Digital Audio Recorders for Turbo-charging Your Interview Sessions

Choked-up with unfeasible recording scenarios?

I’m fanatic of audio recordings, interviews, field recordings and social research. If you are befuddled with the right choice of digital audio recording tools, this is the exact orbit to run your eye sight. I’ll take you through the guidelines to decide on your machine.

User areas of audio recording gizmos

The audio recording machines are multifaceted user tools that aid interview footage, creating podcasts, recording seminars/ lectures/ field events or other sessions. Thus, they are useful for the media professionals, teachers and students, companies, etc. However, selection of the recording device, based on the audio quality relies on the type, cost and the features that suit your purpose.

Audio File Formats

All the recording devices offer an extensive range of audio recording formats:

Compressed: MP3 format is the most widely used compressed format. The file size makes it advantageous, but some audio obliteration may occur at lower bits (less than 128bps).

Uncompressed: WAV format is the customary, native windows uncompressed audio file format. The file quality will be excellent and there won’t be any audio destruction in perfect recording.

The pool of digital recorders

Herein, I suggest some of the best portable digital audio recorders:

• Digital Dictaphones

These are handy voice recording devices featured with en-suite microphones, simple interfaces, and comprehensive long-play recording modes. This is best suitable for an informal voice recording and note-taking. Some dictaphones may place an intricacy in file transfer to computer.

Olympus VN-5500PC DNS

This is a very valuable and simple digital dictaphone and note-taker with Dragon Naturally Speaking Voice Recognition Software with appreciable voice-to-text conversion accuracy. This product is featured with built-in mono microphone, external microphone input, headphone output, adjustable playback speed and in-built storage of 512MB.

 

Sony ICDB600

This is an easy to use digital dictaphone with restricted features. The demerit is that, similar to the tape-based dictaphone, the recorded data could not be transferred to the computer and thus only manual re-recording has to be done for the purpose of editing. This product is featured with built-in mono microphone, headphone output, integrated speaker and internal storage of 512MB.

 

 

• All-in one portable recorder

These recorders are better than dictaphones and apposite for capturing hi-quality stereo location recordings.

Edirol/Roland R-09 HR

This is a professional, high-resolution WAVE/MP3 Recorder. It comes with a rubberized body, handy preview speaker, Cakewalk’s Pyro Audio Creator LE wave-editing software and a remote control. The additional features include isolated adaptive recording circuit, 24/96 fidelity and OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) display.

Zoom H2

This is a handheld digital audio recorder to record very high-quality audios and thus popularly known as “studio on a stick”. It is featured with LCD Display, 4 internal microphones, 4-Channel Stereo recording up to 24 bit/ 48 kHz, Time Stamp and Track Marker functions in Broadcast WAV Format (BWF), Auto Gain Control and Auto Start function. Besides, it supports SD flash memory cards.

• Field recorders

These recorders are mostly preferred for professional and broadcast level field recordings.

Marantz PMD-671

This is a table-top portable model that enables easy recording and audio file transfer to the computer. It is featured with an unremitting recording up to 6 hours, remote operation, an EDL marking system for creating new files. This recorder is well-suitable for Marantz Professional’s PMDEdit editing and file management software.

Fostex FR-2

This product directly records the audio to hard disk drive or Type II CompactFlash™ card in the industry-standard BWF format up to 24bit/192kHz. Furthermore, it features two balanced XLR mic inputs with switchable phantom power and high-headroom pre-amps.

Tascam DR-680

This product is a portable multi-track recorder that supports up to 8 channels concurrently and it supports capturing for surround sound with six microphone inputs. The recording formats include BWF (8 channel) and MP3 (4 channel simultaneous recording). The special feature is stereo real-time mix-down to high resolution (192kHz) master track.

Despite the comparative elucidation here, it’s the user’s choice to single-out the right recorder that suits your need and budget!