Rory, here’s an example. Your 12/3/21 TTB recording. Any Ed Tyre recording. If you all want to drink the kool aid that a deck with 85 or so db of dynamic range sounds as good as one with 126 or so, have at it. I’ve offered several tapers a marantz warm mod 620 loner, no takers. To be clear, I’m not saying the A10 mic in recordings aren’t good. They are.
I think this is exactly what I said, without the snarky comment about drinking the kool-aid. Your comment is subjective without any real detail to what is insufficient about the recordings.
This is an old, old debate. Back then, the folks running stock sbm1s said they didn’t need a mod, that it sounded “just fine” to them. Or that an AD1000 wasn’t worth it. The Bnb>A10 tapes are just fine. I personally have always looked for a lot more than fine. The payoff for spending ridiculous sums on a pair of mics, tickets, the hassle of sneaking gear in, has to be more than just fine. That doesn’t necessarily mean more expensive. My 620 decks all cost around $100 used, the mods $200. Hell many of us spend more than $200 on cables and mounts. Certainly less than running an outboard pre.
Not about cost. I get the feeling there may be a fair bit of nostalgia about "mods" to equipment. Using SBM1's as an example? I've been perfectly satisfied with various stock handhelds and other small form factor recorders. I sold my outboard preamps years ago because I didn't feel it was worth the effort of carrying the extra gear and batteries to power it. I'm not saying it was better without the preamp, just that the small, small difference was not worth my effort. For the record, I loved my full body AKG 480's with a UA-5 warm+ mod preamp. But, I doubt I'll ever run that rig again. I still have the UA-5 here.
Back to the points for others reading this thread, lest someone think the recorder is not a good choice for what we do:
1. An A-10 is tiny and a great part of a low profile rig.
2. The sound quality is good, in my opinion, much more than adequate. Maybe not great, but certainly good and most users listening to audience recordings are very satisfied with the resulting audio.
3. The ability to fully control the A-10 via bluetooth in a world where everyone has their phone out at a concert adds to the low profile value.
To me, the quality of most recordings done today with the right gear is far superior to what was done 25-30 years ago, modded or unmodded. A baby nbox > A-10 is a nice back end of a rig and I am more than satisfied with my results and the results I listen to by others. It was recordings by others that made me sell my M-10 and buy the A-10 and then buy a baby nbox. I wanted a quality low profile rig. I am stating this as an opinion and suggest anyone looking for options to include the A-10 in their own listening comps. The last many pages have been critical of the recorder and I want to even out the discussion a bit.
Topic: Sony PCM-A10 (Part 2) (Read 133280 times)