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Gear / Technical Help => Recording Gear => Topic started by: GLouie on October 10, 2013, 05:04:14 PM
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New guy here (but a taping veteran)- We have a variety of gear here including a couple of SD722s, and I've attached PDFs of some Rightmark Audio Test results for 3 popular recorders, the Tascam DR60 and DR100mk2 and Zoom H4n.
For those not familiar with Rightmark, it's a free software automated testing program, using a computer's built-in sound card. Some people point out that there can be many problems with this technique, so take results with a grain of salt. It's not an Audio Precision.
Here I tested 24bit 96kHz XLR line-inputs. The resulting file is what Rightmark analyzes, so this means it's the recorder's A to D only. The major limitation is the quality of the soundcard used to generate the analog signals fed into the recorders, which in my case is a Digital Audio Labs (DAL) "CardDeluxe", which is a very good card. Since I'm testing the analog inputs, I have to manually adjust recording level and I try to get it within a couple of dB of 0dBFS. Then Rightmark with compensate a bit for its analysis.
I tested only the line-inputs, since I don't have a good way of testing mic preamps. The Zoom was troublesome because it's line-in is more sensitive than normal. I had to settle for setting the input level at half (50), and using the phone inputs unbalanced with an attenuated signal to hit 0dBFS. I can't explain the poor results since it was some time ago and I had to give the unit back. I usually run several tests to make sure I'm consistent. I've seen other tests of the Zoom show other high distortion figures.
I hope I have attachments here...