Rob Danielson wrote:
> Walt, There are 8,353 posts in my nat recordists mailbox. I
> appreciate everything you say about portability and simplicity in the
> field because good recordings rely on so many factors coming
> together,.. but I'll bet that before there are 16,706 posts, you'll
> will be recording on a 24 bit, compact device that does not require
> real time transfers to get to your Mac. In the meanwhile, I'll still
> appreciate your warnings about taking laptops into the field. Even
> hhb portadiscs eventually need repair. Best--Rob D.
You might not win that bet. Both my MZ-R30's are still fully functional.
And the oldest one is now 8 years old. Far older than the group.
Yes, any recorder, including solid state ones will wear out. Though I
expect to be forced out by lack of blanks first. If I live that long.
I record on a compact device now, such things are relative. And fast
transfers would just add to the time it takes me to process recordings.
As I've noted, I listen carefully to everything I record, and one of
those listening sessions just happens to occur while the recording is
being transferred. So a fast transfer would be additional time.
Amusing thing, my Palm uses SD cards. The transfer of 230 megs, a single
file containing a topo of all of Georgia, took 14 hours using the
official software. I have no idea what dumb thing the programmers did.
The transfer was done on a 1ghz Sony laptop, not my mac. Later,
cheating, using just the mac's file copy it took 8 minutes using a USB
card reader. But for that to work you had to have the file produced by
the 14 hour transfer.
If it's going to take $3K to get M/S in the new stuff I'm going to be
repairing my existing equipment as long as I can. I would love to have
all the capabilities of the MP2 built into the front end of the
Portadisc. That should cost less than a $3K pre as the combined price is
less.
Even should I end up doing 24bit recording, I'm willing to bet it won't
involve a laptop out in the field. It will be a proper field recorder
made for the purpose. That's the bottom line. I don't want to pay the
repair bills that carting a laptop into the swamp would involve. To say
nothing of the inconvenience. And I don't have time for how much it
would slow me down.
A much more valuable addition to recorders than 24 bit would be a silent
insect zapper. With a range far enough to protect the recordist from
head to toe. And his microphone.
Walt
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