At 11:48 PM +0000 12/4/07, oryoki2000 wrote:
>I received the Sony PCM-D50 field recorder today. I'll have a more
>complete report in a day or so, but I decided to post a quick note.
>
>At first, I was disappointed by what appeared to be a preamp that is
>noisy, or perhaps the built-in mics are noisy. Then I realized that
>the sensitivity of the built-in mic is very high. I was driving the
>preamp to clipping with a gain setting of 7/10. Backing off to a gain
>setting of 5/10 made my voice recordings indoors sound much better.
>
>Outside, I tried recording wind chimes at a distance of 10 feet (3
>meters). Again, a setting of 7 of 10 was the maximum before lots of
>distortion and clipping.
>
>The built-in mics proved to be more sensitive than my Sennheiser ME20.
>In other words, the built-in mics produce a louder recording than the
>ME20 does, when capturing the same source material.
>
>Fortunately, the D50 has a -20dB cut filter, selectable by a switch.
>With the cut filter turned on, gain levels of 8 or 9 were OK, with low
>preamp noise noticeable.
Not likely to be the mics. Seems like something could still be set
wrong, at least based on typical gain of other Sony recorders. Dan's
Nagra ARES-M had ~ 90dB of gain, but I think I had to select some
special settings, not the default/start-up ones to get that. Rob D.
>
>With this detail understood, I'm starting to like the D50!
>
>--oryoki
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