Comments for:

Sonic LAB: Portable Recorders - Edirol R-09HR
  13-May-09

Actually, a few years ago Roland released one of the first portable solid state recorders, the R-1. I bought one and used it for a while. It was crudely designed but it worked reasonably well and sounded decent. I still use it occasionally, but I am looking at one of the Zooms as a replacement.

13-May-09 09:35 AM

You guys already had this review up on the News page a few days ago.

PS The the anti-spambot image thing is acting up. When I first get to the comment page, it's a black rectangle. I have to type random letters in and click the go button to get a viewable image.

13-May-09 12:17 PM

yeah, we know - there was a small issue with some audio 'ticking' noises on the Flash render, so we re-did it.

Interesting to know about the spambot - I don't see that; what browser/platform are you running? Thanks for pointing it out.

Andy

13-May-09 01:34 PM

Howard, yes, we missed that one, Edirol put us right, hence the tweaked intro text to reflect that.

Thanks

14-May-09 06:31 AM

Re Low vs High gain recording.

Did you match the levels (or normalize?) in post when comparing the two settings?

The low gain vocal sounded quieter to me.

15-May-09 04:15 AM

Hi Scott - no, I didn't want to normalize in post as it might have affected the sound quality. I boosted the input levels to max, and moved closer to the mics, but the gain structure is quite different and the level was a little quieter. It was meant as a rough & ready realtime demo of how switching Gain settings may affect sound quality.

15-May-09 04:32 AM

Hi Andy,

thanks for the response, then your experience of a flatter sound is a consequence of the level, louder recordings always sound better than quiet ones of the same source. We are less sensitive to low and high frequencies, as I am sure you are aware.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness

As the level drops we lose the low and high sound first…this is what I think you are probably responding to, not a non-linearity of the R09HR frequency response (which your comments imply).

About boosting levels, I appreciate your concern, however you should be able to raise the gain of the Low Sensitivity recording to match the high sensitivity level (not necessarily normalizing, that’s a quick equalizer tho). I am fairly sure once you match playback levels that they will sound the same.

Regards Scott

15-May-09 11:32 PM

I'm back...Andy, please check these two recordings. I grabbed the audio from your video and

1. Here is the original unmatched High-vs-Low sensitivity recordings:

www.digifishmusic.com/public/sounds/SonicState_R09HR_MicHigh_vs_MicLow_Original_Levels.mp3

The second does sound flat.

2. Here is the second section with levels matched with the first:

www.digifishmusic.com/public/sounds/SonicState_R09HR_MicHigh_vs_MicLow_Matched_Levels.mp3

Problem solved methinks.

PS: I fixed your popping 'P' on 'input' too you may notice :)

This is an interesting issue that I have seen catch many new users of DAWs who think one DAW sounds better than another. 99% of the time there are level differences between the two packages that cause the issue. Level is a red-herring.

Regards

15-May-09 11:50 PM

When can we expect the rest of the videos ?

27-Jul-09 12:33 AM