Portable Digital Recorders

[cflutist]

In the market for a portable digital recorder.

Alan brought his Sony PCM-M10 over yesterday and we recorded the Cimarosa for 2 flutes and piano (which we are performing tomorrow). Hooked it up to our audio system for playback and it sounded fine to me (and could also hear the differences in our tone).

Researched it a bit more and also found an Olympus LS-11 and Zoom H4n that looked interesting.

Do any of you have any recommendations? I want to spend about $200 - $300 for one.

Thanks in advance.

[Phineas]

Well, there are lots of options to choose from. The Zoom H4 is a good choice. However, if you are not going to do multi-track recording, the Zoom H2 may suite you needs better. I own the Zoom H2, and it is an amazing mic/recorder for the money. I paid $150.00 for mine. You can usually pick up one for up under $200.

[pied_piper]

I have a Tascam DR-1 and I've been very happy with it. It uses an SD card for the media, so you can record hours of stuff on it. It will record in either MP3 or WAV format. WAV format is uncompressed for the absolute best recording but the MP3 sounds equally as good when using a high sample rate. It has built-in stereo mikes and line-level inputs for recording from a mixer too. Lots of other good features too. It's available at Amazon for under $200.

[fluteguy18]

I have the Zoom H2, and I love it.

[Bo]

I bought the Edirol/Roland R-09 about two years ago. It was on sale in my local shop, down to I think about 350 dollars from almost 800, so I grabbed it. I love it...

[cflutist]

Thanks for the suggestions.
I ended up buying the Sony and am happy with it so far.

Made my first recordings yesterday ... just like pictures don't lie, well neither do recordings ... LOL !!!

I've got some work to do before July's Masterclass. Will be preseting the Bach e minor (fell in love with Bach sonatas again) and the Bozza Image. Preseted the Bach Partita and Mozart #1 last year.

So what does one do with the editing software that is provided (Sound Forge Audio Studio 9 LE)?

[pied_piper]

Made my first recordings yesterday ... just like pictures don't lie, well neither do recordings ... LOL !!!

...unless you have Photoshop or a sound editing program...

[cflutist]

So what does one do with the sound editting programs?

I was using the recorder to listen to my playing so that I could make improvements.

[pied_piper]

Lots of things are possible. For example, our church choir made recordings to sell as a fund raiser (and yes we paid royalties to the publishers for recording rights). I recorded each piece in multiple takes. On one piece that I recorded, the first verse was fine but there was a small problem in verse two - someone bumped a chair (THUD!). On the second take, during verse one someone sneezed but verse two was fine. So, I snipped out verse two from the first take and spliced in the good verse two from the second take to get a recording where both verses had no glitches. You can do other things like add reverb (judiciously) for a concert hall sound or edit out excess blank space. If you need to fit 72 minutes of music onto a 70 minute CD, you can edit out a repeat or you can even compress the time to make it fit (within reason or you end up sounding like the Chipmonks).

[cflutist]

hmmm, interesting.

My recorder has a feature where you can speed up or slow the tempo without changing the pitch. I don't have use for that, but the example they gave is if you recorded a live performance and then slowed it down to hear what really was going on, or if you wanted to play along at a slower tempo and still be in pitch.

So when flutists send audition tapes for college or for competitions, how does the receiving end know if it was a performance from beginning to end or if it was snipped together?

[pied_piper]

So when flutists send audition tapes for college or for competitions, how does the receiving end know if it was a performance from beginning to end or if it was snipped together?

That's why some are now requiring video tapes. It's nearly impossible to edit video without it being visually noticeable. I think some that still accept audio recordings may require a signed honor statement that it is an unedited recording. Of course that's no guarantee, but if they later find that the player submitted an edited recording (i.e they can't play as well as they sounded on the recording), it could be grounds for dismissal/disqualification.