"quickie" sample recording

[jonschaer]

All,

Years ago, I used to do some memo-type recording (guitar-related, not bass, which I play more now). Just with a cheap cassette recorder and condensor mic. No one would hear these but me. The only purpose was to sonically jot down riff or melody ideas for future reference, so the sound quality was good enough.

I was hopeful there there was a modern, digital equivalent. I picked up a $40 hand-held flash-memory memo recorder, for the same purpose, and I tried it out the other night. The vocal quality is fine for this purpose, but a guitar or bass sounds terrible. Not just poor fidelity, but it sounds like it's being played under water. You can't even tell the chords or notes being played. I have tried different sound levels and recording proximities, but no improvement.

Do you think it's mic related, or memory/sample rate related? Therer is a jack for an external mic, so I could use a better mic if that was likely to give better results. Would that jack take a preamp out signal? My acoustic amp has mic/instrument mixing to a single out; 1/4" or XLR.

If this is a bust, what is the cheapest method for this kind of recording? Again, this is nothing more than a temporary memory for ideas. Not for any demo or other playback needs.

Thanks,

Jon Schaer
Columbus, OH

 

[Charling]

well, the internal mic on those things are the worst of the worst of the worst. try borrowing a simple dynamic mic from somewhere and seeing how it sounds. you may need an adaptor to get it to fit. in fact you may need two as i imagine its a mini-jack in.

maybe get an xlr to jack and a jack to minjack converter and try it out with a easy to find mic like an sm57 or similar.

it may sound ok.

if the converters are a problem, and it still sounds terrible, you could record straight into your computer using a bit of free software. it will not sound great going into the standard line in but it may be passable for just jotting down ideas.

if not, then you can get a soundcard for £25 or so which should MORE than suffice for what you are doing, and will even allow you too layer up tracks to get full song ideas as well!

 

[jonschaer]

Thanks for the input. I'll try borrowing a decent mic. I wanted something portable, which is why I wasn't going direct into a PC, and my PC is in a different part of the house than the music gear. But that may be the only solution.

And then again, it could also be an output problem. The internal speaker is likely meant for vocal ranges only. I'll see if headphones sound any better.

Jon Schaer
Columbus, OH