Musings on a mobile recording setup.

The Edirol / Roland R44 has turned out to be the last (serious) recorder I shall ever own.  There's now an 8 track version too. 

I looked at the 8-track one - and it was immediately ruled out for me due to only analogue inputs. My view on this is that the world's moved on slightly since then... and it's not that cheap either, for the restrictions...

For not a huge amount more, you can get a far more rugged device from AETA - the 4MinX. I've had my hands on one of these, and it's rather good... and even a brief look at the spec will probably tell you why I'm seriously considering it; I may even overlook the fact that it's French.

(if the AETA site plays up, you can have a look at it on the Pink Noise Systems site, where you also get to see the price)

Do you guys have any suggestion of something suitable below 1500 euro? I appreciate that a lot of you are (semi-)professionals in this business and as such can justify such expenses. And not in the least have knowledge about these things and how to use them. But for me these are just wet dreams.

I'd rather spend half that amount on gear and put the rest away for work on my pipe organ.

Do you guys have any suggestion of something suitable below 1500 euro? I appreciate that a lot of you are (semi-)professionals in this business and as such can justify such expenses. And not in the least have knowledge about these things and how to use them. But for me these are just wet dreams.

Depends. What would your minimum spec be?

input:
- 4 channels at 24/96 (using 24/44.1 right now so already some slack)
- line or adat
- at least a -6dB led
- if mic inputs then phantom/input, 10dB pad, 70dB gain and XLR's
(- luxury but if mic inputs an analog lowpass filter)

output:
- analog stereo or adat
- headphone that can drive 600 Ohm on a 6.3mm jack

various:
- number of possible recording tracks constant independent of samplerate, bitrate, inputs
- at least 4 hours recording time as a single file (or one file/track)
- files directly pc readable (.wav)
- monitoring on the inputs while recording (that made me lose part of the performance last time)
- no need of playback while recording, mixing, busses, effects, filters...
- no automation, midi, video

You could consider an Edirol R44, but I think the one in your price range that deserves a serious look is the Tascam DR680, which pretty much meets your spec head-on - apart from having twice as many tracks!

Or, if you fancy something a bit left-field, but more portable and cheaper, then a Roland R26, perhaps? (6 tracks with this one)

There may be more, but I think that these are the obvious contenders.

Have already had a look at the Tascam DR-680 as PWHodges mentioned it. Going to download the manual and take a deeper look. It looks good indeed and if I shop around a bit it isn't too expensive. But I'll still got homework to do on this.

Have already had a look at the Tascam DR-680 as PWHodges mentioned it.

He mentioned it because he has one! So he's probably a good person to ask about what it's really like in practice.

http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=157462.0 is the fifth thread on the DR680 on TapersSection forums - plenty of end user discussion there!

Have already had a look at the Tascam DR-680 as PWHodges mentioned it. Going to download the manual and take a deeper look.

Feel free to ask questions.  Note that firmware updates made some significant changes relative to the main manual, with things like MS monitoring, arbitrary ganging of input gain setting, gapless switching to new files on long recordings.

Paul

[arbitrary ganging of input gain setting, gapless switching to new files on long recordings.]

Had a few busy days so this got put aside a bit. I did look around a bit for prices of alternatives and so far the Tascam looks the most interesting. Also probably the one to get running with the least "work".

Note that firmware updates made some significant changes relative to the main manual, with things like MS monitoring, arbitrary ganging of input gain setting, gapless switching to new files on long recordings.

Both very useful things to have.

Slightly more OT, but since Havoc inspired me to have a look at everything available... I might as well tell you that I've changed my mind about what I might go for, because it meets my spec (which relates very much to AES inputs) rather more closely and flexibly. And that's a Tascam HS-P82.

I've been reading around, and come to the conclusion that this may be as good a fit as I can find, considering that it's available at not ridiculous prices, and that Tascam appear to be supporting it quite well - several firmware upgrades to make it do useful things, as suggested by end users.

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The other thing Havoc asked that hasn't really been answered is the question about why people don't trust, or even like, laptops running software as a primary location recording system. I think that certainly for me, it comes down to two main things:

Firstly, it's that the software you are running is just that - software, running in RAM that's also supporting an operating system. Plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong which are far less likely to occur with a firmware-based solution where everything is dedicated specifically to the task in hand, and not sitting in something that's essentially volatile.

Next it's the machine response time. With the HD recorder (and I think that this goes for most, if not all of them) it's possible to pre-load your session with named settings and record specifications, select it and have it available immediately* for use. With Audition (and it's not alone) even if you make all the folders, etc in advance and set up the session, the time between starting the machine and actually being able to record is sometimes significant - to the extent that once you've used a hardware solution, you won't want to go back.

On top of those two, I don't like mice-control on location - that can be a pain. And that's the other thing - you invariably have to spend a while setting up a laptop and connecting everything together. The HD recorder in the flight case is largely pre-configured from a connections POV as well as for the session - relatively little left to plug in; mainly microphones, headphones and that's about it.

Anyway, this all added together makes the case in favour of hardware-based recording rather overwhelming as far as I'm concerned.

*With the HD24 for instance, you turn it on, it mounts the drive, select the session, arm the tracks you want to record, and it's off. Takes a few seconds, total. With a laptop, it generally takes at least a minute before you can even open Audition, never mind record anything...

This is my portable setup in use in Keble chapel (iPhone photos, as I forgot to take my camera).

Here is the choir part of the chapel, with the organ very high up to one side - you can see the stand on the right of the photo:



Here is my microphone (the TetraMic), with tile mosaics behind:



And here's the Tascam DR-680 recorder sitting at the foot of the stand (I don't have a battery, and I don't trust internal alkalines to go for long enough):



And apart from the Tascam power block and a wind-up mains extension, that's absolutely all of it.

I'm inclined to agree that a laptop solution is a bit messy compared with dedicated hardware, but if you are going to use a laptop, personally I'd use Reaper for live work rather than Audition - it has a number of features which suit the situation (not least being the ability to disable all keystrokes during recording, except ones you designate, which can involve two keys rather than one, thus making accidents pretty hard - also the ability to close the current file(s) at any point and open new ones from a key combo without losing anything).  And it starts rather faster, particularly earlier versions which remain available online.

The other thing Havoc asked that hasn't really been answered is the question about why people don't trust, or even like, laptops running software as a primary location recording system.

I both trust and like my laptop system, running AudioMulch for recording; however, I have changed to using the Tascam for concerts because of its sheer simplicity and speed of setup.  It's one small box instead of two larger boxes, and can sit unobtrusively with the stand (as in the photo above), which the laptop and Traveler setup cannot.  For less pressured recordings than concerts (where I also have other duties, mind), the laptop and Traveler is still my go-to combination.

Paul

Here is a link to a thread with some results in...