[linux-audio-user] laptop alternatives

Eric Dantan Rzewnicki rzewnickie at rfa.org
Wed Oct 13 15:49:22 EDT 2004


On Wed, Oct 13, 2004 at 02:15:45PM -0400, Len Moskowitz wrote:
> Hi Eric,
> Yes, it is, and it is much smaller than a laptop and external USB or
> Firewire mic pre/A-to-D.  A good match is our Mic2496 dual mic
> pre-amp/A-to-D converter.  See our Web site for details.
> Feel free to ask more questions.

I'm not planning to do typical concert recording. My use would be more
for collecting sounds from daily life, walks in the woods, traffic,
construction, etc. For such a variety of sound sources, what would be
the best mic to use with the mic2496/pdaudio-cf/ipaq combo?

Another appeal to me is having one audio interface/pre-amp/converter
settup that I could use either with my ipaq or with a (future) laptop.
I'm thinking of the ipaq for hands free sound collection and the laptop
more as a travelling studio for use in hotel rooms or while visiting
relatives or friends.

Are there other similar, possibly less expensive, devices that would 
serve these purposes? The pdaudio-cf costs ~$200 and the mic2496 ~$500.
It will be awhile before I can make that kind of an investment.

My current solution is to leave the lens cap on my miniDV camcorder and
use that. This is ok for now. It's compact and decent quality. But,
is limited by the tape duration, the mechanical noise of the tape drive
motors and the linear access nature of tape. I've read that some
firewire interfaces allow the tape to be run at 4x speed for data 
transfer, but I don't think my camcorder supports that. For field
recording it would be more convenient to transfer files by moving a cf
or microdrive card from the ipaq to a laptop or desktop, anyway. For 
portable studio use recording directly to the laptop harddisk is even 
more straightforward.

-Eric Rz.



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