field recording recommendations?

[Mark Lavelle]

I received a $$$ gift card for Sweetwater (as a retirement gift from my cow orkers) and I'm thinking of spending it on some field recording gear. I haven't done any field recording since ~1977, but I figure a basic rig would be
- recorder
- stereo mic pair
- shotgun mic
- contact/piezo mic

I'm thinking the TASCAM DR-100mkIII can handle the first two well enough, but I'm clueless about specialty mics. Any thoughts?



TASCAM DR-100mkIII

[Steve A.]

I received a $$$ gift card for Sweetwater (as a retirement gift from my cow orkers) and I'm thinking of spending it on some field recording gear.

When out in the field I would suggest that you do not ork any cows... they don't like it one bit and besides it is illegal in seven states!

I haven't done any field recording since ~1977, but I figure a basic rig would be
- recorder
- stereo mic pair
- shotgun mic
- contact/piezo mic

I'm thinking the TASCAM DR-100mkIII can handle the first two well enough, but I'm clueless about specialty mics. Any thoughts?

Good choice on the TASCAM! I got the DR-100's li'l brother (the DR-40) a few years ago and it has some great features, like recording a second "safety" pair of audio tracks at lower volume level in case your main tracks exceed 0dB.

As for external mics, Schoepes is highly rated but very expensive...

Home - SCHOEPS.de

For stealth tapers on a budget (like me!) Core Sound filled the bill....

Core Sound — Products

I got their Low Cost Stealthy Mics to go with my M-Audio MicroTrack II 10 years ago and was very pleased with the results.



Their higher end mics with DPA 4060/4061 capsules are supposed to be top-notch.




Steve Ahola

P.S. Best wishes for your retirement!

[Enzo]

You know the worst thing about orking a cow? You have to walk all the way around to the front to kiss them when you are done.

[Mark Lavelle]

When out in the field I would suggest that you do not ork any cows... they don't like it one bit and besides it is illegal in seven states!

That's why I had to retire!

As for external mics, Schoepes is highly rated but very expensive...

Very!

For stealth tapers on a budget (like me!) Core Sound filled the bill....
[...]
Their higher end mics with DPA 4060/4061 capsules are supposed to be top-notch.

Not really interested in stealth but I'd definitely buy the high end stereo set if I had an extra $1K...

It looks like the really good shotguns are all in the $1k range, too, so I guess I'll just play with the naked recorder until some more money falls out of the sky.

P.S. Best wishes for your retirement!

Thanks, heaps -- it's good to be doing more of what I want!

[Steve A.]

TASCAM is a top-notch company... I'll be taking my 3 year old DR-40 out for its first live band recordings tomorrow night so I went to their site to dl the manual and saw that they have updated the firmware several times already, fixing minor bugs and expanding microSD card capacity to 128GB!
I have a whole shitload of digital products that never received a single update. Why should a company have their techs work on firmware updates for older products when they stand to make a lot more money by selling new products to their existing customers?
ANSWER: Perhaps because they view their customer base as being an asset and not a liability... Or as suckers to con into buying their "new improved" version with useless bells and whistles that most of us don't need.

Steve A.

[Mark Lavelle]

TASCAM is a top-notch company [...]

I have a whole shitload of digital products that never received a single update. Why should a company have their techs work on firmware updates for older products when they stand to make a lot more money by selling new products to their existing customers?

Yeah, I've never been seriously disappointed by TASCAM, and that's one of the reasons why. I'm also happy to report that Logitech (my employer for a few more weeks) and many other companies have made firmware upgradability a religion over the last few years.

As a negative example, I was trying to use a PreSonus AudioBox 1818VSL and found that the Windows drivers hadn't been updated in over 3 years! That's lame beyond description...

As for the DR-100mkIII: Not an elegant UI, but usable. There are some things that seem obvious but don't work (playing a file) and other quirks, but I'm willing to RTFM for something like this.

Still looking for pointers on shotgun mics, if anyone has knowledge...

[Richard]

Could you get a small diaphragm condenser and add a tube with sound deadening? It could be a fun experiment.

[rjb]

Could you get a small diaphragm condenser and add a tube with sound deadening? It could be a fun experiment.

Q. How do shotgun mics work? |

[Mark Lavelle]

Good shotgun article.

I ended up going with a Rode NTG4, mainly because it's the best I found for less than $400 and I wanted to save some $ for windscreening accessories (e.g., Blimp). It's great outdoors when you can get relatively close to the sound source, but hardly helps for birds tens of feet away (especially if there's much wind or traffic noise).

The mics on the DR-100mkIII seem good enough for anything indoors, but pretty sensitive to wind.

This week I used a pair of SM57s to record trains with good results, but the beatings experiments will continue until morale improves...

[Enzo]

There was a fun article on building a shotgun mic in Popular Electronics magazine 50 some years ago. But here is an updated article that even has a link to the original magazine project.

"Shotgun" Directional Microphone