Catskills week - digital recorder

[phlute626]

I use my Zoom 2 for school (I'm a band and choir director) as well as regularly recording sessions. From my experience it has been great. You can adjust the bit rate, high and low frequencies and record in stereo. It's small, compact, easy to use, you can hear your recording right away either through earphones or connect it usb to your computer. I recently tried it as a usb mic for the tartini program (reel time tuning analysis) and that was user friendly also. It uses 2 AA batteries and also has a dc adapter which is nice. I bought mine 4 months ago and highly recommend it.

Thanks for the heads up about the updates plunk 111-I'll go check them out!

[Wormdiet]

I'm going to be attending the Irish week in the Catskills next month. Can anyone suggest a digital recorder to take with me? I don't have one so I'd like to know what others like. Thanks!

*Edited for spelling

I've used a sony minidisk player and I currently use an Olympus digital voive recorder/MP3 player. I like the Olympus better. That sound quality is just fine for catching tunes from an instructor, which is about all I've ever done with it.

[bang]

fwiw, the signal-to-noise of most inexpensive digital recorders is <90db. this means recording at >16bits is pointless. afaik, you need to spend ~ $500 on the sony pcm d-50 to do better than this. the zoom h2 is the least expensive option i'm aware of (<$200) and has done a fine job for me recording classes and sessions with internal mics. *much* better than a cassette recorder. it doesn't do well with external mics though. other options <$500 do, and some are smaller, but none quieter. the zoom h4 is one of the larger.

bottom line for me is for learning purposes the zoom h2 was cheapest and good enough. if i were doing field recording or recording low noise concerts i'd go with the sony d-50.

more info than you want can be had here:

taperssection recording gear forum

lot's of zoom info here:

zoom h4 & h2 forum

enjoy! /dan

[Wormdiet]

Does anyone have examples of recordings from sessions on the Zoom 4, I'm kindof toying with this one myself, not not sure if it will performa any better with background noise than my current tools, N95 and Archos Fm20.

I'd like to hear the quality of a session type environment.

Thanks

andy

Pittsboro session clips Recorded on H4

Michael

Hey Mike, do you remember when these recordings were made?

-John, the lefty flute player from Winston-Salem

[Tweeto]

I've gotten useable results with a $100 Olympus WS-300M digital stereo voice recorder. However, after awhile the thing just wouldn't stop malfunctioning. I'd go to record something and the recorder would restart. Tired of the frustration, I went back to using the record function of my iAudio G3. Not only does it beat the digital voice recorder in reliability, but it records in mp3 natively rather than annoying wma, and it uses the AA-battery standard rather than the weak AAA that the digital voice recorders use.

I was interested in that Olympus LS-10, but I can't help but wonder about the reliability. Gotta hear from a long-term user of it before I can put my faith in a company that is famous for wiggly slide switches and frustrating usage.