Topic: Olympus LS-10 Recorder

[spyder9]

@spyder9: What do you base "very noisy and thin sounding" on?

I've owned the Zoom H4, Marantz PMD620, Sony PCM-D50, Tascam DR-1, Edirol R-1, and Edirol R09.  IMO, the R09 sounds best, followed by the 620 as a close 2nd.


Click the link below and check out the samples.

http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable-recorder-sound-samples.html

[prof_peabody]

@spyder9: What do you base "very noisy and thin sounding" on?

I've owned the Zoom H4, Marantz PMD620, Sony PCM-D50, Tascam DR-1, Edirol R-1, and Edirol R09.  IMO, the R09 sounds best, followed by the 620 as a close 2nd.


Click the link below and check out the samples.

http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable-recorder-sound-samples.html

SLUT!      

[spyder9]

 

[dallman]

@spyder9: What do you base "very noisy and thin sounding" on?

I've owned the Zoom H4, Marantz PMD620, Sony PCM-D50, Tascam DR-1, Edirol R-1, and Edirol R09.  IMO, the R09 sounds best, followed by the 620 as a close 2nd.


Click the link below and check out the samples.

http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable-recorder-sound-samples.html

Seems to me you had a Tascam HD P2 for a while...based on the list though, I think it was an honest oversight. 

[spyder9]

True, but the P2 is a full size recorder.  The above are handheld recorders.  Totally different animal(s).

[jboyzh]

@spyder9: What do you base "very noisy and thin sounding" on?

I've owned the Zoom H4, Marantz PMD620, Sony PCM-D50, Tascam DR-1, Edirol R-1, and Edirol R09.  IMO, the R09 sounds best, followed by the 620 as a close 2nd.


Click the link below and check out the samples.

http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable-recorder-sound-samples.html

Not much to argue against this list :-) and I also understand what you mean by checking wingfieldaudio. It's true IMO that the internal mics of the LS-10 do sound quite bright. For classical concerts, I use an external mic anyway which yelds some deeper sound. Compared to other handhelds, I don't think noise is an issue with the LS-10 however.

After all, I can hear sound character and noise depend more on the mic than the recorder itself; check those samples:
http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable-recorder-noise.html

[spyder9]

The DR-1 sounds pretty good in those noise samples.  Warmest sound of the bunch.

To add, where can I get one of those FEL 3.5 thingamabobs in the States?

http://www.felmicamps.co.uk/products/fel3.5series.html 

[Church-Audio]

LS-10 measurements. These were taken from the headphone output of the recorder I will post tests of the actual wav files when I get around to making them. There are clearly issues with using the mic input as far as  low frequency response is concerned. I think they limited the low end of the mic input to prevent overload of the built in speakers...That's my theory anyway.

[John Willett]

I think they limited the low end of the mic input to prevent overload of the built in speakers...That's my theory anyway.

I think it's more that the LS-10 is a small recorder that will often be used outdoors for interview work and the bass roll-off was put in to minimise wind and handling noise.

Either that, or that was the circuit compromise they had to do to maximise battery life - ie: putting in a full frequency response mic. pre. required components with a higher current drain.

That's my theory anyway.

If the answer was the former, I wish they had made it switchable.

Oh - thanks for the graphs, by the way, very useful.

[Church-Audio]

I think they limited the low end of the mic input to prevent overload of the built in speakers...That's my theory anyway.

I think it's more that the LS-10 is a small recorder that will often be used outdoors for interview work and the bass roll-off was put in to minimise wind and handling noise.

Either that, or that was the circuit compromise they had to do to maximise battery life - ie: putting in a full frequency response mic. pre. required components with a higher current drain.

That's my theory anyway.

If the answer was the former, I wish they had made it switchable.

Oh - thanks for the graphs, by the way, very useful.

The other thing I found out is the line input is at unity gain when the input level is at 10. I have been trying to get a schematic from Olympus but no luck if I can see the schematic I might be able to see where the HPF is in the circuit and remove it. I think if the bass roll off can be fixed it would be a good thing. It might be firmware based. But I am thinking its a few caps.

[Arni99]

I think they limited the low end of the mic input to prevent overload of the built in speakers...That's my theory anyway.

I think it's more that the LS-10 is a small recorder that will often be used outdoors for interview work and the bass roll-off was put in to minimise wind and handling noise.

Either that, or that was the circuit compromise they had to do to maximise battery life - ie: putting in a full frequency response mic. pre. required components with a higher current drain.

That's my theory anyway.

If the answer was the former, I wish they had made it switchable.

Oh - thanks for the graphs, by the way, very useful.

The other thing I found out is the line input is at unity gain when the input level is at 10. I have been trying to get a schematic from Olympus but no luck if I can see the schematic I might be able to see where the HPF is in the circuit and remove it. I think if the bass roll off can be fixed it would be a good thing. It might be firmware based. But I am thinking its a few caps.

In 4 hours I´ll tape a show using the internals/then dpa4061 on mic-in with bbox and plugin-power OFF/and the 3rd part of the show on line-in.
To get an idea how this unit´s internal bass-roll-off(internals and mic-in) works with "bassy" DPA mics. Might be a wanted roll-off using 4061s. Nevertheless you can boost low-frequenecies in post. I guess mic-in´s sensitivity won´t have any problems also at loud rock shows with low-sens DPA 4061s.
3 samples to come tomorrow.... .
I recorded from Radio on LINE-in yesterday and had to use gain 7 (of 10) for levels peaking at -1.

Chris, how do you like the ls-10´ look and feel?

[Church-Audio]

I think they limited the low end of the mic input to prevent overload of the built in speakers...That's my theory anyway.

I think it's more that the LS-10 is a small recorder that will often be used outdoors for interview work and the bass roll-off was put in to minimise wind and handling noise.

Either that, or that was the circuit compromise they had to do to maximise battery life - ie: putting in a full frequency response mic. pre. required components with a higher current drain.

That's my theory anyway.

If the answer was the former, I wish they had made it switchable.

Oh - thanks for the graphs, by the way, very useful.

The other thing I found out is the line input is at unity gain when the input level is at 10. I have been trying to get a schematic from Olympus but no luck if I can see the schematic I might be able to see where the HPF is in the circuit and remove it. I think if the bass roll off can be fixed it would be a good thing. It might be firmware based. But I am thinking its a few caps.

In 4 hours I´ll tape a show using the internals/then dpa4061 on mic-in with bbox and plugin-power OFF/and the 3rd part of the show on line-in.
To get an idea how this unit´s internal bass-roll-off(internals and mic-in) works with "bassy" DPA mics. Might be a wanted roll-off using 4061s. Nevertheless you can boost low-frequenecies in post. I guess mic-in´s sensitivity won´t have any problems also at loud rock shows with low-sens DPA 4061s.
3 samples to come tomorrow.... .
I recorded from Radio on LINE-in yesterday and had to use gain 7 (of 10) for levels peaking at -1.

Chris, how do you like the ls-10´ look and feel?

Its a very well built unit I would not use the mic input I would use the line input.. And then put the bass roll off after. Its extremely quiet I am going to be selling the one I have because I have done the tests I needed to do with it but its a nice recorder. I suspect this recorder is built by Panasonic not Olympus there is so many Panasonic parts inside its not funny not to mention the fact it came with Panasonic batteries. I would say its one of the best little recorders out there its got a great vu meter with good ballistics.. You can rely on the metering system. And the battery consumption is amazing No need for an external pack with this baby for sure atleast 10 hours on a single pair of AA's


Chris

[Arni99]

Just returned from my 1st testrun with the ls-10.
Small club and a rock/blues band was playing.
I started with dpa4061+bbox on MIC-IN, after 1 hour I switched to line-in but only for a short period - as supposed not enough output from the 4061s ...pushed the level to max. 10 and still peaks at only -20 to -16.
Then I switched to internal mics for some minutes and went home .

Conclusion: with dpa4061 the internal bass-roll-off of the ls-10 is perfect on mic-in.
For big arenas with higher SPLs LINE-IN (without roll-off) might be an option with 4061-alike low-sens mics.
Of course high-sens mics like dpa 4060ies or sp-cmc-8 should work fine on line-in, which is really quite INsensitive .

The internals sound fine too and the roll-off is really not too bad at and easy to boost in case you think it should be more.

Amazing low noise on all 3 tests.

sample 1: 24bit/44.1kHz => mp3 256kbit/s VBR lame 3.8
dpa4061+bbox on mic-in
post: normalization to -0,1db with Adobe Audition 3.0
LS10-dpa4061_bbox on mic-in.mp3 - 3.08MB

LINE-IN sample 24bit 44.1kHz =>mp3 256kbit/s VBR lame 3.8
normalized
LS10-dpa4061_bbox on LINE-IN.mp3 - 3.13MB

INTERNAL Mics sample: 24bit 44.1kHz=>mp3 256kbit/s VBR lame 3.8
ls10-internal mics-lowsens-lowcutoff-normalized
http://www.zshare.net/audio/2023444371cdd7f7/

[Church-Audio]

Just returned from my 1st testrun with the ls-10.
Small club and a rock/blues band was playing.
I started with dpa4061+bbox on MIC-IN, after 1 hour I switched to line-in but only for a short period - as supposed not enough output from the 4061s ...pushed the level to max. 10 and still peaks at only -20 to -16.
Then I switched to internal mics for some minutes and went home .

Conclusion: with dpa4061 the internal bass-roll-off of the ls-10 is perfect on mic-in.
For big arenas with higher SPLs LINE-IN (without roll-off) might be an option with 4061-alike low-sens mics.
Of course high-sens mics like dpa 4060ies or sp-cmc-8 should work fine on line-in, which is really quite INsensitive .

The internals sound fine too and the roll-off is really not too bad at and easy to boost in case you think it should be more.

Amazing low noise on all 3 tests.

Now you need a preamp and you will be at 0 with the line input


Chris

[Dede2002]

Just returned from my 1st testrun with the ls-10.

Amazing low noise on all 3 tests.

What about the high noise ( the recorded music  )?
Amazing too?
Let me know and take care, my friend.