Freesound Forums

Right now, for doing field recordings, I'm using my Tascam Portastudio 414 4-Track Tape Recorder with a battery pack that I made. Unfortunately, it's a bit large and not that portable, although it does have a lot of great features. What kind of portable recording devices would be good? Digital would be really cool - but all of the digital ones are probably pretty expensive, and I don't have a lot of money to spend.

Mini Disk and DAT recorders are fast becoming obsolete. The BBC are now using Solid Sate recorders and these are coming down a lot in price. As there are no moving parts, the battery is v.small and lasts for ages. We just bought a MARANTZ PMD 670 Recorder for around 500 pounds. Adding to that we needed to buy a case (70 GBP) and 1GB compact flash card (55 GBP). Its great.

I use a digital voice recorder from Radioshack. I got it on sale for 40 dollars down from 200. The onboard mic and speaker are crap, but with a computer mic and some quality studio headphones, it is great. Very good quality, no compression, excellent battery life (haven't replaced them once yet), and it's got a built in still camera (not very high quality, but it's still cool).

I doubt you have Radioshack in Europe, but you should be able to find something similar. Just look for one with mic and headphone jacks.

Radio shack and me go way back.... I'll have to look into that... for anyone who's country does not offer the McDonalds of overpriced subcontract produced electronics known as Radioshack... you can visit radioshack.com from anywhere there's a web!

Hi MD's aren't on the way out IMO...

Sonic
Hi MD's aren't on the way out IMO...

Agreed... when I started my radio broadcasting course, it was necessary that I purchase an MD (seriously, it was on the course materials list), and I love the thing! It's not obsolete because
A) it gets much better recording quality than current MP3 recorders
B) they still function and are getting cheap...
and that's my 2 cents (as it were) on that...

I'm using an iRiver H320 with Rockbox software for recording. Mostly live music of friends bands.

Edirol announces a new recording device, considerably cheaper than Sony's PCM-D1

http://www.edirol.net/products/en/R-09/

noisyjoe
...We just bought a MARANTZ PMD 670 Recorder for around 500 pounds. Adding to that we needed to buy a case (70 GBP) and 1GB compact flash card (55 GBP). Its great.

Yes, the Marantz looks very sweet, as was its analog forerunner. As a compromise on various levels (digital camera, video camera, sound recorder), mini-DV camcorders can do pretty well, though I'd say an external mic or two is essential. The consumer models use mini-DIN connectors, so there is a compromise on quality right there--but if you need a tool for visual documentation with a reasonably good recording capability (with 44.1/16 recording, I think it's at least comparable to MD), mini-DV can be a good solution.

-- Ignotus

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Hello from Germany,

we´re using the M-Audio Microtrack 2496 for 2 months now. The price is pretty fair and it is easy to use. Unfortunately most of the compact flash cards cannot be used for 24bit, 96Khz Recording. The display is to slow, and phantom power is only 30V - i didn´t get my MKH416 started with 30V Phantom Power, so i had to use an ENG Mixer between the mic and the recorder (what is quite better for every mic recording). But it sounds great. And it´s not bigger than a cigarette packet.

I just got my sandisk sansa 1gig with recording. its 32k and crappy builtin mike, but I'm just playing around with ideas for what I want to concentrate on for field recording and its enough to goof around with for now. I have had a lot of success with a peavey mike (not expensive) and Sony TRV33 DVcam. I can get higher than CD quality out of it (I believe its 48Khz 32bit) after modifying default settings and that's ok with an external mike. The internal is ok but motor noise is a buzzkill.

mystiscool
What kind of portable recording devices would be good? Digital would be really cool - but all of the digital ones are probably pretty expensive, and I don't have a lot of money to spend.

I have managed to make do with an iRiver IFP-799. But, if money were no object, I would rather have a Marntz PDM660.