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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."
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
Question: What's the advantage to this MP3 recorder over a minidisc recorder?
I know both recorders use types of compression, but wouldn't your standard MD player offer better overall quality?
(DAT would obviously be better, but I'm trying to figure out why anyone would use this thing over an MD recorder and a decent mic.)
This isn't meant to be a flame or a troll -- I'm curious. I realize MD is limited to the amount of time on an MD tape, but I've used MD to record a lot of Dylan concerts, and always -- almost always, at least -- the sound is superb. The few times the sound hasn't been superb has been my own fault -- cheap mic, bad seating, etc.
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...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I've been looking for some kind of little handheld thing i can slip in a pocket or backpack and use for random field recordings, and this may be what i've been looking for for some time.. i'm not happy about the whole "128 kbps max" thing, and it would be convenient if there were an integrated mic (although i guess i could find a mic that would just clip on).. but still. That's handy. I wish there were pricing information available.. it'll probably be out of my budget, but if it's less than a few hundred dollars, or at least under the rediculous prices you seem to have to pay to get any kind of working portable DAT tape recorder, i want one..
.. daydream 2), i guess..
A random thought: something i've been wishfully daydreaming about for some time is the idea of rigging an iPod to work like one of these-- get some kind of USB-firewire bridge and then hook up a USB microphone, then abuse the iPod's upgradeable firmware feature to add the ability to read in AIFFs to the iPod's hard drive. You could maybe even add the ability to have the iPod go back and encode the recorded AIFFs sitting around into mp3s to conserve space.. This may or may not be possible (i don't know how flexible/hackable the iPod is-- i believe it has an ARM chip though, doesn't it? that should be able to do just about whatever you like, no?) and it would require reverse-engineering the iPod's firmware, which would not be fun and definitely not be something i'm capable of (though someone out there is almost certainly already trying to do exactly that, at least for the purpose of A) adding some more games to complement the built-in breakout easter egg, TI-83 style or B) adding ogg vorbis support), but it's a lovely thought.
I have this mental image of someday some company creating a little slip-on chassis for the ipod that hooks into the firewire port and contains a firewire mic, then contracting with apple to create a legitimate version of the hacked firmware described above.. i know that will never happen, but that would be basically the most perfect piece of equipment possible for my needs..
Ahh, if only professional (read: no "copy protection" bullshit) DAT tape recorders weren't so expensive.. (i can't find any for under $700. Am i maybe just not looking hard enough?
Bleh. Well, back to my daydreams (daydream 1
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Hmm ...
... or even better, if this thing had *802.11b*, then we could all just record the gig with the thing in our pocket.
... walk away from that gig with a good recording, which you paid for with the price of admission.
...
Not sure I like the idea of using MP3 for sample recording (lossy), but it would be really, really sweet for recording live acts.
As a musician, and as a music lover, I'd really like to see live acts offering outputs from the mix desk
Betcha any money we'll see that within the next 2 years
Beat *that*, RIAA
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
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?
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:
And, in the Vaporware corner, the Shine MP3 Recorder for Handspring Visor!
(this is not a
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.).
One simple rule for its versus it's
There are two things this might be useful for:
;)
1) Really crappy bootleg recording. It's the intended use, sure. But nobody with any experience or sense will use it for that.
2) College students who want to take notes. With the 32kbit rate, it would be great for recording long lectures.
In light of those two uses, I see the primary market being college students who maybe think they can be bootleggers on the side. It's not the world's biggest market, bu never understimate the willingness of people my age to spend money on (almost) useless crap
± 29 dB