[linux-audio-user] (semi)professional "field" recording work, what to use?

[derek holzer]

is there any reason to avoid a portable DAT recorder?

i've used a portable MD for years now for field recording, but got 
really sick of the crappy built-in mike preamps, especially in the Sony 
MDs. also, it didn't have a digital out [no portable MD seems to], so 
the choice was to invest in a [used] MD deck with digital outs or 
upgrade my portable hardware. i was lucky enough to find a used sony 
TCD-D7 dat walkman for EUR 100. you might not be THAT lucky, but a used 
D7 or a D8 usually go for 250-500 EUR. [i also live in Holland, so i 
looked on Ebay.de for a while before finding mine in the ViaVia 
newspaper] i think they are about 700-800 new... you can then use the 
optical out to transfer your recordings to the desktop. and a DAT 
walkman is much nicer to carry around then a whole laptop with a 
breakout box, and the batteries last longer too :-)

of course, there are DAT cons: only two audio channels [vs multichannel 
soundcards like HDSP], not instantly transferrable [neither is MD when 
going out of the deck to the computer], walkman models have only 
minijack mike inputs [unless you go for the super pro Tascam portables], 
the usual caveats about DAT tapes needing to be "prepped" before 
recording, needing to tune-up the mechanism/heads from time to time...

re: MP3 recorder.. last week i cleaned up some recordings a friend made 
of Gnawa musicians in Morocco on his MP3 recorder. after seeing the 
spectrographic display of these recordings, i'm not sure i want to 
encode something to MP3 ever again, much less make my raw recordings on 
it. almost everything in upper ranges is gone! further down, you can see 
where the engineers thought the "usable" frequencies were. they were 
most likely thinking of music when they did this, cause all the bands 
seem to be quite logarithmically related. not so nice for "noisy" and 
inharmonic field recordings at all. [i'll have to make a note to check 
the spectroscope of an MD recording for comparison's sake...]

i like the idea of these new Core-Sound palmtop recorders a lot, except 
that with the required-but-not-included external AD converter attached, 
they don't stay so light and cheap as you might imagine. on top of that, 
using flash media to record on isn't the most cost-effective way of 
doing things. when i go out to record in the field, i want at least 2 
hours of media with me. that's almost a gig and a half of stereo data, 
and that's easily 500 EUR worth of flash media cards.... gets pricey! i 
guess you could justify it in the long run by analzying how many MDs or 
DAT tapes you would eventually buy. but at least with an MD or DAT tape, 
you always have the original as a backup somewhere.

good luck!
derek

>Wilbert Berendsen <wilbert at oswf.org> writes:
>  
>
>
>  > I want to make good quality recordings with lightweight equipment and to 
>  > further process the recordings on my Linux desktop PC.
>
>  > 1. Minidisc recording.
>
>  > 2. Harddisk/flashcard/cd-rw recorders.
>
>  > 3. A laptop with a good (external?) audio interface (M-audio USB?)
>  
>