Field Recordings...

I would like to take some field recordings. Audio quality does not matter in the least for what I want it for, but costing less than £50 is a very important consideration. What do you think I should buy - a little tape dictaphone, some digital voice recorder, minidisk player? It has to be cheap cheap cheap, because I am cheap. If you take field recordings, what do you use? Any recommendations?

I've got the Edirol R-09, but it's more than 50$, so why not just a minidisc with a stereo mic?

ya, 2nd hand minidisc.

maybe even an old skool cassette deck

  iep said:

ya, 2nd hand minidisc.

yea, they're probably cheap now and they work well

don't get the one i have, it takes 24672 buttons to disable the shit-ass builtin compressor

what's a good mic for a minidisc, i'm kinda interested as well.

  YEKKER said:

what's a good mic for a minidisc, i'm kinda interested as well.

This is my next question!

But with "cheap" as well as good :grin:

those big awesome headphones you've got?

if they swivel outward, use them as a stereo mic

monitor with ear buds

i always look like i'm wiring a bomb when i'm recording stuff outside

it's kinda ruins the point of a quality minidisc recording if you are going to record with headphones.

i do like the idea though only for reasons of sneakiness,

  ieafs said:

  YEKKER said:

it's kinda ruins the point of a quality minidisc recording if you are going to record with headphones.

i do like the idea though only for reasons of sneakiness,

to be fair, a standard minidisc records at like 292kbps so it's not really super-high-fidelity-audio anyway... there wouldn't be any point of using some $10,000 shotgun mic.

 

i use a sony ECM-MS907 which i find is pretty good for everything i use it for - field recordings, instruments, vocals. it's pretty rugged and small which is good for field recording especially. the next step up is the sony ECM-MS957 which is apprently has way less self-noise, but at $250 us i can't really afford it... and i'm too interested an great quality recordings anyway.

 

i recorded this the other day with a 2 dollar little lapel mic. it was really windy and the guy was talking through some crappy amp about 200 metres away, but even with this absolute minimum of equipment - it's usuable and you can hear the atmosphere.

ahh that's nice to know the quality of an md, i never knew that. as for that mic you have, it looks like a good buy, maybe i'll check if my "sony store" has one.

  ieafs said:

  YEKKER said:

ahh that's nice to know the quality of an md, i never knew that. as for that mic you have, it looks like a good buy, maybe i'll check if my "sony store" has one.

well like i said, that clip was recorded on a TINY LAPEL MIC into my hi-md recorder.

 

there's no moving parts with a minidisc recorder and any hiss or anything you're going to get is from the MICROPHONE not the recorder itself. and with the hi-md models you can record in PCM wav files so there's no compression either.

does compression from the md really affect a recording that much? i own:

it was quite top of the line when i got it. all metal, built like a tank, but i assume it still has that compression feature.

  YEKKER said:

  ieafs said:

  YEKKER said:

ahh that's nice to know the quality of an md, i never knew that. as for that mic you have, it looks like a good buy, maybe i'll check if my "sony store" has one.

well like i said, that clip was recorded on a TINY LAPEL MIC into my hi-md recorder.

 

there's no moving parts with a minidisc recorder and any hiss or anything you're going to get is from the MICROPHONE not the recorder itself. and with the hi-md models you can record in PCM wav files so there's no compression either.

does compression from the md really affect a recording that much? i own:

it was quite top of the line when i got it. all metal, built like a tank, but i assume it still has that compression feature.

i have a stereo mode actually, and lp 2 and 4, which you can use to fit more onto the md

it was already setup as stereo so i guess i'm good to go

  ieafs said:

here's a junk file (ie. something no-one can get samples from :laughing:) i just got off my mindisc to give you an idea of the sound of that sony microphone... you can hear the hiss and that through it.

 

i can, and will "get samples" from that. oh yes.

I'd say minidisc and microphone is the way to go, my brother recorded some gigs on his old one and the sound quality isn't that bad considering it was gaffer taped to a pole.

Those dictaphone things are really over-rated, they seem great until you find out they are recording at 28kbps or something xD

  ieafs said:

there's no moving parts with a minidisc recorder and any hiss or anything you're going to get is from the MICROPHONE not the recorder itself.

I use:

+

My minidisc makes spinny noises when I first start recording.

  YEKKER said:

does compression from the md really affect a recording that much? i own:

it was quite top of the line when i got it. all metal, built like a tank, but i assume it still has that compression feature.

I got one of they (but a mighty shade of blue instead), yeah they're pretty fuckin' solid aren't they ? And the quality is pretty awesome on standard SP stero mode.