Handheld digital recorders

[thumpybumper]

I love my old Olympus, I've had it for several years and even though it has very little hard drive space by today's standards, it's suited me well.

I also have a newer Sony and I almost never use it. The interface is more intuitive and there's more space, but the sound quality is terrible.

Lately I've found that handheld tape recorders pick up the bass frequencies much better than my Olympus. I use the Olympus for recording song ideas when I'm in the car or out and about, but tape is the way to go for getting off-the-cuff band rehearsals - the sound is much richer and more 3 dimensional. You can even get an old Tascam 4 track portastudio for $100 used...I'd much rather use one of those than a more expensive digital recorder. And converting into .wav and .mp3 afterward is really not that much of a hassle...

 

[ljazz]

I picked my H2 up in July..... and wish I had gotten it sooner. We've been on a drummer roller coaster since early summer, and it would have been nice to have our catolog recorded to hand over to each of the new drummers. Now we're sitting with only a couple of sets worth recorded.

But here is where the H2 is really coming in handy...... pre-production stuff for our disc. Our vocalist will come in with ideas on disc or usb drive that he's recorded via a Presonus Inspire. We'll all get that and start working with it. Once we've gotten things hashed out a bit, we bring in the H2 to start recording rehearsals. I'll get it mixed and a copy out to everyone so that they've got something to keep working with. We've got 7 tunes ready to go, and 5 more in the wings. I think I want to try recording with the line in from the board next......

Anyway, the H2 is proving to be a great little investment. I've got it set up using one of the compressors (the live one I believe), and once we got the levels sorted out, it's been set and forget. I'll take it home, dump it into audacity (wav surround), boost the bass a bit on the mic pointed towards me, and normalize, compress, and then quick mix down to stereo. From there I'll convert to mp3, and get back it back out to everyone. The mix process is quick, and takes about 5 mins per song. It's just so much more fun than the boombox in the corner recordings!

BTW.... James, love the stuff you posted on the 1st page!