I am interested in acquiring a better recording device for my ITM camps and sessions this summer (and beyond). I have a Sony MZ-RH10 MiniDisc player currently but I would like better quality, longer battery life, and more storage space. I don't mind carrying around a larger device, not TOO big mind you, so long as my other needs are met. I know that's a lot to ask, and maybe ya can't have 'em all, but I'm just looking for the best I can find for under $1K (U.S. dollars).
My current favorites are:
1) Edirol R-1 and R-9
2) M-Audio Microtrack 24/96
3) Marantz PMD660 and PMD670
If anyone owns or has experience with any of these, would you please give a brief "review" of it with pro's and con's, etc.? My main use of whatever device I purchase will be to record sessions, lessons, concerts, etc. but MAINLY SESSIONS. I am fascinated by the dynamics of sessions and try to document them whenever I can. Hi-fidelity recording quality is a MUST.
Thanks for all your help, which is always forthcoming and generous here at TheSession.Org,
Sean Earnest
Camp Hill, PA
P.S. My Phil Crump B-3 bouzouki arrives tomorrow! At last....
The R-9 looks like a great unit. I tried to buy one but they are apparantly back ordered. If you find where you can get one let me know as I would love one before my trip to Ireland this June.
The R-1, R-09 and the M-Audio 24/96 all cost about the same, so the comparison would, for me, have to be concerned more with the feature set, or... maybe just some unquantifiable personal choice... <G>
The chip-based devices have two innate advantages: They record soundfiles to real-world professional standards (if you choose) and the files transfer to a computer really quickly and easily. I suppose the absence of moving parts is a bit of an advantage, too...
They're all very good. I recently had clients bring me recordings from minidisk and an Edirol R-1. To do some comparisons, we transferred the recordings into ProTools in two ways, direct digital copying and playing the analog out thru a nice mic preamp.
We liked the analog better, but it was a -very, very- close call, and the mini disk did not suffer in comparison to the R-1 at all.
I've never had any complaint about the -sound- of minidisks, but I hated the "lossy" data compression, just on principle.
The later devices record real, full bandwidth .WAV files, and at grown-up sample rates, so that one could conceivably record an evening and the next day release it as a commercial CD. Of course these same files can be transferrred into a computer and ... 'treated,' affected, edited, mangled in any professional audio program.
The R-1 and the Edirol have some features that not everyone will need, digital reverbs and other effects (yawn...), and in the R-09 leaves 'em out, but the lack isn't really well-reflected in the price difference (IMO). (Which will give you some idea how cheap the FX chip is... <GG>)
My choice (I haven't bought it yet) for now is the Edirol, but I don't have really quantifiable reasons for the choice. I guess I like rectangular better than square... <G>
I've carried some sort of recorder with me essentially all the time for years. I find that I just don't use it much. Most of the time it's just too ... psychically (I guess)... jarring to step 'out of the moment' to mess with a recording device when the music is going on. But with this generation of devices the post-production path is so short and smooth that I can't pass one up. (Soon. <GG>)
I think you'd be better off spending that money getting a good microphone (and possibly pre-amp) for your mini-disc recorder. All the hard drive / flash memory recorders that have line-in recording are going to give fairly comparable results, modulo a few factors like recording format. And since you can always pop in a new mini-disc, I'm not sure what your concern is about storage space.
Hopefully you understand that with this sort of set-up your session recordings are never going to sound like a studio recording. Sessions have a wide dynamic range and you're inevitably going to get a lot of background noise in your recording. With a single microphone, unless you can hang it overhead or some such, you're also going to have balance problems with the nearer instruments drowning out the distant instruments. Switching from a mini-disc recorder isn't going to fix any of those problems.
Scott makes some good points. I have done post-production on some really nice recordings made with a fine stereo mic and a minidisk.
While Scott's assertion that "with this sort of set-up your session recordings are never going to sound like a studio recording" is essentially true, it doesn't mean that live (session) recordings can't be made into great CDs, but not without some further tweakings. Mic placements are always a bit dodgy unless it's arranged beforehand with the players and so on... As for the dynamic range... well, there's a way to deal with that... more or less happily... <GGG>
But live recordings and studio recordings are as different as fish and fowl...
I came back to post because I took another look at the R-1,
R-09 and the M-Audio 24/96...
The two R-1 and R-09 have internal mics (that seem to be very good for such an application) and the 24/96 does not.
That seems to be the biggest difference. Another is the media capacity, to some extent. Minidisks will record a long time, but at reduced bit-rates &/or sacrificing stereo for mono.
With a 2-gig chip, the newer recorders will do full-bandwidth for a pretty long time...
Still, when folks come to me and ask if they should dump their minidisks for the new recorders, I generally tell them not to spend the extra $$ unless some new conditions have made the MD of less utility than ... it was last week... <GG>
I have the same minidisc and get some truly outstanding near CD quality recordings on the HighSP mode. You can go one mode higher too, I haven't seen the need to, and it greatly reduces recording time. I think the gig disc will go like an hour and a half, instead of the eight or so on High SP.
Are you sure your mike settings in the recording menu are adjusted right. Unless real loud music, use standard mode, and low sensitivity. It makes all the difference. I can sometimes barely tell the quality from if it had been done on my porta-studio with big condenser mikes all around.
I even was able to plug the minidisc player into my sound system using the two out and one in (into the WHITE input on the Minidisc player) and got incredible results.
I am recording a concert tomorrow night and will bring the minidisc recorder as a backup in case the other board spazzes out on me as it once did. It's darn close to the real thing, unless your mike settings are wrong, then you get not so hot quality.
Another thing, with the Sony stereo mike, on the above mentioned settings, manually adjust the volume (it also controls recording levels) to no more that 3/4 of the way up. Somewhere areound 2/3 is pretty good, or else you may get clipping (that static noise when something is too loud).
The one thing about it, if you burn a CD from it....and the porta Studios too so I hear, and true of mine too.... it is best to maybe bring the wav. file into something like audacity or anything where you can raise the volume a little, so it's not way soft compared to the car radio if that matters to you. I am not sure if Sonic Stage will allow you to raise it there, maybe ITunes would, don't know, I use Audacity for that.
I hear on the Microtrack that if you plug in a mike that needs phantom power it's not strong enough to power many mikes out there. Got that infor after much investigation.
Also the Gig discs are real cheap and even cheaper the standard five to a pack ones that give about 2 1/2 hours on highSP mode, and only are about a dollar each. Cheaper than those little memory things you have to buy.
To make a short story long, if you're getting bad results sound wise, check the settings and see if it gets better. You can sound check what you're recording too by having the earphones on and walking to the sweetest sounding spot to record.
hey Stv...can I do this too:
Iris Nevins
"Celtic Guitar Dreams"
http:/www.OSSIANUSA.com
I use a Sony mike (external with a 6' cord) and the quality is very very good. It has a built in mike but this way I can get the mike where the pickup is best and still run the buttons. It's also easy to use. Used it at Friday Harbor this year. I tried other stuff but I think this can't be beat and ..... I also have 13Gb of tunes (400 Cds) on it which I can play in the car on the stereo with the little transmitter and .... it plugs into my laptop (which I usually am not far from) so the files are immediately editable with Audacity so I can separate them and name them before they're a blur in my mind. It has two outputs for earphones so my wife and I can both sit on an airplane and listen to music.
I had one of the original MD units and upgraded to the newer Hi-MD format. Bad move. Although the feature set is pretty extensive and MD's in general are capable of producing very good sound, the user interface on the Sony Hi-MD is a nightmare. There's also a delay of several seconds before recording commences that was driving me crazy. FInally, on some recordings, you could detect a bit of motor hum during quiet passages.
I've since gotten the Edirol R-1 which I like very much. It's biggest apparent disadvantage is its lack of on-board editing. But with Audacity, it's very simple to upload from R-1 to a PC and do whatever editing is necessary. The output can then be saved in a variety of formats, including WAV and MP3. So, the apparent lack of editing is actually a non-issue. A more annoying shortcoming is the lack of an internal clock. All files appear to have been made at the same moment, at midnight on January 1 of 2002. If you're accustomed to using file time/date information as a way of keeping track of things, you have a problem. Of course, once the files run through the PC, they have time/date stamps but still the initial lack is annoying.
The main differences between the R-1 and 09 seem to be the lack of effects and presence of Bluetooth on the latter. The effects really wouldn't be missed. I can imagine circumstances in which a bit of reverb or mic modelling might be desirable but I prefer recording pretty much unadulterated and wouldn't miss the effects. On the other hand, Bluetooth capability isn't something I have any use for, though others might.
The Edirol mics are surprisingly good for built-ins. The sound is very clean and realistic. There's no moving parts to create any hum, and the user interface is straightforward if you're not messing with effects. Even if you are, it's still a less confusing interface than the Sony Hi-MD. Those with more patience may not find the latter as frustrating as I did, however.
We're fortunate to have several nice options that weren't around several years ago. I'm well pleased with the Edirol R-1 but, depending on personal needs and preferences, there are multiple options that might appeal to you.
On the HiMD if you arm it to record and then record, I inititially can get a second of machine noise, I adapted and start a few seconds ahead. The menu interface is a nightmare until you go through the manual and try the options a time or two, then it becomes second nature. The buttons to press are annoyingly small, but then, it's the size and light weight of the thing that's great.
If you want to stop recording between tunes, don't cancel it out and start recording from scratch, if you just press the record button it will stay armed, then when ready do it again, it's like an on/off switch. This way I don't get the initial recording noise.
Yes, you nearly need to take a course in working the darn thing, and the manual is a bit overwhelming, but I find that true of all the recording devices I have had thus far.
Too bad there isn't a place you can try them all out before you buy. I still wonder if one of them would have been better, but I was amazed at the near CD quality I get off the MZ10. If you had someone to show you the basics it's really not so hard.
I could practically give a one day course in how to get from MD to a real decent sounding CD using audacity edits and EQ.
I find that it records fairly treble though can bring in a touch of bass in Audacity. May be just a taste thing. It's pretty realistic. I don't get any machine noise that's noticeable at least while music is on, then again I do edit out all the spaces between tunes.
It's nothing short of crystal clear when run through a PA system's outs and into the line in on the MD. This is all HI SP mode. Haven't played with the better quality.
With any of these, the key is going to be mike placement, not to far, not too close, and record settings.
I've got an M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 with a Sound Professionals mic that was built specifically for the Microtrack. It plugs into the higher quality (at least that's the claim) 1/4" jacks instead of the stereo mini-plug. The mic isn't very big...as wide as the Microtrack and extends it about 1/2".
I just received an Edirol R-09 on Friday and its amazing, a real improvement over the R-1. In testing I'm getting over 7 hours of continuous recording on a pair of AAs, and the sound is comparable with my previous portable recorder, an M-Audio Microtrack 2496.
Also, Roland really got it right as far as the user interface ease-of-use, the OLED black/white display is one of the most readable I've seen on any recorder, and my test recording of the session in Long Beach yesterday with the R-09 on the table in front of me really came out excellent.
Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
Hello, friends!
I am interested in acquiring a better recording device for my ITM camps and sessions this summer (and beyond). I have a Sony MZ-RH10 MiniDisc player currently but I would like better quality, longer battery life, and more storage space. I don't mind carrying around a larger device, not TOO big mind you, so long as my other needs are met. I know that's a lot to ask, and maybe ya can't have 'em all, but I'm just looking for the best I can find for under $1K (U.S. dollars).
My current favorites are:
1) Edirol R-1 and R-9
2) M-Audio Microtrack 24/96
3) Marantz PMD660 and PMD670
If anyone owns or has experience with any of these, would you please give a brief "review" of it with pro's and con's, etc.? My main use of whatever device I purchase will be to record sessions, lessons, concerts, etc. but MAINLY SESSIONS. I am fascinated by the dynamics of sessions and try to document them whenever I can. Hi-fidelity recording quality is a MUST.
Thanks for all your help, which is always forthcoming and generous here at TheSession.Org,
Sean Earnest
Camp Hill, PA
P.S. My Phil Crump B-3 bouzouki arrives tomorrow! At last....
# Posted on May 26th 2006 by DADGADLad
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
The R-9 looks like a great unit. I tried to buy one but they are apparantly back ordered. If you find where you can get one let me know as I would love one before my trip to Ireland this June.
# Posted on May 26th 2006 by williamcoulter
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
Edirol/M-audio work for me. I saw an M-audio used by one of the "gadget "guys that I know and was blown away by it. Repeat after me..Lottery..lottery
# Posted on May 26th 2006 by I_Fel
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
Try the BBC.
# Posted on May 26th 2006 by Newty
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
1K for a contraption ! I'd be looking for a new banjo and hard case for that price
# Posted on May 26th 2006 by Strathfoyle
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
The R-1, R-09 and the M-Audio 24/96 all cost about the same, so the comparison would, for me, have to be concerned more with the feature set, or... maybe just some unquantifiable personal choice... <G>
The chip-based devices have two innate advantages: They record soundfiles to real-world professional standards (if you choose) and the files transfer to a computer really quickly and easily. I suppose the absence of moving parts is a bit of an advantage, too...
They're all very good. I recently had clients bring me recordings from minidisk and an Edirol R-1. To do some comparisons, we transferred the recordings into ProTools in two ways, direct digital copying and playing the analog out thru a nice mic preamp.
We liked the analog better, but it was a -very, very- close call, and the mini disk did not suffer in comparison to the R-1 at all.
I've never had any complaint about the -sound- of minidisks, but I hated the "lossy" data compression, just on principle.
The later devices record real, full bandwidth .WAV files, and at grown-up sample rates, so that one could conceivably record an evening and the next day release it as a commercial CD. Of course these same files can be transferrred into a computer and ... 'treated,' affected, edited, mangled in any professional audio program.
The R-1 and the Edirol have some features that not everyone will need, digital reverbs and other effects (yawn...), and in the R-09 leaves 'em out, but the lack isn't really well-reflected in the price difference (IMO). (Which will give you some idea how cheap the FX chip is... <GG>)
My choice (I haven't bought it yet) for now is the Edirol, but I don't have really quantifiable reasons for the choice. I guess I like rectangular better than square... <G>
I've carried some sort of recorder with me essentially all the time for years. I find that I just don't use it much. Most of the time it's just too ... psychically (I guess)... jarring to step 'out of the moment' to mess with a recording device when the music is going on. But with this generation of devices the post-production path is so short and smooth that I can't pass one up. (Soon. <GG>)
I hope this helps...
stv
The Culchies, Irish traditional music
CD, "Bruscar Bán" now at
http://www.OSSIANUSA.com
# Posted on May 26th 2006 by stv culchie
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
I think you'd be better off spending that money getting a good microphone (and possibly pre-amp) for your mini-disc recorder. All the hard drive / flash memory recorders that have line-in recording are going to give fairly comparable results, modulo a few factors like recording format. And since you can always pop in a new mini-disc, I'm not sure what your concern is about storage space.
Hopefully you understand that with this sort of set-up your session recordings are never going to sound like a studio recording. Sessions have a wide dynamic range and you're inevitably going to get a lot of background noise in your recording. With a single microphone, unless you can hang it overhead or some such, you're also going to have balance problems with the nearer instruments drowning out the distant instruments. Switching from a mini-disc recorder isn't going to fix any of those problems.
-- Scott
# Posted on May 26th 2006 by srt19170
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
Scott makes some good points. I have done post-production on some really nice recordings made with a fine stereo mic and a minidisk.
While Scott's assertion that "with this sort of set-up your session recordings are never going to sound like a studio recording" is essentially true, it doesn't mean that live (session) recordings can't be made into great CDs, but not without some further tweakings. Mic placements are always a bit dodgy unless it's arranged beforehand with the players and so on... As for the dynamic range... well, there's a way to deal with that... more or less happily... <GGG>
But live recordings and studio recordings are as different as fish and fowl...
I came back to post because I took another look at the R-1,
R-09 and the M-Audio 24/96...
The two R-1 and R-09 have internal mics (that seem to be very good for such an application) and the 24/96 does not.
That seems to be the biggest difference. Another is the media capacity, to some extent. Minidisks will record a long time, but at reduced bit-rates &/or sacrificing stereo for mono.
With a 2-gig chip, the newer recorders will do full-bandwidth for a pretty long time...
Still, when folks come to me and ask if they should dump their minidisks for the new recorders, I generally tell them not to spend the extra $$ unless some new conditions have made the MD of less utility than ... it was last week... <GG>
stv
The Culchies, Irish traditional music
CD, "Bruscar Bán" now at
http://www.OSSIANUSA.com
# Posted on May 26th 2006 by stv culchie
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
I have the same minidisc and get some truly outstanding near CD quality recordings on the HighSP mode. You can go one mode higher too, I haven't seen the need to, and it greatly reduces recording time. I think the gig disc will go like an hour and a half, instead of the eight or so on High SP.
Are you sure your mike settings in the recording menu are adjusted right. Unless real loud music, use standard mode, and low sensitivity. It makes all the difference. I can sometimes barely tell the quality from if it had been done on my porta-studio with big condenser mikes all around.
I even was able to plug the minidisc player into my sound system using the two out and one in (into the WHITE input on the Minidisc player) and got incredible results.
I am recording a concert tomorrow night and will bring the minidisc recorder as a backup in case the other board spazzes out on me as it once did. It's darn close to the real thing, unless your mike settings are wrong, then you get not so hot quality.
Another thing, with the Sony stereo mike, on the above mentioned settings, manually adjust the volume (it also controls recording levels) to no more that 3/4 of the way up. Somewhere areound 2/3 is pretty good, or else you may get clipping (that static noise when something is too loud).
The one thing about it, if you burn a CD from it....and the porta Studios too so I hear, and true of mine too.... it is best to maybe bring the wav. file into something like audacity or anything where you can raise the volume a little, so it's not way soft compared to the car radio if that matters to you. I am not sure if Sonic Stage will allow you to raise it there, maybe ITunes would, don't know, I use Audacity for that.
I hear on the Microtrack that if you plug in a mike that needs phantom power it's not strong enough to power many mikes out there. Got that infor after much investigation.
Also the Gig discs are real cheap and even cheaper the standard five to a pack ones that give about 2 1/2 hours on highSP mode, and only are about a dollar each. Cheaper than those little memory things you have to buy.
To make a short story long, if you're getting bad results sound wise, check the settings and see if it gets better. You can sound check what you're recording too by having the earphones on and walking to the sweetest sounding spot to record.
hey Stv...can I do this too:
Iris Nevins
"Celtic Guitar Dreams"
http:/www.OSSIANUSA.com
# Posted on May 26th 2006 by irisnevins
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
I have an iRiver H300 with a 20Gb hard drive.
I use a Sony mike (external with a 6' cord) and the quality is very very good. It has a built in mike but this way I can get the mike where the pickup is best and still run the buttons. It's also easy to use. Used it at Friday Harbor this year. I tried other stuff but I think this can't be beat and ..... I also have 13Gb of tunes (400 Cds) on it which I can play in the car on the stereo with the little transmitter and .... it plugs into my laptop (which I usually am not far from) so the files are immediately editable with Audacity so I can separate them and name them before they're a blur in my mind. It has two outputs for earphones so my wife and I can both sit on an airplane and listen to music.
# Posted on May 26th 2006 by P&P
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
I had one of the original MD units and upgraded to the newer Hi-MD format. Bad move. Although the feature set is pretty extensive and MD's in general are capable of producing very good sound, the user interface on the Sony Hi-MD is a nightmare. There's also a delay of several seconds before recording commences that was driving me crazy. FInally, on some recordings, you could detect a bit of motor hum during quiet passages.
I've since gotten the Edirol R-1 which I like very much. It's biggest apparent disadvantage is its lack of on-board editing. But with Audacity, it's very simple to upload from R-1 to a PC and do whatever editing is necessary. The output can then be saved in a variety of formats, including WAV and MP3. So, the apparent lack of editing is actually a non-issue. A more annoying shortcoming is the lack of an internal clock. All files appear to have been made at the same moment, at midnight on January 1 of 2002. If you're accustomed to using file time/date information as a way of keeping track of things, you have a problem. Of course, once the files run through the PC, they have time/date stamps but still the initial lack is annoying.
The main differences between the R-1 and 09 seem to be the lack of effects and presence of Bluetooth on the latter. The effects really wouldn't be missed. I can imagine circumstances in which a bit of reverb or mic modelling might be desirable but I prefer recording pretty much unadulterated and wouldn't miss the effects. On the other hand, Bluetooth capability isn't something I have any use for, though others might.
The Edirol mics are surprisingly good for built-ins. The sound is very clean and realistic. There's no moving parts to create any hum, and the user interface is straightforward if you're not messing with effects. Even if you are, it's still a less confusing interface than the Sony Hi-MD. Those with more patience may not find the latter as frustrating as I did, however.
We're fortunate to have several nice options that weren't around several years ago. I'm well pleased with the Edirol R-1 but, depending on personal needs and preferences, there are multiple options that might appeal to you.
# Posted on May 27th 2006 by devellis
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
On the HiMD if you arm it to record and then record, I inititially can get a second of machine noise, I adapted and start a few seconds ahead. The menu interface is a nightmare until you go through the manual and try the options a time or two, then it becomes second nature. The buttons to press are annoyingly small, but then, it's the size and light weight of the thing that's great.
If you want to stop recording between tunes, don't cancel it out and start recording from scratch, if you just press the record button it will stay armed, then when ready do it again, it's like an on/off switch. This way I don't get the initial recording noise.
Yes, you nearly need to take a course in working the darn thing, and the manual is a bit overwhelming, but I find that true of all the recording devices I have had thus far.
Too bad there isn't a place you can try them all out before you buy. I still wonder if one of them would have been better, but I was amazed at the near CD quality I get off the MZ10. If you had someone to show you the basics it's really not so hard.
I could practically give a one day course in how to get from MD to a real decent sounding CD using audacity edits and EQ.
I find that it records fairly treble though can bring in a touch of bass in Audacity. May be just a taste thing. It's pretty realistic. I don't get any machine noise that's noticeable at least while music is on, then again I do edit out all the spaces between tunes.
It's nothing short of crystal clear when run through a PA system's outs and into the line in on the MD. This is all HI SP mode. Haven't played with the better quality.
With any of these, the key is going to be mike placement, not to far, not too close, and record settings.
# Posted on May 27th 2006 by irisnevins
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
I've got an M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 with a Sound Professionals mic that was built specifically for the Microtrack. It plugs into the higher quality (at least that's the claim) 1/4" jacks instead of the stereo mini-plug. The mic isn't very big...as wide as the Microtrack and extends it about 1/2".
Check here:
http://faculty.ivytech.edu/~bpfingst/ss/ss.html
Everything recorded in 2006 (after the § New tunes for 2006! § divider) was recorded with the Microtrack.
The stuff before 2006 was recorded with a Marantz portable casette deck.
However, I still think the Microtrack and Edirol stuff is overpriced right now.
-Brett
# Posted on May 27th 2006 by bretton
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
I just received an Edirol R-09 on Friday and its amazing, a real improvement over the R-1. In testing I'm getting over 7 hours of continuous recording on a pair of AAs, and the sound is comparable with my previous portable recorder, an M-Audio Microtrack 2496.
# Posted on May 30th 2006 by Michael Eskin
Re: Best Recording Device For Camps, Sessions
Also, Roland really got it right as far as the user interface ease-of-use, the OLED black/white display is one of the most readable I've seen on any recorder, and my test recording of the session in Long Beach yesterday with the R-09 on the table in front of me really came out excellent.
# Posted on May 30th 2006 by Michael Eskin