Pro Audio

[Deleted96908]

Hi Everybody,

I've recently taken delivery of an Apogee Duet and am bowled over by the quality it offers for recording very clean audio into my Mac/iPad.

I'm using a Heil Pr40 into the Duet, feeding my Mac, along with B&W MM1 monitors. The Duet also works great plugged directly in my iPad running Bossjock.

I run Adobe Audition on my Mac, which comes as part of Adobe's Creative Cloud offering. The presets are great and save a lot of time when trying to clean up audio, especially for non pros like me.

I'm also looking at the Sony PCM-D100 for field recording, although lack of XLR inputs is an issue. But from what I have heard, it's the best field recorder on offer at the moment. check out the sound samples, especially the sheep, which you can find in the PCM D100 link.

I know many of you invest heavily in your own computer hardware and am wondering how many of you have similar audio setups - Mac, PC or Tablet.

A quick word on intended use. We are investigating setting up an online community radio station (fully licensed), and the above represents our first steps in understanding the appropriate technologies. I am a technology and media consultant, with clients including major broadcasters and facilities, but none of my work to date has been audio based, hence the research and taking advice wherever I can find it.

Chris

 

[bolide]

I think the "best" field recorder will be the one that bets meets your needs, not the one with the best specs or reviews. All digital recorders now offer a virtually perfect audio capture so the mic inputs, provision of limiters, etc will probably make the decision for you. Tascam make some multichannel units that look interesting - you could record lavaliers and ambient mics at the same time and blend them later

The most important thing will be a decent lavalier with a radio setup back to the recorder. You can record on an iPod,yes, but I think having just one source to download files from will ease your workflow

There are some cheap radio setups about, all of which are awful. Sennheiser make a great ENG setup. It's expensive, but you get what you pay for a cheap kit will break very quickly

Samson make an interesting piece of kit called the Airline. It's a rechargeable lavalier & belt pack plus a receiver which is designed to be used with a DSLR (it has a ht shoe mount) or other recorder

Most radio mic stuff uses mains-powered base stations so you'll need something like to Sennheiser or the Samson to go portable

This link will give you some useful info. Although you're probably not recording audio on a DSLR, it has good pointers for low-cost audio capture without spending thousands

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=recording+audio+on+dslr&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

All the prosumer kit with minijacks & etc will do a great job, and the audio quality will be as good as pro kit. But the hardware & connectors won't last. If you look at what the professionals use, there's always a reason for their choices and #1 is not sound quality - it's getting the job done

Nick Froome

 

[Satch]

Recently No.1 son has been doing some audio recording at home, mainly voice overs for video but also some music.

Uses one of these and been really impressed
Scarlett 2i2 | Focusrite

Works with pretty much anything and is an easy way of connecting to powered monitors, in his case Yamaha HS7's.

 

[Deleted96908]

I think the "best" field recorder will be the one that bets meets your needs, not the one with the best specs or reviews. All digital recorders now offer a virtually perfect audio capture so the mic inputs, provision of limiters, etc will probably make the decision for you. Tascam make some multichannel units that look interesting - you could record lavaliers and ambient mics at the same time and blend them later

The most important thing will be a decent lavalier with a radio setup back to the recorder. You can record on an iPod,yes, but I think having just one source to download files from will ease your workflow

There are some cheap radio setups about, all of which are awful. Sennheiser make a great ENG setup. It's expensive, but you get what you pay for a cheap kit will break very quickly

Samson make an interesting piece of kit called the Airline. It's a rechargeable lavalier & belt pack plus a receiver which is designed to be used with a DSLR (it has a ht shoe mount) or other recorder

Most radio mic stuff uses mains-powered base stations so you'll need something like to Sennheiser or the Samson to go portable

This link will give you some useful info. Although you're probably not recording audio on a DSLR, it has good pointers for low-cost audio capture without spending thousands

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=recording+audio+on+dslr&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

All the prosumer kit with minijacks & etc will do a great job, and the audio quality will be as good as pro kit. But the hardware & connectors won't last. If you look at what the professionals use, there's always a reason for their choices and #1 is not sound quality - it's getting the job done

Nick Froome

Thanks Nick, sorry for the belated reply. Thanks for the links.

We've rented and tried lots of kit -

Nagra 7
Nagra SD with mono cardioid and Sanken Cos 11
Sony PCM D100 with Sound Devices Mix Pre D
Sound Devices 633, 788 etc
And a host of other ENG mics too

As you say getting the job done is the first consideration, although have to say, we like the low noise floor of the more expensive Sound Devices and the Nagra 7.

Thanks for your input.

Chris

 

[Deleted96908]

Recently No.1 son has been doing some audio recording at home, mainly voice overs for video but also some music.

Uses one of these and been really impressed
Scarlett 2i2 | Focusrite

Works with pretty much anything and is an easy way of connecting to powered monitors, in his case Yamaha HS7's.

Yes, nice bit of kit although we've now moved away from recording directly to PC/Mac, trying to avoid the inevitable crash that ruins the take

Good luck.

Chris