Topic: Recommending a pocket field recorder

[totalsuper]

Point well taken.  I implied that birders don't know their technical stuff...which is of course a stupid statement...but the point I was trying to make is that the recording scenario's that Netwriter wants to record in (as specified in the original thread post) are more in line with what the people on TS.com are in tune with. 

Nature recordists that are recording bird-songs at the higher frequencies of the human hearing spectrum may likely get very satisfactory results with a setup that is completely unacceptable for the large range of recording scenarios that Netwriter desires.

For example, it doesn't surprise me at all to hear that someone can get fairly high quality bird recordings from a fairly low quality mic because we all know that the lower frequencies are the hardest to reproduce with any accuracy, since those are the same frequencies that so many of us spend so much $$ on in our setups to get a higher and higher quality of.  (Stevie Ray's guitar sounds fine on my 1985-era cheap mic recordings, but the bass completely sucks.)

However, I think we can mostly agree that acceptable results in bird-recording scenario's may not necessarily translate what most consider acceptable in spoken word or music recording.  Or maybe not!

I've just been through this exact research over the weekend and have settled on the Sony PCM-D50. It was a toss up between the Edirol R-09, the Tascam DR-1, and the Olympus LS-10. I really wanted a Marantz for old times' sake, but the good ones start at $1,000. The lower models in the 6xx series have been panned by reviewers for various faults.

Netwriter, if you're still getting topic notifications, I really think you should take a hard look at the Sony. Yes, it's more than you wanted to spend. I really wanted the Tascam for its lower price, but I require the use of internal mics for my purposes, and the Tascam has been shown to have too much self-noise. It's fine if you let it sit, but moving it causes noise, as does a quiet room.

The LS-10 is good if you must turn off all lights and indicators and still be recording, but since you're a journalist, I don't see where you'd generally need to be so stealthy. Besides, for $50 more, you can get the Sony.

The Edirol is a great unit as long as you use external mics with it, but since you aren't, that once again brings us back to the Sony, which is what I keep coming back to myself.