Nice. We're starting to get some real usage data. My brief initial assessment last night parallels darby's and dallman's comments.
the metering of the PR-2 is somewhere around 5dB COLDER than actual
That probably reflects the metering being VU rather than a peak meter. Would be preferable if the PR2 displayed both as is common on other gear, combining the VU solid bar with a peak-line that has some some momentary held delay to it.
For folks who may not be aware, VU metering is "averaged" with a 300ms rise time that makes it more reflective of human hearing and traditional analog meters, but it does not indicate short transient peaks. The actual difference in indicated level between what a UV and peak meter display is going to vary with the nature of the signal and how fast it changes. In actual use, like Darby mentions, we'll just need to get a good feel for where we want the VU meter to top out, along with the knowledge that the actual peaks (dBfs) will be higher.. How much higher depends on how dynamic the music is. When recording on stage near the drum kit the peaks will be significantly higher than what the VU meter indicates, while when recording from far in back where its way less "peaky", the difference between the two will be significantly smaller. With an unchanging sine-wave input, both UV and a peak meter should indicate the same level.
In my initial playing around with the recorder last night, it seems easy enough to use. A long press of the record wheel button (along with a 3 second count down indicator on the display) starts or stops recording, unless the unit is set to start recording immediately upon power up, or upon wireless timecode sync.
A quick press of the record wheel button enters the menu, and the entry point is the input gain setting. If not locked, tapers will need to be careful not to accidentally
double [edit]
triple press the record wheel while recording (with no time limit imposed between presses) as the second press selects GAIN, and the third selects the LEFT channel for gain adjustment (when in stereo mode). Because there is no time limitation between those button presses, it would not be that unlikely to happen in pocket, and any inadvertent turn of the record wheel button after that will change the left channel gain setting. To exit the menu requires a single quick press of the power button which doubles as the "back". For that reason stealthers will want to engage the hold function which can be engaged manually, or set to engage automatically after 15sec or 1min. A triple click of the power button (in quick succession) locks/unlocks hold.
Similarly to what colagol mentioned about the Sidus control app, there is currently no way to link the gain adjustment of the two channels. Left and right channel gain must be adjusted separately.
IMO, neither the metering, the unlinked gains, nor the danger of accidentally changing the left channel gain are deal killers. Like others have mentioned, I plan to figure out what gain to run based on the mics I'm using, pretty much leave the gain untouched from there, and engage hold as soon as I start recording. However, it would be nice if a future firmware update addressed those things and I see no reason why they could not be updated via firmware.
The
5.6.5 Power supply adjustment of microphone section of the user manual states:
This mode allows you to manually switch the driving voltage of the microphone and select the microphone input option according to the type you need.However, in the actual menu I find no option for switching the mic powering voltage. It just allows me to switch between line-in / mic-in. I've not yet measured the mic powering voltage. So far, I've only played around with it using the included mic. Will need to dig out a microdot Y adapter to try it with the DPAs.
[edit to clarify that 3 subsequent clicks of the record wheel, without any time restriction between clicks, enters gain change mode]
Topic: Deity PR-2 Pocket Recorder (Read 264459 times)