Slashdot Mirror
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."
I don't know who they are marketing this product towards but at a 128 kbps data rate, its kind of pointless. 128kbps is fine for MP3s, but if you want to get a good master copy of any music you need a much higher bit rate. Remember 128 kbps isn't as good as an audio CD, still better then tape mind you.
Maybe good for those live dead shows, but probably not, there is no RCA or Mic line in.
Just my 3 cents...
How can you call something professional with these limitations:
1. Max 128kbps recording
2. Max 256 MB memory using MMC.
3. No option for recording MP2 (lossless)
But it is nice to have portable MP3 recorders and I wish that someone would create a good unit for doing that. Right now, most recording is done with protable DATs (and sometimes mididiscs) or with a laptop with a good sound device (M-Audio or Emagic comes to mind).
I'm still holding out for Ogg Vorbis. Someday, somebody has to build a recorder and player in Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3.
And so it goes.
It seems rather odd that this unit, directed towards professional DJs, is lacking a digital input. Surely these professionals will have digital boards with digital outputs perfect for recording on this neat little unit. Even middle-of-the-road MiniDisc recorders often have digital input.
-Dan
unixpunx.org - punks, computers, intelligence
I doubt that will ever happen, as no one outside of computer geeks and wannabe computer geeks has heard of ogg. don't believe me?, walk around your average college student union, and ask the student populace (perhaps the people who use mp3 the most) about ogg. "ogg? what's an 'ogg'?"
my pet machine
This device appears to be totally solid state. Minidisc and DAT both have moving parts. This recorder should be shock-proof and shouldn't be able to physically damage the media.
- AlanH
ALGORITHM
ISO/MPEG1 Audio Layer III (MP3)
DATA RATES
32, 64, 96, 128 kbps
AUDIO MODES
Mono, Stereo
SAMPLE FREQUENCIES
16, 32, 44.1, 48 kHz
MICROPHONE AUDIO INPUT
Input Level: Adjustable -60 to -40 dBu
Impedance: unbalanced 600 ohms
A/D Conversion: 18-bit.
Connector: 3.5mm Stereo Mini-Jack
It's strange that companies can try to find such outlandish uses for such useless devices. This device, if it is inexpensive, migh be alright for sound design students who want a quick copy to review their work in live arenas but seriously, Minidisc players are widely available, and include a TOSlink interface, alowing for recording and playback without using cheap A/D and D/A converters typically found in consumer audio gear. With the wide availablitiy of Sony's Portable DAT walkmans, ( not to mention the zip drive size of Tascams professional DAT recorders), and the increasing number of main-mix-down digital outs on live sound boards, what we see here is a chunk of plastic barely ready for use by anyone other than a highschool journalist with a cheap microphone. Luckily a lot of the well thought-out live venues will include some sort of stereo or multrack device for capturing any performance.
It astounds me still that as soon as a company marks "professional" on a box that some people continue to assume that such devices really work better, or worse, are better than others. From the already mentioned-above point of low-bitrate encoding, lack of information on which (and I think those of you who compile a lot of mp3s would find this very important) on which CODEC is used. Add to that relatively skimpy 18 bit converters, and thin 3.5" jacks, and we're off to a wonderful start. Heck, if this is how we're going to start recording anything, why didn't we just stick with analog tapes. They're cheaper than flash memory cards.
And aren't we tired of reading about the company to come up with the latest, lightly modified MP3 player anyway?
That being said, no live taper would ever be caught dead using this thing to record a show. If somebody showed up with this thing a taping section, they would be laughed out of the building.
Aside from it's horribly low bitrate and low capacity, this thing sports neither balanced inputs nor phantom power for condenser mics. On the upside, the mic input is low impedance, but I don't know where to find unbalanced low-z mics. That means you need a bulky transformer/XLR adapter at the recorder... The adapters to use this thing are bigger than the device itself. What sort of pro would use this? Possibly the same pro that uses Peavy equipment ;)... This is useless in the pro field, but could possibly be useful to the garage band scene to send in demo mp3s to a record company (who'll either sign them up or kick them in the nuts... wait, I'm repeating myself). Could a garage band afford this? Maybe, but probably not. This thing would be more useful for reporters, but it's lacking a phone input for taping phone interviews, and a limiter for compressing the dynamic range. Almost has a market, but not quite.