Personal Digital Recorder Redux

[Feynman]

It's been awhile, but I'm ready to buy another small digital recorder. My primary recording desire is solo classical/acoustic guitar, but I occasionally get to record a full orchestra as well.

Gizmo years being much like dog years, I assume many improvements have been made since I've been away.

Anyone got any new advice to share?

For anyone else interested, I highly recommend these sites. They do a lot of reviews and comparisons of these things:

http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/

http://forums.oreilly.com/content/Audio-Co...ital-Recorders/

--

For the record, I have owned, tested and spent loads of high quality time with these:

Zoom H2 - a nice little unit, flimsy but fine; pretty good sound - great price

Zoom H4 - same as above, and I have no need for the extra features as it turns out

Olympus LS-10 - very nice build quality, but I thought it was (a tiny little bit) lacking in overall sound quality (believe me, I tried all the recommended settings and tweaks, but I'll spare the boring details). Mind you, it makes excellent recordings, but I liked others better. I even bought a second one to see if my first was a fluke.

Marantz PMD660 - very nice quality, easy to use, occasionally whiny.

Edirol R1 - My first recorder, and it was pretty great actually, though I'm not so much into Compact Flash media at this point.

Edirol R-09 - A nice one, but it had a few things I didn't care for.

MicroTrack - I had the original - lots of things I disliked there.

---

Whew.

Anyway, it looks like some of the issues have been addressed by the manufacturers, but I lack much new detail.

- Olympus states the LS-11 now sounds better than the LS-10, and Wingfield seems to support that.

- Zoom has upped the build quality with the H4n.

- Tascam and Yamaha have some new stuff.

- MicroTrack has been modernized.

- Edirol has updated the R-09.

- Etc.

Any real world experience with any of the new stuff?

In all honesty, any of these recorders are more than fine, but I get really picky with the classical guitar stuff, to an extent.

Enough!

Thanks.

[JGale]

It's been awhile, but I'm ready to buy another small digital recorder. My primary recording desire is solo classical/acoustic guitar, but I occasionally get to record a full orchestra as well.

Gizmo years being much like dog years, I assume many improvements have been made since I've been away.

Anyone got any new advice to share?

For anyone else interested, I highly recommend these sites. They do a lot of reviews and comparisons of these things:

http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/

http://forums.oreilly.com/content/Audio-Co...ital-Recorders/

--

For the record, I have owned, tested and spent loads of high quality time with these:

Zoom H2 - a nice little unit, flimsy but fine; pretty good sound - great price

Zoom H4 - same as above, and I have no need for the extra features as it turns out

Olympus LS-10 - very nice build quality, but I thought it was (a tiny little bit) lacking in overall sound quality (believe me, I tried all the recommended settings and tweaks, but I'll spare the boring details). Mind you, it makes excellent recordings, but I liked others better. I even bought a second one to see if my first was a fluke.

Marantz PMD660 - very nice quality, easy to use, occasionally whiny.

Edirol R1 - My first recorder, and it was pretty great actually, though I'm not so much into Compact Flash media at this point.

Edirol R-09 - A nice one, but it had a few things I didn't care for.

MicroTrack - I had the original - lots of things I disliked there.

---

Whew.

Anyway, it looks like some of the issues have been addressed by the manufacturers, but I lack much new detail.

- Olympus states the LS-11 now sounds better than the LS-10, and Wingfield seems to support that.

- Zoom has upped the build quality with the H4n.

- Tascam and Yamaha have some new stuff.

- MicroTrack has been modernized.

- Edirol has updated the R-09.

- Etc.

Any real world experience with any of the new stuff?

In all honesty, any of these recorders are more than fine, but I get really picky with the classical guitar stuff, to an extent.

Enough!

Thanks.

I have one of these http://www.tascam.com/products/gt-r1.html

[Feynman]

You like it?

Oops - it appears that it doesn't have a tripod socket? How do you position it for guitar recording?

That thing has some cool features - tell me more, please.

[tomteriffic]

Mitch, I have the H4n. They did up the build quality a fair bit on it. One thing that it has in common with the H2 is the "crossfire" mike setup. These mikes sound surprisingly good. In my initial tests with it, recording at the standard CD sample rate, it did an unflinching job of capturing me, my guitar and the room I was in with very, very good accuracy. If I moved, the stereo image moved and the room reflections changed slightly too.

I use it to record rehearsals, with a couple of nice condensor mics, once placed near Most Esteemed Redhead and her percussion kit and another near the bassist and bass/kick amp. The main unit is someplace close to me. The main mikes don't give up much at all to the additional condensors. The plan is to start recording shows with the unit out in the room, and also taking feeds from the sound board in the hopes of getting a good take with more immediacy that just sticking a mike out in the room would do.

The interface is not all that tricky, although there's always a learning curve with anything like this with lots of buttons and a small screen. The manual is in real English and is pretty well laid out. It records at up to 24 bit bit depth, or several flavors of mp3.

Hope that helps.

P.S., it comes with a little handle that screws into the tripod socket. The handle drops perfectly into your basic stage mike clip. So you can hang this thing on standard music gear without having to drag a tripod along.

[Bloozguy]

Mitch,

I have used my H4 to record my daughter's orchestra concerts. I set it to record 96kHz WAV files with none of the built-in bells and whistles engaged. Feeding it is a pair of modified Oktava MK012 small diaphragm condensers in an ORTF stereo pattern through a Presonus mic preamp

I have also used the built-in microphones just to capture her violin out of the whole orchestra.

Sounds pretty good both ways.

I'm pretty picky about that stuff as well and if my primary use was solo acoustic guitar, I would not be satisfied with the built-in microphones on any of the units. My preference has always been an AKG C451/CK1 up close and a Neumann U87 farther away...but that's an awfully spendy setup.

Just my $0.01 (adjusted for inflation)