#143

Francisco Lopez said in his red bull academy lecture that he uses a zoom h4n. I honestly think that gear isn’t that important.

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#144

Steve Roden purposely does something similar, using the cheapest mics/recorders, eg a built-in phone mic etc… it’s part of the aesthetic. Clearly, beautiful, transcendent things can be made with any gear. But sometimes, in specific use/sound scenarios - say, recording quiet sounds that need close, sensitive micing - having the right tool is essential. The trick, I suppose, is knowing when you need gear.

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#145

I’ve had a decent time with the more recent Zoom H5. Everything I’ve tried has been clear and sounds good. But I haven’t used it to record really soft/quiet sounds yet.

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#146

Totally agree with Karl above. It’s all about context. However, I wanted the flexibility and pre-amp quality to record quiet sounds with maximum signal to noise. Jez’s primary concern with Zooms is the noisier pre-amps.

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#147

I think it’s a bit strange calling those Nagras dictaphones. They’re surely just recorders like any of the others?

I’ve got a Mezzo - the onboard mics have S/N ratio of 90 dB and self noise of -122dbu up to 96khz. That’s totally awesome in a recorder small enough to fit in your pocket.

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#148

This is just making me want a new recorder, even though I’ve been fine with the H5 until now :slight_smile: Maybe I should try recording something quiet to see if I actually have any issues in practice.

#149

I bet the h5 spec is pretty good too. They’re so much better than the old zooms. Not pocket size, but none with xlr in are…

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#150

that’s what i thought before i tried my favorite (~400€, not really a high end thing) mic into a top notch preamp. Suddenly the mono workhorse was able to reproduce elements with depth of field. I guess it all comes to how transients are handled.

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#151

I was looking at the Nagra pico, which is marketed as “dictaphone-style”

#152

My Zoom H6 is treating me just fine, but this is is my first recorder and I haven’t had a chance to really put it through its paces. With more experience I’m sure I’d be able to find fault with it, but it gets what I want to get done done and beats recording on my phone in glorious mono. I haven’t had trouble with it yet.

I’m waiting on a pair of JRF contact mics to arrive in the post any day now, so we’ll see if they get along!

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#153

did you improvised on location, ie while recording ? or post-recording ?

#154

Everything was done in real time while recording on location. I had created a Max patch ahead of time with some tools (multi delay, envelopes, triggers, slicers, etc), then fed the live audio directly into the patch and listened through headphones while I played.

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#155

Nice approach!

20202020

#156

My approach involves using whatever I can find, which in the past has included both hi and low end equipment (e.g., shoebox-style cassette recorders, handheld Zooms, and Sound Devices recorders; and built-in and external microphones of varying quality). I’m in total agreement with @analogue01 in that perhaps the aesthetic is more important than overall audio “quality”. Graham Lambkin is one of my favorite artists to utilize field recordings as material for his work, and he uses some “poor” quality recorders quite effectively. Embrace what you have! Embrace noisy pre-amps and crap microphones!

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#157
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#158

Totally agree with this! It’s not like gear isn’t important, but it’s not as important as we might think. There’s also another aspect to it, you can make up a mental plan of what the final piece should sound like and then pick your gear according to that, or you can pick some random gear and explore that. In the end field recording is a lot about exploring, so it only makes sense to include the gear you use in that process too.

5 Likes
Speaker Preferences
#159

This whole discussion made me want to share these work-in-progresses that I’ve been working on as of lately.

The first two tracks are made using mainly field recordings specifically created for these tracks. The idea was to pick one interesting space for each track, explore it sonically through field recording and then create a track using these sounds. Spaces should be closed ones, but could be of different sizes. The first track is made using sounds from a 4 storey-high light shaft, the second one with sounds from inside and outside of a concrete bridge. Initially I wanted to be very strict with how much I would add to these tracks. So in “shaft” I did add some sounds made with the modular synth, but they were only there to emphasize pitched tones already presents in the field recordings (the shaft is characterized by strong, clearly pitched comb filtering)
In “bridge” the added synthesis sounds are passed through a convolution reverb that uses fragments from the bridge’s sounds as the IR. The last track is just a mix of random modular stuff I’m still unsure about…

https://soundcloud.com/papernoise/sets/kurodama-various-wips/s-oGRTU

3 Likes
#160

I am still researching the mid price recorders…sort of chewing over the zoom F4 at the moment as I would quite like four tracks. Have read differing reviews of it but no comparisons with the eridol and the tascams at the same price bracket (around £500-600).

For the record I do lots of recording with walkmans, dictaphones, mobiles and minidiscs and love the lo-fi end of things. Take the point that good stuff can be achieved at all levels. I dont recall seeing any comments on synth//eurorack threads telling people they should embrace their Casios? (but maybe they should)

As I am at work I cant listen to your tracks Papernoise but looking forward to them later. Personally I love altered and composed over field recordings…dont hold any purist standpoint over recordings - this integrity thing is a bit of a hang over- has its place but not always valid.

There is an air conditioning duct at work which I am desperate to get a really high quality recording of. It is just fantasically haunting.

#161

I have the same craving of making a super hq recording of a specific factory hum close by. I just realised a pattern of where the more banal the sound gets the more hq I want it. Whereas with more special sounds I don’t mind it being lofi. Feels like I want to compensate conventional sounds with higher quality which doesn’t really make sense when I think of it…

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#162

To me there’s sounds that have a lot of fine-grained and subtle details, and for those I think it’s great if your recording equipment is as hi-q as possible (within reason). Then there’s the sounds that are just generally interesting, where it’s less about the details but about the whole thing, and then there’s the sounds that aren’t nothing special by themselves, but can be made interesting by using a certain recording technique which might as well be a lo-fi one.
I see lo-fi recording or processing equipment as a stylistic device that you can use on sound for various purposes, which can range from “talking about technology in sound and music” to capturing a certain mood, or feeling that certain devices add to the sound (thanks for what we associate with them).

1 Like