This developement frightens me, frankly. Look at the number of recorders that have come out in the past 12 months that are similar, and many on this forum use them and like them, with a small percentage of exceptions. These units straddle the the once Berlin Wall like divide between "professional" and "consumer" grade equipment. These "podcasting" recorders that are another step below are making this once clear distinction seem to no longer be relevant, probably due to the death of the audiophile as served up by the MP3, ipods, and their ilk.
I remember well the recording market when I bought my first Sony TCD5M at the beginning of '85 (man, 23 years sure flew by ?
) At the beginning of that decade, there were professional cassette recorders built like tanks made by Uher, Nagra, Nakamichi, Marantz, and Sony. Also, there were consumer recorders, both desktop and hand held, that were used for voice and ENG recording that were "toys" in build quality compared to the afore mentioned units. However, never were the two classes of recorders marketed to the same users, or considered close in quality result. There was a big difference in "pro" recorders sold for high fidelity music, compared to "pro" recorders used by court reporters, for example. In fact, real professional audio equipment for music use was difficult for a regular consumer to obtain or even know it existed.
In the early DAT era, the consumer market quickly proved to not be interested in digital tape, so almost all field recorders were built as "pro" units, except for the small palm DATs like the D7/D8, which seemed toy like at the time, but in comparison to today, were actually very solid.
This is really just a rant, but I find it strange how the well understood and accepted wall between true professional equipment and consumer grade equipment has been all but wiped away. In fact, the only manufacturer today that seems to still believe in these principals is Sound Devices.
My fear is that one day, manufacturers will abandon the true "pro" recorder as we know it, and we will be left with wave recording ipods that might as well come free in a box of Captain Crunch.
Topic: Ipod Recorder -- WAV format with XLR ins (Read 2439 times)