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."

Comments

Re:Provessional-Grade Video Recording With A PDA

[van der Rohe]

Minidisk uses ATRAC compression, however, so it's not the same quality as DAT for example, which can record at CD quality (16 bit, 44.1 kHz.)

This PDA solution appears to provide high-quality sampling rates/bit depth without relying on compression.

Pro-Quality Audio? Sure...

[Dynedain]

You can have SPDIF, DAT, you name it....but if the mic sucks....so will the audio

Re:Wrong

[Mononoke]

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.

Not necessarily. They are only two different ways to carry the same digital signal. (AES/EBU is balanced signal, S/PDIF is unbalanced.) Yes, you want AES/EBU for longer cable runs to keep data loss to a minimum, but S/PDIF is perfectly suitable for short distances. Such as: From the Mic preamp in one jacket pocket to the PDA in the other. No need for balanced signal for that short a distance.

Yes, I Am An Audio Technician (IAAAT).

Re:Good!

[Mononoke]

If record companies were smarter, they'd record all the concerts themselves. I mean, you already have a full audio setup for sound reenforcement. With just a little extra effort it could be setup to do a good job recording, or for 0 extra effort a DAT can by plugged into the main output and that captured.

Already being done by most bands, but only as a reference tape used to judge the quality of their performance.

Have you ever heard a 'board tape', as these are called? The mix is usually terrible because the show is being mixed to sound good for the paying audience, not the tape. Mixing a live concert and mixing to tape are two very different things. Real 'live-recordings' are recorded on separate consoles located away from the arena, at great added expense.

(Why are board tape mixes bad? Mixing a live show involves combining the sound coming out of the PA with the sound coming off stage (Huge guitar stacks and expensive snare drums are the worst offender in this regard.) The board tape is only getting half of what the audience heard.)

(Yes, I mix live audio for a living.)