Help a pimpled adolescent in her search for affordable technology.

June 9, 2009 1:19 AM

Help me find good quality sound recording equipment (radio-ish), on a budget.

I'm a high schooler with no school tech programs or savvy teachers to turn to for advice and suggestions. Right now I'm trying to produce a radio story/podcast thing documenting the stories of illegal, undocumented students at my school and community, to eventually air on college campus radio stations and the like. We're trying to advocate a new act that was introduced to Congress, the DREAM/Student Adjustment Act, that would help a lot of people I know go to college.

Anyway, I have your traditional cassette-tape recorders but I don't think its of a high enough quality to air on radio. I need portable equipment to do street interviews, and to eventually upload to the computer to edit and the like.

As this is an unofficial school effort (the administration would frown if they knew), the only funds I have available are really my own. So I'm looking for a)portable digital recording equipment b)a user-friendly editing program c) general advice on radio/podcast production.

posted by mmmleaf to technology (15 comments total)

I'd say the zoom H2 may be a good choice. H4 looks fine too.
posted by nicolin at 1:26 AM on June 9

What kind of cassette recorder do you have?
Cassette recorders are just fine for radio- as long as it's a good cassette recorder and a good microphone. I'm not a mike expert, but as far as recorders go I would recommend getting a used Marantz- they're really the gold standard in cassette recorders and the audio quality is going to be better than what you'll be getting out of some tinny digital recorder.
posted by dunkadunc at 1:33 AM on June 9 [1 favorite]

Aha, it's a small portable cassette recorder, the sort of thing you'd just use to tape an interview to transcribe later.

I guess I am willing to spend a decent amount so long as its something I can use often in the future. I'm interested in radio journalism anyway, so assuming I follow through with the whole aspiration thing it might come in handy later.
posted by mmmleaf at 1:40 AM on June 9

Seconding Marantz recorders, they just work. Every journo around here has replaced their PMD222 cassette recorders with solid state units like the PMD660. The Edirol units I've seen looked alright too. ElectroVoice mics, particularly the 635, work really well for interviews. Cheap, sound good, indestructible.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 2:06 AM on June 9

I work as a radio producer for community and national programs in australia, the best portable recorder i have found is the M-audio microtrack, it is fairly cheap, but once you buy it you won't need any extra equipment to do recordings, however if you would like extra equipment (such as pre-amps, better microphones that need phantom power etc) it will work with them very well.
they are a lot simpler than the zoom equipment of a similar price, and much more flexible in my opinion and more quited to radio work where all you need as straight forward recordings of good quality. where as the zoom h2 seems more dictophone like to me, and the h4 is a bit gimmicky and i think tailored more towards musicians as you can do multritracking and i think there are a few edit functions?

the marantz units are in my opinion more in the professional bracket with a pro price, they have luxury connectors and better pre-amps, the little things that make recordings extra nice. but to the untrained ear a microtrack would sound just as nice as the microtrack.

i recommend the microtrack so highly i can't stop talking about it. though some people are dissappointed by the battery life but if it is such a problem you can by an external usb battery pack, but i have never made recordings that are 4hours+ long and can't imagine exactly why someone would?

i have 3, not because they keep on breaking but because i like them, one gets sent around to remote interviewee's so they can record themselves, and two come on the road with me so i can record 4 tracks simultaneously.

it sounds like you are making an interesting program, perhaps you could post it to meta music or something when you are finished? good luck!
posted by frequently at 2:18 AM on June 9

Sounds like you are really on the right track with your project, that sounds awesome.

I think you could use a tape recorder if nothing else was available. I think This American Life was using pro-sony tape decs up until a few years ago.

You should find a copy of the This American Life comic book...I think you can buy it from them. It's pretty helpful.

You should check out transom.org DEFINITELY.

I would not buy the microtrack. It has a lot of weirdnesses that have been rectified in other brands. Marantz stuff always seems to break or sound crappy to me.

I have an Olympus LS-10, which I like quite a bit. It's a bit old now, and there are a few annoyances (a gigantic red light that's on when you are recording, which is unessesary), but it's really good quality.

One important thing with digital recorders is that both the internal microphones and the preamps be good. Because in general you want to use an external microphone on a chord, and then you are going to have to use the inputs. A lot of recorders have one or the other.

I'd check out the new Tascams, they look pretty sweet.

Also Brad Linder's blog has a ton of great info.

Really, check out transom.org. You would not believe how much good information is on there. There's a great Ira Glass interview, that's a good place to start.
posted by sully75 at 3:44 AM on June 9 [2 favorites]

I used Sony and Tascam DAT recorders in film school, along with a wide range of microphones totally unsuited to your application. I'm sorry I don't recall the specific recorder models. They sounded just great, though.

Except for the time I forgot to check my levels and blew out a whole damn day of recording. I had to loop the dialog, and recreate entire soundscapes. Harder to do with an interview.

Make sure you check your levels.
posted by Netzapper at 4:21 AM on June 9

Huge fan of the Edirol's sound quality and ease of use myself, but have a bit of a hard time with their flimsy plastic construction for the price. I use them primarily for research interviews so the fact that they might not be good for "on the street" stuff is less of an issue.
posted by mrmojoflying at 4:52 AM on June 9

This page provides samples. If you're looking for blogs, Kyla Brettle's one is pretty interesting.
posted by nicolin at 5:22 AM on June 9

Seconding sully75s recommendation to check out transom.org - it's radio orientated, so quite relevant.
Also Netzapper raises an interesting point with recording levels in that for digital recording you basically want to forget everything you knew about setting levels in the analogue world. The meters on these digital recorders show peaks, not VU, and if you're recording 24 bit you have WAY more S/N headroom so you can keep your levels low without being overcome by noise, but with no fear of distortion. It's easy to post-process after editing for a nicely balanced recording.
You can glean the whys and wherefores and many other tips form a couple of other forums that are not radio orientated but relevant none the less, namely taperssection.com and messageboard.tapeop.com.
The research you do here will lead you over the biggest hurdle - choosing a recorder, pre-amp and mics. Along the way you'll discover that how user-friendly an audio editor is depends on how much you use it. At opposite ends of the complexity (and price) scale are Audacity and ProTools (both cross platform) either of which may be adequate, plus a load in between depending on your OS of choice: Adobe Audition, Wavelab or SoundForge on Windows. WaveEdit, Peak, and Logic or even GarageBand on Mac.
Be prepared to research and experiment lots, and have fun doing so. Good luck with your project.
posted by dirm at 8:01 AM on June 9

On the software side of things, Audacity is free and should do everything you'll need of it. It actually has fairly solid filters for noise removal, and all the other basic editing you'll need (cut, paste, normalize, mix down) is there.
posted by JeremiahBritt at 8:03 AM on June 9

I'm thirding the recommendation of transom.org.

I'd also recommend considering a membership in AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio. There's a student rate (and I bet they'd give you a discount on that if you called), and you could really get a lot of guidance from their mentorship program and listserv.

Since you're in SoCal, (not sure where), I'd talk to YouthRadio as well.
posted by YoungAmerican at 8:50 AM on June 9

I'm not a big fan of audacity, btw. I like Reaper much better, which you can download and try and then buy and it's still pretty cheap. More like a protools situation with more power and I think in some ways it's a lot easier to use. The Audacity interface is pretty clumsy and limited. IMHO.
posted by sully75 at 12:20 PM on June 9

Oh and there's a cheap solution for your recorder. If you look on ebay you can find a used minidisc recorder. Before the flash recorders this was more or less state of the art for many radio people. But now they are pretty outmoded and you can get them cheap. They are still very useful and there is something really nice about the way minidiscs record that I don't find with the flash recorders for some reason.

Here's one that I have, and pretty cheap but you can look online for old reviews to find a good one. I'd probably buy a couple if I were you, as backups. I've made great, great recordings with this thing. You'd need to buy a microphone. Transom.org would recommend you a pretty expensive one, I think it's the Beyer M58 or something like that. I'd hunt around on the site for a cheaper recommendation, it's unnecessary to spend that much.
posted by sully75 at 10:20 AM on June 10

Thanks! I actually ended up getting an LS-10 for pretty cheap on ebay (two weeks pay but it's rather pretty if you ask me). Thanks for the suggestions--transom.org is great. I've been recording arbitrary sounds, from my dog panting heavily to cracking bananas off the cluster to musical instruments. Have you seen that movie Les Triplettes de Belleville? My life kind of feels like that thanks to the handy LS-10. Anyway your input was much appreciated, and I'm very very excited to start.
posted by mmmleaf at 9:23 PM on July 9