digital recorders

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 11:10 am

Cathy,

what kind of things are you doing with Garage Band? The program is sitting on my Mac but I haven't had time to play with it yet.

John

johnkerr · Post by **johnkerr** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 11:36 am

jim stone wrote:If I can ask a really bonehead question, what's
the minimum I need to record a clip? I have a toshiba
laptop and an olympus digital voice recorder with
an internal mike. I need the Dick and Jane version,
if you will be so kind; not what I do best.

The first thing you will need is a better microphone. The internal mic on your digital voice recorder is probably great for recording voice (spoken, not sung) and lousy for recording music. If you record your flute playing with that, I can guarantee you will hate what you hear on the recording, and it will be mostly due to the microphone, not to your playing. (Okay, if it's the ornamentation or the rhythm or the phrasing you hate, then it's your playing. No good mic can cover up those problems.) If your voice recorder has an input jack for an external mic (some do, and they take the same kind of pin connection as a headphone jack), then you can buy a good stereo mic for as little as $60, such as this one on minidisco.com: http://www.minidisco.com/Sony-ECM-DS70P ... ategory=29

If you are currently able to transfer voice recordings from your recorder to your laptop, then you would use the same process to transfer music recordings you make with it (after hooking up your good mic, of course). But if your voice recorder won't transfer the audio files directly to your computer, you can always do it in real time by connecting the headphone output of your recorder to your laptop as an input line (you may need to buy some connecting hardware or cables if your laptop only takes USB input and your recorder only has pin jack output, but it should be doable) and then as you play the recording you can capture it with any number of freeware or shareware audio capture programs that are out there, and then convert that captured file to an mp3. But if you're buying a mic and cables already to use with a digital voice recorder, you'd probably be just as well off if you just used the mic and the audio capture software to record directly onto your laptop - although if you do this, you will probably need to buy a pre-amp unit as well. However, they are not all that expensive. For instance, I made my clip by plugging my mic into a Griifin iMic unit (around $40), which then connects via USB to my Mac, where I run GarageBand (bundled for free on my Mac) to capture the audio. This is all Mac-specific, of course, because that's what I use and that's all I know. But similar hardware, cabling and software should be readily available out there for Windows - although setup/installation might be a bitch. But that's Windows for you!

If your laptop has an internal mic, you could of course use it for recording your clip. But it will likely have the same limitations as the mic on your voice recorder. Really and truly, a good mic is <i>the</i> key piece to getting a decent recording!

jim stone · Post by **jim stone** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 11:47 am

Very grateful for this info, fellows. I have back in St. Louis
a good mike. We're in Bloomington IN, subletting an apt
for a couple of months so that I can suck up some ITM.
(Lately I;ve mostly been sucking up cough syrup, I'm afraid.)
Grey Larsen is here and there are excellent sessions twice
a week. See what I can do when we get home.

Really appreciate this help, Jim

Liney Bear · Post by **Liney Bear** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 4:10 pm

Thanks, you guys (and gals)!

I ended up getting an Olympus WS-300M recorder. Not too high end, but it works all right, I reckon.

I wanted to use it mainly for picking up tunes at sessions, but I'm also going to try to post a recording here. Let me know if this works, and feel free to be as critical as you like.

http://www.box.net/shared/kxr0ir1v7n

michael c · Post by **michael c** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 4:15 pm

Liney Bear wrote: I wanted to use it mainly for picking up tunes at sessions, but I'm also going to try to post a recording here. Let me know if this works, and feel free to be as critical as you like.

http://www.box.net/shared/kxr0ir1v7n

Fair play to you and your machine for letting us hear those powerful Maids of Mt. Cisco. Great stuff.

Cathy Wilde · Post by **Cathy Wilde** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 4:15 pm

JohnB wrote:Cathy,

what kind of things are you doing with Garage Band? The program is sitting on my Mac but I haven't had time to play with it yet.

John

Hi John,

So far I've just been recording and doing very basic editing with it (taking cusswords out, etc.); thought I'd throw something into the clips pile. It's taken some getting used to but I think I've figured out the worst of it after a day, though I've stuck to just one track. However, tonight I'm going for a second track, because now I know what this clip really needs ...

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 2:43 am

Thanks Cathy

"taking cusswords out" sounds pretty useful:) are they yours or someone else's.

What would be handy would be some software that could slow down taped recordings that get faster and faster due to the batteries running down. I've got a few old taped session recordings like that with some great stuff on.

John

hans · Post by **hans** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 4:00 am

JohnB wrote:What would be handy would be some software that could slow down taped recordings that get faster and faster due to the batteries running down. I've got a few old taped session recordings like that with some great stuff on.

Are you sure its not the players speeding up?

Seriously, CoolEdit has a function under Effects: Time/Pitch -> Stretch
which lets you define a "gliding stretch" where you can set initial speed and final speed independently. If you've analysed the pitch change you can do a fairly precise compensation. CoolEdit is also great for reducing or removing tape hiss.

My own recording setup is:
Quality or cheap mike into minidisk recorder. (I got a tiny cheap stereo mike with decent sound for "in the field" recording).
Either transfer recording (rerecord) onto computer,
or do it simultaneously (minidisk out into line-in of computer),
or do not record on the minidisk, but still use it in record-pause mode and feed the line-in of the computer.
That lets me change the sound level of the recording signal easily. Changing the sound level with the record mixer of Windoze is a pain.
MP3 creation gets done later.

Steve Pribyl · Post by **Steve Pribyl** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 12:31 am

I use the Edirol R-09. It has incredible quality. Anyone want to buy a slightly used Olympus DS-20?

sturob · Post by **sturob** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 12:06 pm

I'm going to order me an Edirol R-09 so I can make some clips. I've been talking about posting a clip for several years now. Heh.

As for SDHC memory, are there any brands to avoid? Any ones good? How much does it matter?

Stuart

Tom O'Farrell · Post by **Tom O'Farrell** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 2:40 pm

The zoom H4 recorder is getting really good reviews.

pixyy · Post by **pixyy** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 3:55 am

Tom O'Farrell wrote:The zoom H4 recorder is getting really good reviews.

I bought one a few weeks ago and so far am very happy with it.
The recording quality is good (like the Edirol R-09) and the multitracking function is very cool.
I'm working on posting some clips in the 'Clips' thread