I normally use my OGG player’s recording feature for my recording purposes, and it works fine for capturing tunes that people play acoustically. However, I will be without it during my time at Augusta, so I need something that I can use for this purpose while I’m there. I was thinking that a dedicated recorder would be better in some aspects, such as a faster startup time (to catch tunes before I miss the beginning of them). But I’m not sure which ones - if any - can do what my iAudio G3 did. Does anyone know of devices that do the following:
• Records in common formats OTHER THAN wma.
• Each recording is a seperate track, that I can quickly browse to for easy review.
• Preferably something that I can buy at BestBuy, CircuitCIty, Staples, OfficeDepot, or similar storefronts, because I need to buy this as soon as possible (I have no time left for shipping from Amazon, etc).
• Preferably uses the AA battery standard, but I would consider something that uses the AAA battery standard if that’s all there is.
• Has either USB or firewire, for its transfer method.
• Shows up as a removeable drive on the host computer, without requiring installation of any special software (aka MSC, aka UMS). Must NOT require Windows Media browser (aka MTP) for transfer, because I use Macs and Linux in addition to Windows.
My ul-T-mate recording device would be the Ediroll, of course, but it’s quite pricey, and I don’t think that I can buy it from any storefront near me.
I can’t advise you on what kind of recorder you have, but you might also check out what is available in local music stores, especially those that are geared towards popular music. I bought an Edirol from the “guitar center” here in town, and they had many types of recorders in stock.
I recently bought a used Olympus DS-20 from a board member (thanks Steve). At first I had some problems importing files from it to my Mac. Now it’s working well.
I also bought Audio Companion for $25 and I am delighted with it. Takes any input, apparently, and converts it to sound files.
The DS-20 might not have the best sound but it does have a small speaker which isn’t horrible and the sound files are easily good enough for learning tunes.
It’s so small that it looks like a cell phone – so it doesn’t attract too much attention on the table. Nothing’s perfect but this is certainly good enough. I recommend it.
I add a microphone and line-in inputs as criteria myself.
Your criteria rule out mini-disc recorders and tape recorders. Olympus has some fine digital recorders that would meet most of your criteria. They do record in WMA but without copy protection so you could convert the files to MP3. (And the Olympus recorders seem to play MP3.) Whether you can get one of the better ones at your local Best Buy I can’t say.
Except for the file format part, any of the Olympus WS-300M line
(WS-310M, WS-320M, etc.) would do. You can get pretty simple
conversion software to go from WMA → MP3 if that’s the sticking
point…
What I don’t like about the WS line is that you can’t add memory
using SmartMedia, like you can with some other recorders. You
can get 1Gig SM card pretty cheap…
EDIT: I just looked at Scott’s Olympus link and it appears that
Olympus has a new DS-40 model, with a removeable mic. http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1277
It claims to “playback and store WMA and MP3 files”, though
I think it only records into WMA… Has anyone tried one of
these yet?
I own and highly recommend the Edirol R-09, records to SD and SDHC cards in either uncompressed format up to 24-bit/48KHz sampling, or compressed up to 320 kbit .MP3 format. Records for 4-6 hours continuously on a set of rechargable AAs.
You probably aren’t going to find much beyond basic digital voice recorders (which may or may not meet your requirements) at regular electronics stores. Demand for digital recorders suitable for music isn’t usually high enough to bother stocking them. You might have better luck somewhere that sells live sound gear.
If you use a Windows computer, I THINK there are some iRiver models that will work for you. I bought one for around $120 at Circuit City (can’t remember the model - T20? - sorry; it was a while ago!), but alas, although the specs DID originally say it worked with a Mac, it didn’t.
Pity, because it was a really cool little recorder that would record in mp3 format and hold about 8 hours worth of stuff. I bought a cheapie little lavalier-type mic from Radio Shack that worked with it OK.
Anyway, a quick look at the iRiver site could be worth a look - perhaps they still sell their stuff at retail places.
If all else fails, you could always go the quaint, old-fashioned cassette route and then use an iMic to digitize/transfer your stuff to computer later. That’s what I did last year, but it’s a drag … in fact, I still haven’t transferred all my tapes.
Larry and I ended up splitting the Edirol R-09 for Christmas and it’s great. The only problem is who gets custody at Augusta, so it might be back to the good ol’ cassette recorder for me, at least part of the time!
My mad plan is to bring my Mac and transfer things from the Edirol (when I do get my hot little hands on it) each day. If this works out I could burn you a CD of some of the flute class (if that’s where you’ll be), but it would probably still make sense to have backup …
What type of sound card will hold the most hours on the Edirol? I know a basic one came with it, but I want to be able to get the maximum hours possible.
I’ve found it really great for recording in classes, meetings etc. To get a new track you just stop it and then restart it recording. Or, dump it all to Audacity on your computer, which is free, and cut and paste the tracks exactly as you want.
The new Edirols will take memory cards of up to 4 GB, although the 4 GB cards are still a bit pricey. However, I think the 2 GB cards, which are plenty big, are down to around $30-$40. Lots of different manufacturers of them; most major names should be pretty reliable and you should be able to find them in the camera department at Wal-Mart or Target; definitely at Circuit City/hh gregg.
I don’t know if I need something that “works well for music”. I know that I won’t be compositing the recordings or publishing them. I just want to be able to hear them later. Something cheap-but-works is all that I think I’ll need. It’s quite sad that none of the digital voice recorders wanted to appeal to Mac or Linux users. Even my personal audio player (iAudio G3) can record in mp3 format. I appreciate the suggestions. Thank you, all.
It looks like my options are:
• Digital voice recorder $40-$150: only records in wma. Flip4mac allows the wma files to be recognized by Quicktime player, but iTunes - the app that I do ALL of my listening on - still doesn’t recognize them.
• Boss Micro BR $240: I get conflicting reports on whether it records in non-proprietary formats or not. Not pocket-size. Looks low quality (not surprising, as most “guitar gear” usually looks that way).
• Zoom H4 $300: Far from pocket-size (it’s huge-mongous). Price a little high for something that looks cheap. Won’t accept 4+GB SD cards.
• Ediroll R-09 $400: The best, but with a price which reflects such. I haven’t been able to find one in a storefront yet. It’s still a bit large for carrying in a pocket.
Cathy, I might take you up on that offer. I’ll bring a 2GB flash drive for you to transfer to rather than CDs.
Tweeto, if all you want to do is hear them later — well enough to learn tunes from, you can get off real cheap. I have a $110 Zen MP3 player from Best Buy. It holds 2G of files, has an FM tuner, and a “voice-recorder” that will save a couple of hours of sound, (in MP3 format). The quality is surprisingly good. I record the “new-tune-teaching” portion of our weekly session, and upload it to my PC through a USB cable.
PM me if you’re interested, and I’ll email you an example. Really not too bad, and very versatile!
It depends on what settings you use for the mp3 encoding. Uncompressed (i.e. real “cd quality” .wav files), 80 minutes of sound is about 700 MB. With a reasonable amount of compression you can use about 80 MB of space per hour of recording, but that is at a quality level that most people won’t be able to tell apart from a CD (~200 kb/s mp3). You aren’t going to get great recordings from the mic in most portable recorders anyway so even 128 kb/s mp3 (about 50 MB of space per hour of recording) may be overkill. Most inexpensive voice recorders probably do 64 kb/s or less (you can mangle the human voice without problems a lot more than you can recorded music), or about 25 MB per hour of recording.
edit: The easiest way to check what the quality settings mean in terms of space is to do something like this.
Damm. Who moved this topic to the Postructural Pub? I never go there.
Oh well, I’ve already made my decision anyway. I’m going to go with either the Olympus VN-4100PC or Olympus WS-300M voice recorders. They still follow the bad path of being powered by AAA to save a mere 4mm over the AA standard. Oh well, I’ll just have to buy/carry more than 2 times as many AAA rechargeables as the amount of AAs I would’ve had to carry.
I found some $10 WMA-conversion software which, judging by the demo, works really well - EasyWMA.
Thanks, Crookedtune, but I wanted the advantage of instant-record, which is usually provided only by a dedicated recorder.
I wanted the advantage of instant-record, which is usually provided only by a dedicated recorder
Always on, is a big feature, as is a very small form factor. A small unit isn’t that big a deal at a class or conference, however, in some situations or venues, stealth mode can be a great feature.
I have an old Sony unit that I carry almost everywhere. Most people think it is a cell phone. When I was shopping, a small size and always on were two must have features, as was USB support. For fielding recording, I find that 80% of the time, the acoustics of the venue, or background noise are more of a limiting factor than the sampling rate.
