Portable Digital Recorder Resources

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After several weeks of research I have finally made a decision and purchased a Sony PCM-D50 digital recorder (without the fancy leather carrying case) to replace my mostly broken Sony PCM-M1 portable DAT.

During my research I came across some excellent resources that helped me make up my mind. I found some of the most thorough information on O’Reilly Digital Media. Their comparison chart was invaluable along with the extensive reviews of all the devices listed there. I consulted other in-depth reviews and another great comparison chart at Transom.org. I also read many of Brad Linder’s reviews including his review of the PCM-D50 and Create Digital Music pointed me to more reviews of just about everything I looked into.

This is by no means a complete list. I read lots of other articles and websites along the way, but these sites certainly helped the process along. I have yet to receive my new toy, but as soon as I do I’ll be posting some first impressions and sample recordings.

Mangled, Reversed, Distant and Filtered Piano

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Over processing usually leaves you with audio that lacks it original luster, or perhaps it starts to sound like the processor itself. However, sometimes you might end up with something interesting as a result of pushing the processing beyond the normal boundaries. While listening to the garbled piano in the last entry I could hear something haunting about the passage, so I decided that I would try to bring out those haunting characteristics by adding some unrestrained processing to the recording. I started by reversing it and pitching it down a couple of semitones. This brought out a brief harmonic minor melody. Later, after applying some extreme filtering and massive reverb I ended up with this thin, distant, and haunting sequence.

Mangled, Reversed, Distant, and Filtered Piano

iPod Garbled Piano Recording

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I finally made a dock connector for my third generation iPod that I’ve been making experimental recordings on with Linux and an AT822 stereo mic. Prior to making the dock connector I was only able to make mono recordings via the headphone jack. Since the dock connector only accepts a line level signal, I am pre-amping the AT822 with my ailing Sony PCM-M1 DAT recorder (it eats tapes, so it’s a useful retirement).

With this setup I am able to use the otherwise useless DAT recorder by connecting the stereo mic to the mic input, putting the device in record mode, adjusting the levels, and then taking the line out to the dock connector on the iPod as shown in the photograph. The recordings are relatively clean except for a tiny bit of high frequency interference that I haven’t tracked down yet.

The only other problem is that recording in stereo seems to tax the resources of the iPod. When I try to record at a sampling rate higher than 44.1kHz the audio is likely to suffer from a bizarre digital jitter effect. Here’s an example of a piano recording at 88kHz that I played and edited together to illustrate the jitter problem. I wouldn’t use this rate for anything I want to record well, but I kind of like the stuttering sound it creates as the iPod fails to process the audio quickly enough to store it accurately.

iPod Garbled Piano Recording

There’s Four Chips in that Bag

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I top and tailed this clip of ambiance from a popular lunch spot in downtown Minneapolis, applying quick fades in the beginning and end of the twenty four second example. I also applied normalization to boost the levels.

One of the employees prompts a customer into ordering his peperoni sandwich. After that I examine a bag of chips and my friend Derrin advises me that “there’s four chips in that bag”.

Four Chips in that Bag

 

Old Amplifier Abuse

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A couple of weeks ago, while working in the studio with Nils Westdal, we decided to experiment with an old amplifier that has a built in spring reverb. We plugged the direct out into a firewire interface and hit the record button in the software. Nothing was plugged into the amp, but by turning up the reverb knob all the way and the volume most of the way up, the spring reverb became very sensitive to vibrations. All that was left to do was to bang the amp around a bit while capturing the output.

Spring Reverb