small portable field recorder

[postprosound]

I am looking to buy a small inexpensive field recorder. Something that I can have with me if I stumble onto something, or throw into my luggage when I go on vacation. I guess I have narrowed it down to the M-audio microtrack, edirol R-09, or the zoom h4. Anyone have experience with these. I am at the moment leaning toward the zoom, but…
Anyone have any experience or recommendations?

[Eric L]

I have not used them myself, but the Zoom reviews have not been great. Something about a low level hum when recording with battery power. Zzounds has some customer reviews. Do some research before you buy, or buy from someone with a generous return policy and try it out yourself.

Check out this review of the Microtrack. Lots of other cool info.

[soundguydave]

I own a few of the microtracks. As long as you get a external mic (AT 825) they work great. The interface takes some getting used to but other than that they have been great. Battery life could be better, and you can't swap them out, so thats a downside.

[mampam]

I am looking to buy a small inexpensive field recorder. Something that I can have with me if I stumble onto something, or throw into my luggage when I go on vacation. I guess I have narrowed it down to the M-audio microtrack, edirol R-09, or the zoom h4. Anyone have experience with these. I am at the moment leaning toward the zoom, but…
Anyone have any experience or recommendations?

Got an edirol for one of my out of town (very small town) clients, ex-ad man. He records the bank employees etc. and emails me the files. Works very well. Even the built-in stereo mikes do a pretty good job for him to set on his piano and record ( he is also and old piano bar player.)

[Frank Kruse]

Some of these "machines" don´t provide real or too low phantom-voltage. The MicroTrack for example doesn´t work with a lot of condensor-mics. Read the small print carefully .

Don´t expect sensations from the mic-pres on the mentioned recorders. Most of them are too noisy so 24bit recording is a waste of space. Just record 16bit and you´re fine.


Frank.

[Starcrash]

I love my MicroTrack! Having a 24/96k recorder the size of an iPod is awesome. I have an additional 1GB CF card which gives me about an hour and a half recording time at 24/48k. That said, it does have it pluses and minuses:

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Frequent firmware updates. Not just bug fixes, but actual new features and improvements to the UI. Since I've had mine they've added bolder text display, scrubbing audio, mono recording with summed headphones, and some others I can't remember off the top of my head

It feels pretty rugged and I haven't had any problems with mine. The key to battery life is to charge it overnight before you use it the first time. Take it home from the store, unpack, plug it in to the wall, and walk away. It's tough, but it makes a difference in battery life. I always thought that this was an urban legend with rechargeable batteries, but it actually says this in the manual and I know others whose MicroTrack batteries don't last as long as mine.

Pretty solid balanced TRS inputs and S/PDIF in/out.

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The worst, and this may be the dealbreaker, is the phantom power issue. It's not TRUE 48v like they claim. Recently they've finally admitted this on the M-Audio website. You have to either use a separate phantom power unit or battery-powered mics. There's a list of supposedly compatible mics, but I'm still skeptical.

The phantom power also makes the batteries drain really fast. Like, really fast!

Another possible dealbreaker is the preamps which are relatively noisy for recording quiet stuff like ambiences. If you have a good portable mic pre with phantom power you''l be in business. Just strap 'em both to your Bat Utility Belt.

[jeremiahmoore]

I own a microtrack - I view it as the audio equivalent of a pocket digital camera: The quality level is not that of your SLR, but the it's extremely convenient.

The phantom voltage output of the microtrack is something like 30 volts. I've had no trouble powering a sennheiser MKH-416P48. I've tried some studio condensers and encountered failure.

I use mine with a pair of Shure WL-183 omni lavs. I made a cable which adapts them to the mini-in which supplies power (sony's consumer plug-in-power/P-I-P "standard")

[thanks to Dan Dugan for discovering the WL-183s in this application]

A few other minuses of the microtrack:
-slow boot (40 seconds?)
-TRS inputs can crackle if twisted, particularly when phantom is on

That said, I use it all the time.

Haven't tried the Zoom or the Roland.

-jeremiah

[smsjr]

Don't know about the other recorders, but the previous posters have covered some of the shortcomings of the Microtrack. Here is my impression so far. Keep in mind that I have a SD744, so I'm a little biased.

Battery life - This will eventually bite you. It's too bad you can't swap out batteries. Battery life is not great. I can get hours and hours with my Sony infolithium batteries on the 744, but barely 2 hours on the MT.

Mic Pres - Honestly, they really don't cut it for high end recording. But for going out and grabbing a quick sound, they are probably fine. There is a decent amount of noise, and the 27 db boost is kind of silly. But if you did strap a good mic pre in front of it, maybe you could get some good results.

UI-this is where I'm not a big fan. It's clunky. Menus are okay, but playing back files can be a pain. For some reason fast forwarding and rewinding sometimes don't work right on my device. Maybe this has been fixed in a new firmware update. As far as I know there's no way to name files until you copy them over to your computer. That's probably asking a lot of a sub $500 recorder, but still it can affect your efficiency.

Stereo Mic - Again, for grabbing quick sounds, not too bad. But it has its limitations, which is what you would expect from a mic that is packaged with the relatively cheap recorder. I have used it and it did the job, but it would not be my first choice of mic for sure.

Overall - You can bring this thing out into public places and people will think you're just listening to an MP3 player most of the time if you use the onboard mic. That can be a big advantage if you're trying to record without drawing a lot of attention to yourself. I think that is its greatest strength. From a quality perspective, there are some additional gear you can add to this kit that will allow you to get some good results, but as mentioned, don't rely on long battery life, phantom power, good mic pres or file management from the recorder alone. At $399, it's a good option, but if you have the cash, and need to do some high end recording I would opt for some of the better recorders on the market.

Steve

[Noiz2]

You might look at the Marantz 660. It's pretty cheap uses AA batteries, has real 48V phantom power and suposedly works quite well. I have been using the 671 and it has been great. Some parts I like better than either the Nagra V or the 722 (not all but some).

[postprosound]

Thanks for all of the recommendations.
So I am assuming that all are about the same, good for getting louder sounds, poor at tone & ambiance. Mic pre's need some help, but, if you put a decent mic/pre combo on them they do ok. Does that sound about right?


Thanks again!!