market identity and a parent company to enforce it.

In my opinion, Orban is probably going after markets which it should stay out of, but it is doing it with the idea that it is a freebie, since they have this device to market to whomever they please. But marketing to musicians and consumers is a totally different beast than marketing to a corporate community (the broadcast industry), and I think they may find that it is more than they can deal with.

So, having sort of justified the existence of this thing, I will also say that, since one of its primary uses would be for transcription, they should have built in a crappy mic. The built in mic would also make it more palatable to consumers who just want to record their children's first words, etc.; however, this was originally designed as a broadcast oriented device, and most reporters would prefer to use a lapel mic over a built in anyway (or a hand-held for interviews).

It would be really neat if it were a device suitable for use by professional musicians, but it appears that it really was not designed for that purpose, it is just being marketed that way to make an extra buck (which will probably be immediately lost due to the costs of setting up consumer support - keep in mind, Orban is used to selling their equipment to companies, not people).