At the Muskimesse 2008 conference last week, Edirol announced a new
version of its popular R-09 handheld recorder. The new recorder is
named the R-09HR. Read about it here:
http://www.edirol.net/products/en/R-09HR/index.html
Delivery of the R-09HR should start by June. No price has been
announced. It's not known if Edirol will continue to sell the R-09
once the R-09HR is available.
The "HR" in R-09HR stands for "high resolution." The HR label is
warranted (at least in Edirol's opinion) because a new analog input
circuit was developed for this machine. The new analog preamp is
powered independent of the digital components in the recorder, an
approach Sony uses in the highly regarded PCM-D50. To take full
advantage of the improved analog input, the R-09HR now can digitize
recordings at 24/96 (up from 24/48 in the R-09).
The R-09, like the Edirol R-1 before it, has one of the better analog
circuits available in a pocket-size recorder. It will be interesting
to see how much better the new R-09HR sounds.
The R-09HR retains the form factor of the R-09, with two mic capsules
mounted at the top of the recorder. The new model gains about 20 g
(less than 1 oz).
The biggest complaint against the R-09 is that the 3.5 mm (1/8-inch)
mic and line input jacks are not securely mounted to the recorder's
circuit board. There have been lots of reports of premature failures
of R-09 input jacks. Edirol has been quick to repair the damaged
machines, (repair takes about two weeks) but we all want equipment we
can trust. Hopefully the new R-09HR will address this issue.
A few years ago, the selection of easily portable digital recorders
was limited to 2 DAT machines, plus Sharp and Sony minidiscs. Today,
there are 16 small digital recorders on the market, from 11 vendors!
Less than 100 g
---------------
Yamaha Pocketrak 2G
(announced but not yet available)
more than 100 g
---------------
Sony MZ-RH1 and MZ-M200 HiMD
Marantz PMD620
M-Audio Microtrack II
more than 150 g
---------------
Edirol R-09
Edirol R-09HR
(announced but not yet available)
Zoom H2
Olympus LS-10
more than 200 g
---------------
Korg MR-1
Tascam DR-1
Nagra ARES-M
Zoom H4
more than 300 g
---------------
Sony PCM-D50
more than 500 g
---------------
Sonosax MiniR82
Nagra ARES-PII+
Sony PMD-D1
All of these machines are small enough to operate while holding in one
hand. With the exceptions of the Sonosax MiniR82 and Sony HiMD
recorders, all include a pair of mics.
--oryoki
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