Topic: Another Newbie Question Thread

[stevetoney]

Taking the practice theme one step further, if you plan to stealth record, learn to operate your gear by feel.  Turn the lights out at home and learn your way around your recorder without looking.  Obviously manual level dials are better than digital button levels for this purpose, but if you're experienced you should be able to set your levels at around the right place beforehand.

[Gutbucket]

Good advice, except I take exception to the 'obvious' statement, which is simply a personal preference.  I prefer digital button control over levels in a pocket recorder rather than a potentiometer knob for a few reasons: Can be adjusted more precicely without looking (count the button presses); often less prone to accidental adjustment; exactly repeatable gain settings in descrete level increments.  Yet I fully understand that a level knob is prefered by other users.

[stevetoney]

Good advice, except I take exception to the 'obvious' statement, which is simply a personal preference.  I prefer digital button control over levels in a pocket recorder rather than a potentiometer knob for a few reasons: Can be adjusted more precicely without looking (count the button presses); often less prone to accidental adjustment; exactly repeatable gain settings in descrete level increments.  Yet I fully understand that a level knob is prefered by other users.

Interesting.  I don't stealth anymore so I haven't had to do any 'no look' taping for a long time.  I didn't realize you could set levels with button level controls without looking.  Nice!

[Gutbucket]

IME, the goal is to learn where to set it beforehand so that you have sufficinet but not excessive headroom and needn't adjust the input gain setting at all during a recording.  However, until one figures that out level checking and level adjustment durring the recording may be necessary.  I pretty much switch between two gain settings on my small pocket-recorder rig: one for jazz/classical and a lower level setting for small to medium sized PA-with-subwoofers venues.  I could cover most anything by determining one additional setting below and one setting above those for very low level material like ambinet nature recording and for super-loud stuff, but I don't typically use this rig for those things.  Finding the comfortable range to 'set and forget' is the key.

[earmonger]

And luckily recorders are more forgiving now.

I look at my recorder when the band is coming on, to make sure the levels are visible with my usual settings for my mics. And if there's a big bass buildup during the show I take a nervous look at my recorder again. But otherwise set and forget is the way to go.