Mobile recorders

I'm currently looking into buying one. The Sony PCM-D50, albeit expensive, has taken my fancy. The Tascams feature overdub, which is a big plus.

So I'm not yet sure. What do you guys use?

It will be for recording atmos, and if I have an overdub machine, having local musicians in the desert play to my tracks and record them.

I use a zoom H2, it's cheap and cheerfull. Sound quality is decent. The four mics are excellent for capturing "atmos" though.

I'm thinking of getting zoom h1. it's like h2 just with 2 mics instead of 4 as i know. from the demos, quality seems to be fine enough. take a look at it.

i've got the edirol 09-HR, needs a little eq afterwards but picks up loud gigs very well if there not too much sub bass (few recorders can handle serious bass)

i've been quite impressed by that zoom with the built in video recorder but a mate who worked in a music store said zooms were coming back all in the time so i went for the edirol instead. also the 09 is blaggable as a mp3 player and pokes out of my pocket without being noticed, the zooms you can spot a mile off

i also had a tiny yamaha pocketrack which are good if you csn get them cheap but i lost mine with it being so small, had a bladdy ceephax set on it too

  On 10/19/2010 at 12:38 PM, Gocab said:

I use a zoom H2, it's cheap and cheerfull. Sound quality is decent. The four mics are excellent for capturing "atmos" though.

Yeah it's an amazing bit of kit for something so cheap. It was used quite intensively in our last album - being able to record directly onto an SD card is just real handy

NB if you do get one, don't use the supplied SD card - It's too slow and you'll end up with random clicks throughout your recordings which I assume are drop-outs from where the data isn't transferred quick enough. That might account for the returned products on the above post - If I didn't notice that the problem was instantly fixed by using a decent SD card (I'm currently using a 4Gb Sandisk one) then I too would've probably returned it.

  On 10/20/2010 at 2:59 AM, mcbpete said:

  On 10/19/2010 at 12:38 PM, Gocab said:

I use a zoom H2, it's cheap and cheerfull. Sound quality is decent. The four mics are excellent for capturing "atmos" though.

Yeah it's an amazing bit of kit for something so cheap. It was used quite intensively in our last album - being able to record directly onto an SD card is just real handy

 

NB if you do get one, don't use the supplied SD card - It's too slow and you'll end up with random clicks throughout your recordings which I assume are drop-outs from where the data isn't transferred quick enough. That might account for the returned products on the above post - If I didn't notice that the problem was instantly fixed by using a decent SD card (I'm currently using a 4Gb Sandisk one) then I too would've probably returned it.

Thanks for everybody's suggestions - will check out the Zoom even though I'd not considered it before.

Tascam can overdub, a big plus, and Sony sounds supreme.

Yeah, I've got a 8gb high-speed card in mine. The supplied card was only 512 mb I think? I don't know why they even bother, since it's too slow to do high quality 4 channel recordings.

Here's a great little page that has audio recording comparisons for many portable recorders: http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable-recorder-sound-samples.html (that was actually the site that made me go for the H2)

  On 10/20/2010 at 2:21 PM, mcbpete said:

Here's a great little page that has audio recording comparisons for many portable recorders: http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable-recorder-sound-samples.html (that was actually the site that made me go for the H2)

glad I got my 09

anyone tried Alesis Palmtrack?

I haven't tried anything else, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I love my Roland R-05. I've recorded many farts with this device.

I'll be on the market for one of these very soon! Glad this thread popped up! it looks like the Zoom H2 and the Alesis PalmTrack are the way to go for your money. I'd like to do some more research / hear some more testimonials about these two devices and weigh the better option.

The Zooms rule. Our drummer has one here in the house and it fucking kills.

I think the sound on the D50 kills the Zooms, but then, it costs more than double. Do what makes sense for you.

Also, you'll want a windscreen for either one you get. The D50 in particular is very very wind-sensitive.

Yeah the perfect wind shield for the H2 is this one - http://www.htfr.com/more-info/MR341435

Even though it's meant for a Rode mic, the whole thing stretches nicely over the whole unit -

It looks a bit nuts, like an evil cyborg furby - but it works !

Ha, nice. Thanks for the tip, I haven't found a wind shield that makes me happy yet.

Good recommendations so far!

Yesterday I came across Korg's "Sound on Sound" in the store, looked pretty awesome. Unlimited multi-tracking. I've had a zoom h4 for a few years and I love it, sounds great and does everything I want it to. Turn on auto-gain for when I'm at band practice, turn it off when I'm recording birds in the park. I heard the h4n is a bit friendlier though, and the h2's probably work just as well.