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Professional-Grade Audio Recording With A PDA
matt-fu writes "For a long time, live recording has been consigned mostly to the realm of DAT recorders, Minidisc recorders, or laptop computers. On one hand you have subpar sound quality, on the other you have a bulky rig with a big 'steal me' sign attached. Thanks to the folks at Core Sound though, mobile recording is about to take a huge leap forward with their PDAudio project. By using a hardware card that allows recording via S/PDIF onto Compact Flash, you will be able to use your iPaq or Zaurus alongside a decent A/D converter to portably get field recordings at up to 24bit/192kHz. The site includes WinCE screenshots, and there are Linux clients in the works as well."
Miss Cleo: I'm seeing high quality concert bootlegs in the future, along with a good chance of RIAA lawsuits. Be prepared as the death card is also in your future.
Now we can expect a special music piracy tax on PDA's as well.
RIAA endorsement
They are like a snake and we are going to cut it in pieces.
Our estimates are that none of them will come out alive unless they surrender to us quickly.
They think we are retarded - they are retarded.
We are surrounding them and pounding them. The whole trend has changed and we are going to finalize this very soon.
-yours truely Mohamm3d Al-Sahaf
So, who would be interested in nothing more than a high-quality sound bite? Most CF and similar products are small, and audio recording is big. Or are there multi-gigabyte flash cards in the making?
This is really cool, but there are good solutions (MiniDisc, etc.) already for audio recording. This may have advantages over them, but there is still a significant installed base out there which will make adoption slow.
Perhaps a video version of this could be developed, holding DV video? One of the difficulties of Mini-DV, just as DAT, is its linearity, which makes editing a chore. Combined with the LCD display on the PDA, a DV version of this tech could enable basic editing on the fly. It could do for video what MiniDisc did for audio.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
How many great concerts have disappeared into the ether because no one recorded them?
A LOT!
And artists - if you are concerned that pir8's will swipe all your material remember that piracy makes the pie bigger and the bigger the pie the bigger your slice, and that the Grateful dead encouraged this sort of thing and they had the second most lucrative tour after U2 and that the pir8s are in fact working for you for free - all you have to do is grab their best stuff and publish it yourself ala Zappa in Beat the Boots.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Yeah,
But does it support OGG Vorbis?
And more importantly can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of PDAs all pirating music at a concert? Truely a sight to behold.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
With this, and cell phones the size of postage stamps that can stream live video, we are reaching a point where people are going to have to assume they are being recorded or filmed at all times.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
have an "I'm bootlegging this concert" sign attached instead?
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
This is not an all-in-one solution. You'll still need an encoder, and frankly, a portable DAT or MD recorder is: smaller; a single finished piece; designed specifically for this purpose; and (at least in the case of the MD recorder) much cheaper than a iPaq/A-D converter/this funky card.
Though a minidisc recorder is fine for your bootlegging needs. This PDA thingy might be good for bands who are recording their own shows straight from the deck, etc. Less bulky than a laptop.
While we are on the subject, any of you cats know about any loop-based composition software for the Zaurus? Just something to play around with. I've seen Nanoloop for the gameboy, and something else for the iPaq, but nothing on the Z....
I can do pretty much the same with my Archos Jukebox Recorder and an amplified microphone. With on-the fly VBR MP3 encoding direct to a 20GB hard disc, space is not an issue. And it fits in a pocket.
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
This will be nice for future batches of pdas. The current batch of pda processors, almost certainly cannot handle this high of quality of audio.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Remember this story? It looks like this PDA gives high tech pirates a way to record uber-amounts of concert data. The RIAA may finally have some high-quality competition.
Stealth B
Professional-grade recording requires at least six-figures worth of high-end equipment, in addition to numerous skilled sound engineers. A single quality microphone runs thousands of dollars alone. Does this PDA offer good recording quality? Maybe. But don't start throwing around PR bullshit just because it runs Linux.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
Cool now when I goto a concert I don't have to have an obvious tape record/mini-disk etc. Just have my PDA and if anyone ask I'm just checking my email :)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I have to say I'm impressed with what appears to be a very good product for handhelds.
I can't wait to start seeing micro-editing and remixing suites available as well, I'm sure it will only be a short time before we have the ability to DJ or Master Music on a handheld as we do on a laptop today.
Also, what about effects?
It shouldn't take much doing to convert that application into say a reverb or delay peddle. An all in one solution for applying Delay/Distortion/Flange/Phaser/Reverb/EQ would quickly find itself in virtually all performers eqpt bag in a heart beat.
24kbits*192KHz*2channels = 1.152 MB a SECOND. If you compress it, then whats the point of having such high fidelity anyways? Your 512M CF card is going to hold 7 minutes of audio data.
Why not just buy a portable minidisc recorder, which is smaller than a PDA, cheaper than a PDA, would probably have 10 times the battery life of this PDA-based monster, and has media that costs $2 a pop? Add to that the media lasts for a 74 minute recording at a quality that will definitely blow that PDA solution out of the water and you've got a complete waste of time.
I can't understand why most geeks would lambast the general public for falling for the Megahertz Myth, and yet they get all starry eyed when someone starts throwing preposterous specs out at them. Do you honestly think that you can get an appreciable difference between 16/44 and 24/192 outside of a professional studio?
This product is targeted at clueless audiophile wannabes. Unless you are one, move along.
This is "professional" grade audio by the standards. S/PDIF is not *professional grade*. AES/ABU on a 110 ohm cable is. S/PDIF is considered "consumer" grade. No XLR cables, no pro... that's how it goes.
You can have SPDIF, DAT, you name it....but if the mic sucks....so will the audio
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Well, it all depends on what you consider professional grade. There are already digital four track recorders (the thing indie rockers usually know for their cassette eating tendencies) that use SmartMedia cards. Plus, on "high fidelity mode," the Zoom MRS-4 gets 17 track-minutes of 24 bit audio with a frequency response of up to 32 kHz on a 32 meg card.
-- anarchivist@noise.annNOSPAMarbor.mi.us s/NOSPAM/-
Your comprehension of contractions in the English language is as good as your comprehension of politics.
Try indymedia if you wish torepost articles from th'independent...
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
"Do you honestly think that you can get an appreciable difference between 16/44 and 24/192 outside of a professional studio?"
Yes. It's called SACD. Pick up a copy of Stereophile if you feel like it; the difference is pretty extreme, AS LONG AS YOU'RE WILLING TO SPEND MONEY ON IT. For Joe Slashdot, no he probably can't hear the difference through his "multimedia" speakers. But, say, Bob Audiophile, with his $20,000/pr Martin Logan electrostatics fed by a $10,000 monoblock Krell amp from a passive transformer attenuator preamp and Sony XA777ES SACD player - SACD wins HANDS DOWN. No contest. Bob's redneck cousin would probably be blown away if he hadn't been already blown away in a "hold my beer and watch this" stunt involving a firecracker and a plugged toilet.
Hell, you don't even need to spend upwards of a few grand, if you get a decent system. You'll save even more if you skip the speakers and go with headphones... ask on Head-Fi, but off the top of my head, a HeadRoom Little ($260) feeding some Sennheiser HD600s (~$350 from HeadRoom, ~$200 from Meier Audio) and a Sony NS-500V (~$130 when they were still new, check eBay) will give you DAMN good sound with ASTRONOMICAL bang for the buck. But beware - you'll get upgraditis... "Headphone Hi-Fi: First hit's free."
Head-Fi: http://www.head-fi.org
HeadRoom: http://www.headphone.com
Meier Audio: http://www.meier-audio.com
This
Outside the studio is actually when greater bit depth is more important. It lets you capture a quality signal without riding the meters right up to distortion.
A 24-bit signal recorded peaking at -48dB still uses 16-bits of data to capture the audio. Try that with a 16-bit signal, and you'll only be capturing 8 real bits of data.
And second, yes, you can tell the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/192. Try listening to a SACD or a DVD-A and tell me they don't sound better than a CD.
I dunno who it is
but it prolly is fhqwhgads.
* note that SACD is a different format, called DSD, and is not technically 24/196 in the fashion the original poster intended (PCM). You can, however, get upsampling DACs that do indeed show an impressive improvement (even though they shouldn't) when converting 16/44.1 PCM to 24/196 PCM [a company called dCS makes a DAC that converts the 16/44.1 to DSD/SACD, if you're curious], and the DVD-A format if I remember correctly is in 24/196 PCM. I haven't heard it, though, so I couldn't say anything about the sound quality.
This
personally, I'd rather have a fully-digital device that can do 44.1/48 (which this can) and not have to deal with Minidisc, DAT's or anything at all that you have to transfer in real-time.
The potential is there though with this device, to work very well into the future as media gets cheaper and prices go down. 5 years ago, would you have assumed you could get a DVD-R for $2? 512MB of RAM for $50? 200gb of hard drive space for $150?
Of course not, with your thinking.
It's a shame so many people think that what exists now is the only thing that matters, and when someone shows you something that will likely be great a long time from now and is built with the expectation of advancement in technology, you say "bah, what is good now will always be good and who needs progress".
Phish actually sells their concerts online. They also don't mind if you swap concerts -- as long as you're not trying to making make money off of it./p.
Back in the 90s, DAT was where it was at for professional-quality live recording. If PDA recording had come back then, it'd have been great. But now you can spend $90, and get a MiniDisc recorder (including shipping) which gives great sound quality, and is much better on batteries than DAT decks, and writes a removable and archivable medium. I leave my DAT deck at home these days.
Josh Woodward
... here.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Even two normal mics with a cardiod pattern will produce some sensation of stereo if they are right next to eachother. However, they make mics specifically for this kind of thing. They have two capsules that face away form eachother and a pickup pattern such to give good stereo from one unit. The recording studio on the university has one like this, I don't remember what kind it is. Sounds just gorgeus for stereo drum kit recordsing. You just hang teh thing over the centre of the kit and it gets good stereo.
that a portable dat, which is smaller, and 1/4 the price of this rig, and can record 20 times as much, is much more sensible.
just because you *can*, it not a good enough reason.
I don't think this solution, a PDA and an interface, is going to boost the quality any more. And it looks less portable.
What I'd really like to see is something like a recordable iPod.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
So why does the add-on port on the Visors get ignored so often?
I think the original poster meant recording, not playback.
The real question should be can you tell the difference between 44.1/24 and 192/24. That difference is much more subtile. It's there, but you need much better equipment to appreciate it at all, and even then it is small. The big improvement is the increased dynamic range, not so much the increased frequency range.
Well, at 44.1/24 space requirements are quite a bit lower, and lower still if they do some on-the-fly lossless compression.
Yeah, I agree. You might want to look into a Marantz Portable CD recorder or something.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
"Try listening to a SACD or a DVD-A and tell me they don't sound better than a CD."
What you're hearing is probably 99% mastering differences, not some appreciable difference on the resolution.
When they decide to produce something for DVD-A or SACD, I'll bet you anything that far more time is spent mastering it than the original CD version. Now if you took the improved master copy and put one on 192/24 and the other on 44.1/16, I'll bet 99% of the people could not tell the difference.
It's a scam. They need something new to soak you for and people fall for the numbers.
I used to record live shows (that meaning, taper-friendly bands) with Minidisc. True that it's portable and convenient. BUT it's compressed, and there is no DIGITAL way to get data back to the computer.
NetMD (Sony) let's you push data from computer to MD, not vice-versa. On a large home deck, you might have optical out. But in most cases, your stuck with sending compressed audio over your analog sound card.
With a Nomad Jukebox III (even the 20GB version) I can record full uncompressed WAV. About 30 hours worth as far as space goes. With an outboard A/D converter, you can even go optical in. Then drag several hours worth of shows over Firewire, in just a few minutes.
So you use an s/pdif input card and record the data digitally on your pda... WHOPIE.
You still need, as it says, a DAC. Got a really small high quality dac? High quality mic? Got enough storage capacity for high quality recording on your pda?
A portable DAT recorder is still way better.
Upsampling dacs show an improvement through allowing the use of gentler filters, rather than really steep "brickwall" cutoff filters at 42Khz.
They shift quantization noise way higher up in the spectrum so you can filter it out more gently.
The only other reason they provide better sound is because gear that accepts 24/196 tends to have better analog components all around.
SO yes, tehre are reasons for upsampling to sound better.. but none of them have to do with what comes to midn at first: The increased detail available at higher rates. Absolutely none.
one question, which will be more likely snatched from the mixers work spot, 10cm*10cm pda or a 'bulky steal me' laptop/other hardware chained by multiple wires to the other hw? (and since it already includes bulky hw in the form of a good ad converter i honestly lose what's the point for honest usage)
when was the last time somebody stole your entire suitcase without you noticing instead of nicking off just your wallet or gsm?(no, i haven't lost anything this way.)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
For a long time, live recording has been consigned mostly to the realm of DAT recorders, Minidisc recorders, or laptop computers. On one hand you have subpar sound quality, on the other you have a bulky rig with a big 'steal me' sign attached.
Subpar sound quality? The DATs that I've worked with have better resolution than CDs (48 KHz vs 44.1 KHz sampling), minidiscs are technically CD quality, and laptop computers can be equally sensitive given the right equipment. Given what I've heard of PDA sound, there's nothing subpar about the existing recording mediums. Also, it's hard to claim that a minidisc is "a bulky rig".
By using a hardware card that allows recording via S/PDIF onto Compact Flash, you will be able to use your iPaq or Zaurus alongside a decent A/D converter to portably get field recordings at up to 24bit/192kHz.
So to record in this way, I must buy a "decent" A/D converter and a bunch of Compact Flash. And, unless they are using some compression which will lower the sound quality, this thing will suck up more MB-per-minute of audio than a CD. Good thing Hitchai (formerly IBM) makes their MicroDrive, and I have a money tree in my yard.
So, bottom line as I see it? An interesting project, but one which uses expensive hardware and media that makes it prohibitively expensive. So if you want professional digital recording, get a professional digital recorder. If you want ad-hoc "pro" sound recording from a PDA, now you've got an option.
DAT's at least do 16/48 uncompressed, a MUCH better solution than MDs. With my laptop I can go up to 24/196 (although I hardly ever do that) uncompressed. The MD is 16/44.1 but compressed... Obviously it's better than nothing, it's not the best out there...
I dunno who it is
but it prolly is fhqwhgads.
This seems too cumbersome to be useful. The low storage capacity of a PDA is a killer, and having to port around an additional A/D converter makes the system way too bulky. What we need is a hard disk recorder like the Archos Jukebox or Creative Jukebox on which you can monitor recording levels. I'm really surprised that I haven't seen anything like that yet.
Personally, I need something that I can record six or seven hours at least between checking in with a computer. For that I have a hard time seeing a better solution than hard disk recording.
-David
I don't think the minidisc format is "limited" at all. Recordings I make on it sound great. It's a small rig, and it works. For the amount of money it costs ($600 - Rode NT4 + sony minidisc recorder), it a great setup.
The same setup with this PDA thing will be at least $1500 as I don't have the PDA, and the size of the whole setup will at least double. Plus you have to keep track of batteries of all the stuff. What a pain. The Rode/Minidisc take a total of 2 batteries. A 9volt and a AA. I get about 5 hours of recording done on them (assuming I bring 5 discs).
The only thing I think this PDA thing could offer me is the instant digital transfer of recordings. That would be a huge time saver. But the costs of the setup are a lot......
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
My old boss, who is a total genius and hardcare audiophile, swears by monster cable, and says it's the easiest thing you can do to make your audio setup sound better.
We were talking about something one day (on our project to make better AD converters by using optical sampling and demultiplexing) and got sidetracked into audio electronics. If you know any basic electronics, then you can understand how the low-impedance output of your amplifier will form a divider with even a few tenths of an ohm of resistance in the speaker wiring. Not just that but you get effective filtering and resonances due to speaker line resistance in series with the speaker coil reactance. If an amplifier wants to cut out the bass after a bass note, it's effectively putting zero-potential between it's two outputs, yet any finite line resistance will not cause this response at the speaker's end due to resistive decoupling. Enter monster cable into the picture - cut down tenths of ohm resistances to thousandths or smaller. What's the ultimate effect - much tighter bass response by cutting out speaker bass resonances.
He says even using a crappy amp and crappy speakers (not sure what level of crappy he's talking about) one can be amazed at the effect of just rewiring with monster cable.
Then again, this guy goes to the max. He'll buy a high-end audio amplifier and then rewire it himself. He'll take out any serial capacitor connections (they are usually used between stages of amplification to pass the AC signal but allow the next ampflier to be DC-biased differently). He then inserts his own DC-coupled subampflier to give the whole amplifier a response function all the way down to DC. [note - he also blew out his speakers after doing this the first time because before the amplifier biased itself for zero-DC output it put out some nonzero DC into the speaker, which blew the coil. So now he has a small timer to allow the amps to all bias before opening the output chain to the speakers].
He also removes any other capacitors coupled to the signal, because to cut costs many amplifier companies, even at high-end gear, use low-cost non-linear dielectrics (like tantalum) which cause non-linearities in the audio signal, and any musical buff wants the primary amplifier to be as linear as possible. So he replaces them with more linear dielectrics (I forget, maybe polystyrene caps).
Ultimate story is that he has a setup with extraordinary linearity (super low intermodulation distortion) and frequency response. And this is frequency response and linearity not measured at the amplifier output, but at the speaker output, which is what really matters. Monster cable helps this significantly by giving very low-impedance connection to the speakers, which cuts down bass resonance.
make world, not war
note that SACD is a different format, called DSD, and is not technically 24/196 in the fashion the original poster intended (PCM).
DSD is supposed to be the raw output of a 2.8MHz delta-sigma modulator (similar, but slightly inferior the front end of virtually any audio AD).
You can consider this a 2.8MHz PCM signal with one bit words. This give you a lousy signal to noise ratio, however the modulation casues most of the noise to be in the HF part of the spectrum, leaving the audio part clean.
Normally you want to filter out the noise and drop the sampling rate (this is called decimation and is the back-end in the earlier mentioned ADs), leaving only information.
I can only guess that the reason sony went with a system that spends so many bits on storing just ultrasonic noise is that this is so nuts, noone has patented it before.
You can, however, get upsampling DACs that do indeed show an impressive improvement (even though they shouldn't) when converting 16/44.1 PCM to 24/196 PCM
upsampling can't add anything that isn't there. the only reason you want to change the format for conversion is to adapt the signal to your analog DA backend. This normally mean a digital delta-sigma modulation to a 1-5 bit word with sample rate somwhere between 0.5-4 MHz. Going through 24/196 is totally and utterly pointless as this format will absolutely not match any concievable analog backend
You are not going to get 24 bits recordings of anything battery operated.
The level of precision recuired to even begin to approach 24 bits recuire very high biascurrents in the device.
Actual 24 bit conversion is actually extremely hard. I am not aware of any standard device capable of this level of precision at audio frequencies, let alone 200KHz.
Also you will not find any mic or concert venue enabling you to deliver 144dB dynamic range into the adc. You will likely actually get somwhere between 30-60dB
Note: Do not confuse the wordlength with the precision. There are many AD and DA devices who output a lot more bits than they actually can deliver data for. This is done to justify the audio-biz need for specmanship. (stick a '24' bit dac in there so we can write it on the front panel, never mind the device is propably only capable on 16-18 bits)
i think that the people in ars electronica (austria) have already done something similar.
check it out:
http://www.aec.at/en/futurelab/xedit.asp
this program is used by the bbc journalist to record and edit in the field.
Interesting... the chief improvement many people find is in soundstage, which could very well be influenced by >42khz ultrasonics. But as for your idea that gear that takes 24/196 has better components being a main reason, the improvements are also noticed in DACs whose upsampling can be switched on and off, as Head-Fi admin and head reviewer noted: "This was the first DAC to arrive, and it was my first home experience with a digital source component marketed as an upsampler (24/96). With the upsampler off, this $2294 combination fell somewhere between the Arcam Diva CD72T and the Creek with me. Flip up the upsampling switch, and soundstage opened up -- way up. Not only does the soundstage open up, but also every voice and instrument occupies a more solid, real place within the image. I was sold on upsampling, almost from the get-go. But, just to be certain, I gave it more and more listening time, and, yeah, I really like this upsampling thing. The GoldLINK III makes big, strong bass, beautifully full mids, and liquid treble. "t hreadid=14337&highlight=upsampling+dac )
( http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&
This
I work at a microelectronics shop, and with 20 EEs around the lunch table, woe to the one who mentions 'high-end' audio cables and means it.
(We work motly with RF, so yes we are pretty well versed in transmission line effects ant the like)
Expensive audio cables is a hoax. There, that is really all you need to know.
To elaborate: most audio cable companies tries to pull somthing about transmission line effects or impedance matching (same thing) as the virtue of just their cables. This is utter bullshit as transmission line effects no not come into play before the cable is a significant fraction of the shortest wavelenght. (cable propagation is somwhere around 0.3-0.9c, highest intresting frequency is 20KHz. Finding the cable lenghts where transmission line effects matter is left as an excersice for the reader Hint: use 1/16th wavelength as a pretty paranoid fraction of wavelenght before TL effects matter)
The only thing that matters in your choice of speaker cable is that you want to keep series resistance much much less than the speaker impedance. This usually mean 10-14 gauge cable for 2-4m runs. The copper quality in regular cables are not, contrary to the 'ethusiast' cable makers claims, any worse than in expensive cables. For those of you looking at silver cables: drop it, just buy thicker copper.
or 14 minutes, with lossless compression. (which your Required DAC may well provide) And hey, as long as you're within 50 feet of say, a wireless harddrive (like the one in your friends pocket) you could store a lot more (and 11 mbit/second is perfect speed for this audio. including room for packet overhead)
BTW your math is right, but you accidently said '24kbits' instead of '24-bit.'
and what if the pda is used in a wired lan environment? all of a sudden it does make it useful for professionals who want to save space/weight.
Oh not to mention maybe the first concert in space might need to rely on as a light as possible of a solution(1) -- what could be lighter than a PDA that is capable of studio quality recordings?
1. Unless the technology for building a space elevator is ever proven and someone decides to fund such a mammoth wonder of the world.
Like this device can't be easily stolen???
The preview button is there for a reason - USE IT!!!
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
This is just Dumb.
"Oh Yeah" the engineer says, "I can record 35 miliseconds of studio quality sound to my PDA."
With a bit of silicon waterproofing my matchbox makes a great swimming pool.
Generally condenser mics (such as the Rode NT series), are higher quality and will produce superior recordings.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
How about those guys that use cat5 and split the pairs between poles? I saw a guy doing that one time And it sounded better than the ratshack wire.....
I found my inner child, then I got caught abusing it...
You mean nothing? I swear im not trolling but honestly MD really didn't do anything for audio outside of the audiophile community (which I am a proud part of). Yes it was technically advanced and has put lossless audio into alot of hands but without the Sony juggernaut it would have died peacefully a decade ago.
I would say an iPod like device would have better luck, huge capacity for lossless audio out the gate, instead of trying to cram a concert into a SD/CF disk.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
I have looked at voice recorders for lectures. Many, and my guess is all, have the problem that the digital noise is significant when you are in the back of the room. Even MP3 recorders that have a voice recorder record in only crappy format (external mic is only way with these). This seems like a solution to me. And the money will be spent on something with many uses.
I am a musician who records a lot of live performances, and I just bought a Creative Nomad Jukebox 3.. I'm really happy with it.. For about $375 you get a 40 GB hard drive, and it can record to WAV or several different MP3 formats via the analog or optical line in..
I tried the Sony Minidisc recorder, but was disappointed by the built-in DRM (you can't copy your own recordings to a PC digitally, because it doesn't think you have rights to them)..
My Sony PCM-M1 can record at 48kHz, and you can buy DAT tapes that are over 2 hours long. You'd need a huge HD on the PDA to record 2 hours of 48kHz. Plus on most DAT's (at least the PCM-M1) you have the option of digital in and out. On the PDA where is the archival storage? The HD? No thanks.
is annoying, but Sony does make a minidisc/cd burner stereo component that is available in Japan, or online if you look around enough. It digitally records from MD to a CD, then you can just keep copying the CD, or load it on your computer for editing.
I think that before this can become a truly viable solution, PDA battery life must increase. Since this drains battery power (from what I understand), many PDAs will be unable to record an entire concert straight through. On a side note, I believe Sharp is going in the right direction with the Zaurus SL-5600's longer life battery.
Why would you need a balanced connection for a digital stream? Aren't errors handled with checksums and retransmissions?
Audiophile? And you think MD is for Audiophiles!? And you think it is LOSSLESS?!?!?! And you think your are an audiophile?!?!?!?!?!?!? get real man...being an audiophile is nothing to be proud of, and you don't even know what you are talking about...
Honestly. Do you really think people are still wasting their time with a proprietary hardware device that is not even being produced by the manufacturer? None of the new Handsprings have a Springboard on it. None.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
minidiscs are technically CD quality
Actually, they aren't. Minidiscs contain compressed audio. Usually compressed via Sony ATRAC codecs.
-ted
Although I am not familiar with the hardware innards of one of these digitizers, I would hazard a guess they are using this topology. Its quite accurate, very simple to implement, and uses little power.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Lossless?!?!? Atrac is a _lossy_ codec, and the latest version are actually more lossy (lower bitrate) in order to pack more data onto a small medium (by today's standard's, MD is tiny.. ~140 MB) with a relatively large form factor.
:)
As for HD-based recorders, some people are trying to work with Nomads.. but their recorder function currently will occasionally drop samples, and creative is not paying much attention. Field/Home recording is not a large part of their target demographic, evidently
For more discussion on this, look at the excellent laptop-tapers group at groups.yahoo.com.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Well, for one thing, Minidisc is 16/44.1 using a very old psyco-acoustic model. The sound quality of MD actually sucks IMO, and can not hold a candle to ogg compression. Just because you have this neat new gadget, doesn't mean you HAVE to use 24/192. It also supports 16/44 which would sound drastically better than MD. LeX
The only thing that matters in your choice of speaker cable is that you want to keep series resistance much much less than the speaker impedance.
This was my point exactly regarding monster cable, which is basically low-gauge braider copper cabling. This is where you'll actually gain any noticable effects, by cutting down the cable resistance, for tighter bass response.
Any good thick braided cable is good here, and for many people this is most easily obtained at your local high-end stereo shop as monster cable.
Intersting note - a project I was working on with the high-energy physics group at U. Penn many years ago required us to get some really low-gauge wiring for an immediate application. Easiest thing to do was to pick some up directly at the local audio shop.
make world, not war
Why sample at 192kHz?
It's not like you're going to hear tones above 20kHz anyway...
And by the way storing it uncompressed on your 128mb disk gives you a recording time of 220s
i think the author is a bit misinformed -- yes, recording to a PDA is a good idea, and it's got definite possibilities -- but how can you say a DAT has poor sound quality? you can get textbook-sized battery powered DAT machines that have mic preamps in them already that record to 24-bit 48khz. that's a pretty darn good format.
if you care enough about the sound quality of your recordings, you'll have the best equipment for what you're doing. DAT is still a viable medium for stereo recording. i'd be surprised if a PDA could record more than 2 channels at a better quality than a DAT machine. DAT machines have SPDIF too, that's a consumer format. But, the best stuff goes over AES/EBU lines, or if you're a hardcore audio person, you've got tube preamps and you know how to use the analog realm to the highest level of effectiveness.
bootleggers and tapers are one thing -- but in my experience as an assistant engineer -- great recording engineers are WAY behind the technology curve. a good engineer with 10-year old tube equipment still beats the pants off of a bad pop musician in his dorm room with a Boss BR-8.
This was my point exactly regarding monster cable, which is basically low-gauge braider copper cabling.
Actually monster and other 'exotic' audio cable manufacturers sell mostly 16 and 14 gauge wires as speaker cable. The extremely thich cables some of these sell are pretty much only insulation.
Any cabling you buy in audio stores will cost at least 3x as much as equivalent cabling bought at electrical supply shops.
Ok, hopefully this isn't redundant.
:/ ), but could also imagine it possible; kernel level programming is beyond anyone I know well.
I've asked around #Zaurus about Alsa support, if it we'll ever see it.
? Presumably sound support is done by SHARP? Does sound support come from a Zaurus perspective rather than the ARM developers?
If Alsa is possible I could try to convert some multitracking programs ( although i know of none lightwieght & QT atm
Imagine - take your Zaurus, SolarPanel and Acoustic. Then sit under a tree outdoors quietly building up layer of layer of heart rendering lift music.
So close could the joy could be ours.
A blog I run for the wealth
I have recorded thing s via Mini-disc that if hadn't have been captured we would have never heard. Many bootlegs this way have served as the only record of great performances.
:)
It's with this knowledge I recorded a Jimi Hendrix cover band i saw live.
So there you are - at one point there's 5+ links in the chain ->
Jimi covers Robert Johnsen -> Cover band play it live -> I record it -> I practice the song on my Guitar at home at my convienience -> I play it to a friend who hasn't heard it before... music like language a living thing.
So what have records got to do with it all? Where are the RIAA now? I'm afraid music is language. The record biz was a niche borne of technology, it is now irrelervent... but the suits fight back, thier most respectable achievement? - Fame Acadamy and the like.
Come on, pls get bored and wander off
A blog I run for the wealth
Hmm, I remember one of the cables we bought for the high-energy project was almost 1cm diameter (i hope i'm not mixing this up with my current research with magnet driver leads that are this thick, that was 7 years ago), and the insulation wasn't that thick. This was before I even heard of monster cable, don't know if it was monster or not. expensive yes, but we needed it really fast and the audio store was open.
make world, not war
Dude, you clearly don't know what you're talking about. I wouldn't be so rough on you except that you're calling those of us who do know something "clueless audiophile wannabes."
d f
First, 16bits is not enough to cover the dynamic range of human hearing. 16 bits only amounts to ninety-something db of dynamic range, and the human range is greater than that (Yes, I know about amplitude and frequency masking effects). 120db is the threshold of pain, and is relative to the quiestest observable sound.
Second, sampling beyond the highest frequency you want to record is very useful:
-Filters are not perfect. In fact, it is impossible to build a perfect filter. You must filter whatever you're sampling in order to avoid alaising (higher frequencies you didn't want in the first place being turned into lower ones which mess up your signal).
-Also, sampling at a higher rate amounts to oversampling. Ever seen a CD player that says one bit D/A convertor on it? That cd player upsamples the 16 bit signal into a one bit signal with a higher sampling rate and then uses that to drive your headphones. Oversampling allows them to get 16 bit like D/A performance from a 1 bit D/A convertor. Oversampling also works when you're recording.
I honestly don't know if 96KHz audio streams are filtered at 20KHz or so, so that the extra speed is oversampling, or if it is just used to provide increased frequency range. Even if it isn't there are other factors:
You have to sample HIGHER than 2x the minimum frequency you want to record. The Nyquist rate is 2x the highest frequency content in the signal, but in the real world, components are not prefect. The transistors in A/D and D/A convertors do not switch instantaneoulsly, etc. Sampling faster helps to account for this.
And using 24 bits also helps in other ways. It reduces the noise floor/THD of your signal. In going from an analog signal to a digital one there is a certain amount of quantitization noise produced (the actual value of the analog signal is rounded to the closest digital value). This noise can be modeled as a nomally distributed signal arcoss the frequency range of the digital signal, and decreasing the size of the steps that the signal changes in, lowers the amplitude of this noise signal, reducing SNR/THD.
Noise is also added to the signal if you try and do any type of digital filtering (such as an equalizer). This makes 24/96 an especially good idea to use when you're making an album.
So anyways, 24bit/96KHz is worthwhile. Especially the 24 bit part IMSHO. It kinda sucks having speakers that will put out 130+ db, an amplfier with >123db SNR, yet the SNR of all my music is less than 100 db.
Here's a link about some of this stuff, just be prepared for some math (I'm currently taking this course):
http://courses.ece.cornell.edu/ece426/files/fwl.p
I won't even get into the validty of compression here, just do a search on "perceptual coding" and read a little bit. One basic point is that, while we can hear with over 100db of dynamic range, we can't hear a 1db 1002 Hz signal if we're hearing a 100db 1000 Hz signal.
Finally, Minidisc IS compressed too. Using what kind of messed up logic is a compressed 16bit 44.1KHz signal, better quality than an uncompressed 24 bit 96 KHz signal? Your MHz myth comment is total B.S. With a digital signal, 2 things matter: sampling rate, and bits per sample. That's all there is (unless you're talking about mu-law encoding, which you clearly weren't if you're talking about minidisc.)
Life is too short to proofread.
So your nitpicking my post, and sorry, yes I am an idiot and I thought that it was lossless. Upon thinking for a second i realize this is obviously not true. And yes, the only people I have ever known to use MD _were_ (past tense, no one uses it now) audiophiles. I am referring to the cheap college type, not the 30,000$ Nagamichi speaker buying set.
So you say being an audiophile is nothing to be proud of, but being a geek who debates lossy codecs on a dead format, now thats fucking cool right?
Give me a break.
Where could I find more info on this topic? I mean: - I'd like to know what PDA works best (small, cheap, long battery life, stable functionality, CPU-power, etc) - What ADC's do people use or build? (I only need 44.1 or 48 KHz with 16 bit, 24 bit is too cumbersome or...?) - What software can I use? Optimizations (powersaving, optimal record-buffer-record cycles, ease of use, etc) are possible? - Etc, etc Is there a forum for this kind of topic? ano
MD did nothing?
You have to be joking - try going to any consumer hifi shop... they're selling like hot cakes. I can't see why audiophiles would use them (except the pro. models which are stupidly expensive).. but for the average punter they're great. 8 hours per disk, very very long battery life (mine is only on its second battery after 12 months, and I use if every day) and none of the disadvantages of mp3 (like needing a £1000 computer to actually get songs onto it).
Actually Minidisc put Near-DAT quality portable recording (in a smaller form factor than portable DAT decks) in the hands (or pockets as it were) of low budget (College/Community) radio stations and freelance radio journalists. This alone is a worthy contibution. Making consumers aware of digital recording and it's many advantages was another good one.
I had read on a couple audio boards that people were using CD recorders to captures live sound. This apparently yielded high enough quality, and had the advantage that you got a CD out of it.
Is anyone out there using this?
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
...if you didn't notice. They won't be selling this stuff exclusively as a PDA kit.
The cool thing about this is not "Yay, you can record on your IPAQ!" but "Yay, someone is producing a digital audio interface in CF format with OpenSource drivers!"
I've thought that using the PDA to do my taping would be super-slick and would get me a lot of oohs and ahhs, but the PDA+4GB CF card+dual CF sleeve combo is WAY more expensive than a Nomad Jukebox 3, which I recently converted to from MiniDisc, and which I am ecstatically happy with.
Still, it's nice to see someone sticking their neck out and making a device that people want rather than need. Good luck Len!
Speaking as a "clueless audiophile wannabe," and hobbyist concert recordist, I can confirm that this is a hotly awaited product in our community of fan tapers of concerts. We're longing to replace our dying or at least decaying DAT technology with something that can handle higher fidelity recording in the field. This product is a) small, b) beefy spec'd, c) flexible for individual needs. My needs as a taper are largely satisfied by 24 bits @ 48 kHz, but someone else may want to use 24/96 or 24/88.1. This product is FLEXIBLE to allow individual audiophiles to make up their own minds.
Many others have cited minidiscs, but they're compressed audio, period, using lossy compression algorithms developed in a closed environment, not even like Ogg, where the compression is openly developed so that those that actually care about good sound can improve on it.
There is no appreciable diffference on your car cd player, or is there? Even from my recording laptop, where I record at 24/48, I'm able to hear the difference at 24/48 to 16/44.1, for one thing, the Nyquist theorem guarantees other frequences above 22.1 kHz up to 24 kHz that are within the audible range of humans. Don't forget harmonic overtones either!
Why else would we want the extra bits and kHz? You cannot make a good CD to play on a standard player without a superb source recording. That's the reason that wellmade CD's sound wellmade, they actually use GOOD recording techniques, including higher bitrates and higher sampling rates in the studios. When I record a concert [ legally, think people like Medeski Martin & Wood, John Scofield, or Charlie Hunter ], I do so, knowing full well my distribution to folks will be using a 16/44.1, but my source is 24/48. Why the extra work? Because, when i dither down, I let my software choose the best bits to be used, and an antialias filter for the recorded version at 44.1 The resulting recording is far better than my sources with my 16/48 or 16/44.1 versions on my trusty DA-P1 DAT deck that I once used, and far better than friends who use minidiscs or analog cassette.
What Len and others have done is satisfy a legitimate demand in the marketplace. I, for one, am looking forward to it, and no, we won't be using a 512 stick of storage, more likely the 4 GB model at a reasonable bit/sample rate, of something liek 24/48 or 24/96. I've got no relationship to Coresound other than as a previous customer of his establishment, and a happy one at that.
BTW, since we're lobbing ad hominem attacks at "clueless audiophile wannabes," here's a retort... Your use of minidisc demonstrates your cluelessness regarding field and stationary based recording technology. You need look no further than well-established online groups like DAT-heads and Etree.org, as well as new groups like Archive.org/audio, and yahoogroups' laptop-tapers group to see the fallacy in using minidisc for high quality source recordings. Minidisc is simply not a well-thought out choice for your argument.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."-Tennyson
Now that would be something to get me to part with some cash in short order. Someone must have one in develompent by now?
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The original source signal DOES NOT HAVE any ultrasonics. You cannot get more information than you started with. That's information theory. The source CD was recorded with a 44.1Khz brickwall filter, and no matter how you slice it or dice it, that's all you get.
When you use a DAC during playback, you get harmonic noise because of the DAC process.. this is not part of the audio signal, or something you want to hear, it's an artifact of the dac process, and it needs to be filtered out in order to protect your equipment (and just because, well, it's not part of the recorded signal). If you use a sharp filter on the output stage, which you have to do if the signal ends at 44.1Khz and the first band of noise starts at 44.2Khz.... you end up with ringing & phasing problems that arguably DO affect the sound.
By doing upsampling, OR oversampling, you ensure that the noise starts way higher up in the spectrum, so you can use a nice gentle filter to get rid of it, and can massively reduce the effects of that filter on the signal.
I do not dispute that this guy heard more soundstage when he turned on the upsampling; I'm just pointing out that you are NOT increasing the resolution of the signal..and it's absolutely NOT the same thing as recording at 24/96. You are still reading from a 16/44.1 source, and there is no way according to the laws of the universe to extract any more information than that out of the signal.
The most you can get is more accurately reproducing what is recorded in that 44.1Khz sample.
And seriously... 99% of the difference people hear with really high end gear just *are not there*, and blind listening tests can prove it.
I've seen people claim that a better cable (even though the one they had was already very good) provided richer, deeper bass and cleaner highs.
I've seen them claim a vibration dampener under their headphone amp cleaned up the signal a lot. (it wasn't in an environment with any real vibration to speak of to begin with).
And I've seen people who claim to be "audio engineers" say they can hear the difference on a computer between playing back a sample from 2 different hard drives.
So you can't take it too seriously.
Are upsamplers a nice piece of home audio gear? for sure.
DO they make stuff sound better? Some say yes.
Does it actually increase the resolution of your source? Hell no.
(And I like good audio gear myself... I listen on $600 Grado heaphones, on a nice Creek amp)
... before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech
or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What
did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was
manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of
this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my
power of meddling.
-- Joseph Conrad
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