Minidiscs and recorders

November 16, 2004 12:50 PM

Does anyone make an expandable, portable stereo digital music recorder? Several hard-disk MP3 players now support voice recording in mono. Korg has a cool little four-track recorder that unfortunately uses SmartMedia (128MB limit). This would be for a musician who likes to record every gig, but can't afford to hire a professional to mic every instrument. At the moment, he uses a consumer-grade minidisc recorder and a high quality stereo mic.
posted by b1tr0t to technology (10 comments total)

The Creative Nomad JB3 is used by lots of folks for both taping concerts and field recordings.
posted by togdon at 12:57 PM on November 16, 2004

Edirol make the R-1 Portable 24-bit Wave/MP3 recorder. It goes on sale Dec. 15 and various places are accepting preorders for $439.
posted by rajbot at 1:00 PM on November 16, 2004

Wow, weird coincidence. As of last weekend, I own one of those Korgs. If I read the specs correctly, you can get 90 minutes with 1 track of the highest quality on 128MB. So one angle is simply to buy several cards and have an accomplice change them out over a gig.

Also, the Korg only has one mono input - your friend would need a mixer to do what he wants.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:20 PM on November 16, 2004

http://www.taperssection.com/ seems to be a good resource, mainly oriented to concertgoers that record, but it sounds as if your friend is in a similar situation equipment wise.
posted by jester69 at 1:27 PM on November 16, 2004

There are quite a few players out now that take expandable media, most are from Korea -- they are years ahead of everyone else (or in this industry, months). I think one of the reasons more manufacturers haven't been courting removable media is that it makes the RIAA happy. Also, if you have to keep buying a whole new player every time you want to upgrade the memory, that's a lot of repeat-business you'd be killing off. Anyway, what's the point when you can just throw 40 gigs in your pocket. No show is going to fill that up. That said, there are plenty of players that take SD/MMC cards, but until either the prices drop or the storage capacity's are increased, I'd rather just get a 1.5 GB mini-HD unit like this one. Heck, the Rio Carbon is 5 GBs.

I've used MiniDisc recorders for concerts, and (IMHO) DAT's are still the best tool for the job. That doesn't mean you can't get decent results from the Flash / Porty HD units, but you'll need to record with the most lossless codecs available (most just encode direct into MP3 or some DRM-crippled proprietary format), then you need something big enough to hold it. Also, you need to be able to record off line-input, and it'd be even nicer if you could control your gain in the unit. My Sharp MD-701 could do this on-the-fly, and was awesome for concerts. I don't know any units that are designed to handle that, at best they'll have a HIGH/LOW gain or some god-awful AGC built-in (for voice recording).

If you don't mind carrying around a small powered EQ unit with you, you could probably get some decent recordings out of them. I don't have any personal experience with the Nomad JB3 mentioned above, but looking at the specs, it looks like the recording bitrate is 128 kbs. There are other units that I know can record up to 320 -- you might want to go with one of them. Check out that Korean site I link to -- they've got a lot of players/recorders for different tastes, and the prices can't be beat. (Also, you can buy from the OEM instead of paying extra for the "Jens of Sweden" tag, for example).
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:42 PM on November 16, 2004

Just to clarify, the JB3 records in wav and has been touted as the DAT replacement by many concert tapers. And now that I've mentioned it... DAT would be another (expensive) option.

With all of these solutions you'll be looking for essentially this chain:

mics -> battery box -> preamp + a/d converter-> recording device

In terms of mics there's a full spectrum of cheap to god-awful expensive. I sort of like the sound of Core Sound's Binaural Mics. It sounds like he may be able to skip buying a mic if the stereo one he has is any good (lots of info here to help him determine both if it's good enough to record shows and how to set it up).

The Lunatech V3 seems to get good reviews for its portability to perfomance ratio on the preamp+a/d front, but if you're into matching things up you could always snag Core Sound's new(-ish) Mic2496.

The DAT-Heads mailing list would perhaps be a better spot to ask such questions. They're an open community, so your friend could do the asking himself...
posted by togdon at 2:08 PM on November 16, 2004

I'll pass the info on to him. It looks like the Nomad JB3 is the way to go. Too bad it doesn't support 80 or 160 GB - then he could rip his audio CDs and dispense almost entirely with his laptop and CD player.
posted by b1tr0t at 2:59 PM on November 16, 2004

Woah, that Edirol unit is pretty kick-ass.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:36 PM on November 16, 2004

Saw this Aaton Cantar-X hard-drive based pro recorder a few days ago on Engadget.
posted by Icky at 8:40 AM on November 17, 2004

There is nothing wrong with the original Nomad Jukebox (not 3) either. I used one for two years to record my gigs, and was thrilled with the sound quality (of course the mic is extremely important). You can get a Jukebox cheap on ebay, e.g., here. They can record 16-bit/44.1 stereo .wav files, or you can lower the sample rate and/or record in mono if you wish to gain more space. Mine came with a 6GB hard drive, but later ones had 10GB drives, and they are simple to upgrade if you wish.

Check out http://www.soundprofessionals.com for mics and preamps. The Nomad only has a line-in, so you need to boost the mic with a pre-amp.
posted by SNACKeR at 11:15 AM on November 17, 2004