David,
I understand your desire to continue to use your cassette machine.
When you decide to improve the quality of your recordings, the Hi-MD
minidisc is the most cost-effective alternative.
Your Sony cassette tape machine was widely used for field recording
during the 1990's. I'd guess that the majority of bird vocalizations
in library and research collections today were made using tape
machines similar to yours.
Field recording technology has improved a lot in the last few years.
Your recordings will capture a much wider frequency range if you
switch to an inexpensive Hi-MD minidisc machine (your cassette tape
machine is limited to a range of 100 to 9,000 Hz, Hi-MD 20 to 20,000
Hz). The minidisc machine also has a considerably quieter preamp
(less "hiss" in the recording). Hi-MD is a digital format, which
makes for faster and more accurate transfers of your recordings to
your computer. And a Hi-MD recorder is much smaller and lighter than
your cassette machine. You can easily slip it into a big shirt pocket.
It won't take a big investment to update your equipment. The cheapest
new Hi-MD recorder is the Sony MZ-NH700. It's a discontinued model
that is readily available (unused) on eBay for about $130, sometimes
less. If you would prefer to purchase a current model, the Sony
MZ-RH910 costs about $170. Add $35 for five reusable Hi-MD discs, and
you're set.
While the cassette recorder should be retired, your Sennheiser mic is
still perfectly serviceable. I'd connect it to the minidisc machine
using a Shure A96f impedance matching transformer ($40, discussed in a
recent message).
--oryoki
"Microphones are not ears,
Loudspeakers are not birds,
A listening room is not nature."
Klas Strandberg
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