Topic: Olympus LS-10 with external mics?

[melbourne83]

I've recently purchased the Olympus LS-10 and just bought a pair of Core Sound Cardioid's w/ batterbox. I'm new to taping and want to record an outdoor event next weekend.

I was wondering if anyone here ever tried the LS-10 with external mics? How did your recordings turn out? the manual of the LS-10 says you shouldnt connect external mic's to the LS-10's line-in jack. I'm not a tech pro and confused now... 

[gearscout]

The microphones go into the Mic In jack.  If you had a pre-amplifier, you would use the Line In.  Even with the batteries, you are using Mic Level inputs, not a pre-amplifier.

Do a test and see how they sound with "Mic Power" turned on in the LS-10 and with that same Menu item set to "Off."  You may notice a difference. 

Your Core Sound battery box includes a "Y" conversion cable that will join those two mono mics into a single stereo (binaural) input...which is the LS-10's "Mic In." 

The LS-10 does pretty well with many external microphones.  I found it to accent the "high end" a bit, compared to the Sony PCM-D50, but that takes a few seconds to adjust in Audacity or another audio editor if it doesn't please you.

Hope that helps!

[flintstone]

The LS-10 does very well with external mics.  Set the mic sensitivity to "Low" for best results.

[melbourne83]

thanks for the heads up. just received the mics and now looking forward to the weekend.
the reason I asked about the ls-10 was I read several comments on its results with external mics and everone said different things. I should have read more reviews on the LS-10 before I bought it but its appearance just attrackted me way to much that I had to go for it immediately. I will see how things turn out this weekend. Have a lot of bands to tape on my schedule. cheers

[melbourne83]

Hi just comming back from my first big festival and also first taping experience, I'm very pleased with the results. Taped 5 bands(radiohead, xavier rudd, monster magnet, kaiser chiefs and foo fighters).
Thanks to yous who gave me some advise here.

All shows recorded with CSC's > b-box > LS-10
I had some problems though, I lost one of the mic-clips so one mic always had to be corrected in its position from time to time, which you will hear now. I reckon I can fix most of the crackles but I'm not sure when I will have the time to work on the recordings.

An mp3 sample of Foo Fighters 2008-06-22 is attached to this post, let me know what ya guys reckon. cheers

[guysonic]

Later today going to upload LS-10 technical review first edition that should answer questions on where/when you might connect external gear and some tips on using controls/features.

See this review at www.sonicstudios.com/ls10revw.htm

[melbourne83]

That's a pretty good review. I found one thing to be not entirely true:

"Also, USB LS-10 CONNECTION will only recognize the external flash card if inside the deck. To access LS-10 internal memory, the external card needs be removed, and the LS-10 needs reestablish fresh USB computer connection for accessing internal deck memory."

when I connect the LS-10 to my computer Windows opens up the SDHC card + the internal memory. I once freaked out as I accidentally opened the internal memory window and couldnt find what I've just recorded, but luckly figured it out pretty quickly.

I found the file transfer of the LS-10 to the PC via USB 2.0 is pretty lame, especially when it comes to transferring huge files (takes me about 8 minutes to transfer a file about the site of 1.4 gb) therefore I bought another cheap 4gb SDHC card on ebay that comes with an adaptor for SD/SDHC to USB.