Robin,
Thanks for this well-written, non-technical presentation.
Here are four suggestions to make a good article more useful.
First, be sure to explain the tech jargon. Terms like SPL and phantom power
will be unfamiliar to a reader who is new to audio recording.
Second, since you point to EIN as an important criterion, it should be
explained more fully. At least tell people how to interpret the EIN values in
the table. I'm thinking of statements like, "EIN higher than -100 means
pre-amp noise easily will be heard in your recordings."
If this seems to complicated for your audience, then I would not present the
actual EIN numbers, and substitute a rating of preamp noise, such as "high,
moderate, low, very low."
Speaking of EIN, I would provide greater credit to Raimund Specht for his work
that provides insight into the EIN of portable recorders. Perhaps you could
include a footnote, as well as a hyperlink to his web page.
Third, you describe several criteria you think are important in the process of
choosing a recorder. But then you don't provide any notes about how well the
20 recorders in your list meet most of those criteria.
For example, you write (and I certainly agree) that ease of use in the field is
important. You could add a column to the table that rates ease of use using a
scale of 1 to 4 (1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = excellent).
Fourth, your table includes lots of information about recorder size, but the
article text doesn't mention size as an important criterion. You could leave
out all the dimensional data, and just keep the three categories,
"pocket-size," "hand-held," and "shoulder." That would make room for ratings
on the criteria you do say are important, such as ease of use, speed of boot
up, pre-roll buffer, battery life, build quality and so on.
--oryoki
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