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Portable Digital Voice Recorders for a Singer?
Geek Singer asks: "I've had classical singing lessons for a while now and managed to advance to a level where hearing my own lessons is important for developing my skills. Here in Europe many singers use MiniDisc recorders. As a geek I think that MD recorders are DRM-encumbered, clumsy, slow and obsolete. Especially moving the recordings into my computer can get very troublesome due to nasty restrictions cast by Sony. For these reasons I need to have something else than a MD recorder. There are various portable MP3 players that have a voice recording capability, but I've found none that have all the properties I need: low price, good recording quality, line-in recording, excellent battery life, a good interface, support for Linux or Mac OS X and enough space for tens of hours of decent quality voice recordings or a slot for an exchangeable memory card. I've already checked numerous manufacturers including iRiver. Their players are great, except that the HD-models are too expensive and the flash-based models don't have a memory card slot. What portable digital voice recorders do you suggest?"
Record them on a real computer, Listen to them on a portable device.... then, you have no question.
You can even plug it into your monitor out and record crap at your shows. Korg Pandora PX-4: 299
The main issue with the IC recorders was with regards to poor recording quality. I know that the local public radio uses MiniDisc recorders for their recording needs.
How about a portable DAT recorder? They aren't too pricy, if you get a 'pro' level one, there's no serial copy bit, and the sound is excellent.
They've been the benchmark for non-compressed portable audio recording for years.
And get me one, too! :-)
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
On another note, I recently saw another sound designer use an Archos unit to record a grand piano. I provided the mics and mixer, he preferred to use his own recorder rather than my MD.
This is a boring sig
Aside from looking for deals on E-bay, you'll find that the features you want are not availble at a consumer level.
High end mindisc recorders allow digital dubbing, but not consumer models. An excellent source of information is here.
By the way, minidisc does not use DRM, it just doesn't have a digital line out jack.
In broadcast circles a lot of people are moving to various flash media units, and seem quite happy with them. These tend to be "pro" units, with XLR mic jacks and digital in and out.
You can also check out transom.org for advice on recorders.
Three Squirrels
Fostex MR-8
I got one for the same reason. It's very lovely, very feature rich, and still pretty simple to use. The only downside is the size (compared to an iPod). It's the same size as a 12" laptop, but thicker. With the manufacturer bag, it's easily portable (with mic, cable, and AC power supply). Of course it also runs on AA batteries, but it's hungry.
I first tried the iPod with the iTalk, but it couldn't auto-adjust the recording level quickly enough to keep from clipping horribly (a nasty digital trash clip) from piano and higher pitch voice.
Musician's Friend sells it for a good price, and they also sell some kits that include it, a mic, balanced cable, headphones, and other accessories. Just make sure you buy a Fostex certified memory card if you want to upgrade beyond the card they provide. It needs good, fast cards to do multi-track work.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Something that will record directly to a CD?
I had read somewhere that these were good to use for such a purpose, but that was a few years ago.
It's going to be bigger than a flash-based player, sure, but the convenience of winding up with a CD would be worth it.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Being in the music scene and recording often I know KORG makes a killer little product called the Pandoras Box. It goes for about 300 bucks and it tailored to recording music, it's a portable virtual 8 track studio. You can even record a few times and compare each track to see improvements.
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
... is noise.
Yes there are silent pc's available. You can even find them with shielded sound cards. They are not going to be under $300 however, unless you want to build your own, including building your own shielding around that sound card. If you are using a PC with a hard drive, you have a power supply fan, the processor fan, the hard drive, and possibly both a video card fan and a bios fan that are all going to introduce background noise into your recordings.
Most laptops today have a fan in them, and I don't know anyone interested in computers today who would consider the internal microphone of a laptop for any recording beyond very rare sampling.
Before you suggest using an external mic and headphones, remember that there really isn't a laptop out there with a shielded audio system in it. As a result it is invariably going to pick up electrical noise from components within the computer.
The last option I would consider is a USB based sound system. Not because I don't trust the quality, but because of the fact that once you add the price of one to your computer, (laptop or otherwise) you could have picked up a profesional grade digital recorder, and been done with it.
One other thing to take into consideration is the 'setup' and 'teardown' time involved. If you go to a teacher, paying for a 50 min lesson, you are not going to want to spend a significant portion of those 50 min setting up a computer or laptop to start recording your lesson, and your instructor is not going to be pleased if your setup and teardown (especially if you are carrying around mics and stands) eats into some other student's lesson time. Likewise for practice rooms if you need to practice, and can not live with an electronic keyboard in your dorm, appartment or other living arangements.
If you do go with an MD recorder, and a mic, with an optical connection to a PC that allows you to transfer cleanly, I recomend pre-testing your equipment, or at least finding out if all will work within the return time of whomever you are buying the stuff from. My own MD recorder has a very hit or miss pattern with the various mics I have tried with it. At best I can recognize my voice with the volume cranked all the way up. Occasionally I may even be able to recognize what I was saying at the time. Fortunately I don't need to record with it, as I have other options available. (none of them direct to digital, but my erquirements are not as high.)
I wish you better luck.
-Rusty
You never know...
Go ahead and mod this Off Topic, but...
Here starteth the rant
Please refer to yourself as a VOCALIST and not a sewing appliance. I, myself, am a VOCALIST and I am trying to correct everyone I can. We refer to people who play instruments as instrumentalists. Also, If people who sing are singers, then people who play are players.
Here endth the ranting
Using the Freedom of Speech while I still have it.
Of course the new H340 is expensive, but the older non-colour-LCD models (H110, H120, H140) have virtually all the same functions as it does.
Optical/analog in/out etc.
You're going to want a decent microphone, and as far as I can tell, most of the cheap consumer grade recorders don't have a decent mic. Look for something with either a decent mic or with XLR input and provide your own mic.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I was also looking for a voice recorder, and found they'd all become mp3 players while I wasn't looking.
:
;-)
I eventually bought the iRiver iFP-395T as it began to stand out of the pack on my checklist.
The clincher was its ability to record *directly as mp3*.
Most other devices on the market record to wav format which is very VERY fat in comparison.
This means the 512Mb version can store about 36 hours of audio, which will probably outlast the battery itself for continuous recording.
It will also allow me plenty of time to get back to any PC or laptop that understands a generic USB storage device to unburden it.
It also has the line-in socket if you have a fancy mic.
Other goodies
- Ogg support.
- Linux support (even for it's alternate proprietary filesystem firmware).
- Full configuration options for pretty much everything.
- Small/light/looks funky.
- Belt and arm (jogging) clips.
- It *will* survive a heavy drop that any HD based device will *not*.
All I really need now is one of those 3cm long USB adapter cables the Creative Muvo 2 comes with, so I can add it to my keyrings (Hint to manufacturers!), removing the only minor annoyance there is: forgetting the cable to plug it into a laptop/PC.
I'm eyeing gutted Muvo2 shells on ebay
I own a neuros and use it just about every day. A while back I saw some info on making digital recordings with the neuros on their forum. The line in on the neuros is unpowered and you would want a good powered mic with preamp.
Try taking a look at the forum yourself.
This is an ideal situation for a portable device. Forget lugging a laptop or a computer--that's ridiculous. Every musician needs a portable device to record him/herself for rehearsal purposes. trust me--i'm a musician with geek tendencies.
I think MD with optical or USB is still one of the better options. They're easy enough to use and the quality is acceptable. Unless you have an old old MD, you shouldn't have problems copying self-recorded audio files via some kind of data link.
Here's a good MD resource:
www.minidisc.org
Here are some tips:
1.) make sure you have a MIC in, not just a LINE in. a Microphone input is necessary to boost the signal; line in won't give you the gain you need. My MD recorder has a switchable mic/line input
2.) it's very important to have a decent mic. The best for portable recording are called condenser or electret mics, which take a battery and add some juice to the signal before it even hits the input. Sony makes an affordable stereo mic for like 70 bucks designed for this: the ECM-90x series. There are a bunch of similar things on ebay.
If you really want to ditch minidisc, get an iPod or a high quality digital voice recorder. I don't know much about these, though. I think they make a mic adapter for the iPod--that would be a simple solution, though theh whoel thing would cost maybe 300-400 USD. As for digital voice recorders, don't get anything below 44.1 kHz, or it'll sound like junk. And once again, the mic is important.
also, be sure you don't crank the input level too high (if you have a condenser mic and a mic in) or it will distort and sound like utter garbage.
personally, i like cassette tapes. but luddites have no place on this site, eh?
We have the Zoom palmtop multritrack recorder, and don't forget your Tascam 5 track pocketstudio.
Some decent headphones wouldn't hurt, either. Add a decent microphone and you can do some serious work with this stuff!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
The newer RCA Lyras (RD2010, RD2012, RD2015) have FM (88-108Mhz) recording capability and also a SD memory slot. I have the 2015 (512MB flash) model and my wireless FM mic works great up to a hundred feet. You just make sure they are tuned to the same frequency obviously.
It records as a WAV file, uncompressed (so no ATRAC compression artefacts); it has USB, so I just plug it into my Mac and it appears in iTunes &c, so getting the data off it is a doddle. No DRM or other restrictions.
A few minor downsides to be aware of. It takes 4 rechargeable batteries. (DON'T substitute alkalines if you're stuck; it ran through 4 fresh Duracells in half an hour! I guess the high current it draws means that only NiMHs or similar will cope properly.) The UI is a bit clunky. And it only records at line level; although there's a booster for lower levels, it introduces a whining noise, so avoid it. And there's no on-screen indication of level or anything.
I expect that many of these problems have been fixed in more recent versions; you can probably pick up something with larger capacity for a similar price now. And of course, it's a music player too!
Yes, MD isn't a bad solution. But you probably need convenience more than high sound quality &c. (Gosh, it was only a few years ago that I was recording my singing lessons!) And the ease and speed of getting data off an HD unit compared with MD is probably well worth considering.
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