Hi,
I have been following the taperssection for a while now and I think it's very helpful and a good place to find information, thanks for that. I've decised to buy an Edirol R09HR, but I am still a bit indecisive about buying a external mic. My question is:
Would an external mic (±budget 100 dollar/euro's, for example an Audio Technica Pro 24) be a significant improvement, compared to Edirol's internal mics?
I want to use the mic without a preamp or a batterbox. I'll be recording environmental sounds and accoustic stuff most of the time, no loud rock shows.
Thanks in advance!
I have not yet used the R09HR but based on my experiences with the R09, definitely.
I do a lot of environmental field-recording, I often use a pair of Sound Professionals SP-TFB-2 Binaural Microphones (high sensitivity models) ~$70 and a pair of home-made mics with the same capsules (
http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,94446 ) ~$20 plugged straight into the R09 with excellent results. Both sound identical (they use the same caps).
Here they are side-by-side...
I don't know what the internal mics are like in the R09HR, but if the R44 and R09 are anything to go by, then they will be far too noisy for field-recording.
Secondly, external mics will give you much better choice of mic-placement for better stereo and boundary effects.
Click here to pull up my Freesound recordings with the R09 + Sound Professionals binaurals... in particular here is a recording that pushes the noise limits of both the mic-in and SP-TFB-2
Rainforrest birds. Sounds very very good IMO. Note you will need to create an account on freesound if you want to download the high quality original files.
and
Click here for and example from my home-made $20 specials So your choices are quite a few in this area, but the cheapest way to go is to
build your own. The advantage of the SP mics are that they are 1. very reasonably priced. 2. The in-ear clips provide a nice mount 3. You don't have to fiddle with making your own
I'll now stand back and let the alternative recommendations flood in...
digifish