Dear All
I hope I'm not asking too-stupid questions here. I would appreciate any answers
or hints on where to find the info I'm after.
I am in the market for a relatively inexpensive, portable recorder that can
record in some sort of uncompressed format (e.g. AIFF). The primary use for the
recorder will be for ambient sound and interviews for radio pieces, but I also
will use it for recording bird and frog calls that I may want to analyse using
Raven or similar programmes (hence the need for an uncompressed format - I am
an environmental journalist with a serious academic interest in biology and
have just started becoming interested in sound). My primary mic is a Sennhieser
ME 66 with K6 power module (already bought).
It's important to me that the recorder be compact, light, reliable, and that
the manual recording level can be easily adjusted while recording.
I have excluded the Marantz flash recorders from consideration because they are
too big and heavy. After looking around a lot I have whittled my list down to 2
options:
1) Sony MZ RH1 MiniDisc recorder
2) Zoom H4 Handy Recorder (or possibly Zoom H2)
I'm leaning towards the MiniDisc for 3 reasons: 1, the recording level seems
more easily adjustable on the fly, and 2 that MiniDiscs are far cheaper than
flash memory cards (I will sometimes need to carry at least 5GB of storage far
away from my computer for the type of things I do, and I'm not rolling in cash
right now), and 3 that the MiniDisc unit is smaller than the Zoom.
Also, I've read that the Zoom has an irritating and incurable low-level
clicking sound on quiet tracks made using battery power (I will not be using
the unit tethered to a wall plug).
However (and this is where I really need some of your experience and insight),
the MiniDisc does not have balanced XLR inputs.
How much of a problem is this, as I will virtually never be using a mic cable
of longer than 1.5m? Not being much of an audio technician, I gather that the
chief advantage of a balanced line is that interference is minimised over long
distance. Does 1.5m count as 'long distance'? I also have heard that the
preamps of the MiniDisc deliver far cleaner sound than many other small
recorders.
I also had the occasional problem of equipment noise with my previous MiniDisc
recorder (MZ R909) - sometimes the whirring of the unit interfered with
recordings, ad I'm not sure how noisy the RH1 is. The 909 also died of
mysterious causes, even though I handled it carefully.
Any advice will be gratefully received - pros and cons of the equipment I've
identified, as well as alternatives that I might not know about.
Regards
Adam Welz
Cape Town, South Africa
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