Topic: Deity PR-2 Pocket Recorder

[Sebastian]

Thanks for the peek inside. How easily did it come apart? Did it just snap back together?  If easy enough and unlikely to get damaged in a way that requires gluing back together I might upen mine up to see if I can better ID the unmarked chips for you.  Any insight into the potential of somehow physically wiring two or three of these together to share transport control and clock?

It came apart easier than I thought. I found it best to start at the top (left and right of the input/output connectors). Also, there were 2-3 sport where they used a tiny bit of glue to hold it all together.

Theoretically, it should be possible to wire two units together. The audio codec IC has PINs for the word clock. However, since it is a BGA chip, its pins are on the bottom and not easily accessible. So you'd have to see where to get access to the clock signal elsewhere. and you'd need to cut the trace for that signal on your slave device to avoid mixing two separate clock signals. Personally I'd say this is not worth it. A DR-2d is roughly the size of two PR-2s and can already record two stereo tracks simultaneously.

[Gutbucket]

Thanks. 

Yeah, in actuality the primary advantage of wiring two together for me would be eliminating the need to carry the external 4ch preamp required in my DR2d based rig, and beyond that the smaller plastic PR2 units are stealthier than DR2d which uses a metal housing and looks more like an audio recorder.  Otherwise for recording 4 channels I remain content with the DR2d rig.  That's all on the practical side of things.   

To advance further on the technical side of things I'd need to wire three PR2s together to enable 5 or 6 channels, the use of which is a practically achievable simple extension of what I've been doing and has been a long time goal.  8 channels is the ultimate goal, but effective use of that would require tiny 5V PIP powered fig-8s mounted coincidently with the current mics to form 4 M/S pairs in place of the 4 mono channels.

/dreams

[Sebastian]

Well, another question is whether or not the word clock signal can actually be driven over a cable (which is significantly longer and significantly more exposed to RFI than a PCB trace) without additional buffering.

[Gutbucket]

Wondered about that. Would probably keep the 2 or 3 units adjacent to each other or together in a single USB battery-like housing, although one application would have them spaced apart from each other, but not by more than about 10".  This is all above my DIY electronics level of expertise and comfort zone though.

[datbrad]

Hey, sorry to pop in with a question that may have been covered earlier in the thread and I missed it when I scanned through the posts.

Can you plug a usb microphone into the usb-c port and record that signal instead?

[lpmaskman]

Now arrived! That's really small!
First real recording will be Pantera for me in february.

[Gutbucket]

^ Try it without the battery box on something loud.  The built-in PIP is 5V.  Not as much as 9V battery box but more than most any other PIP equipt recorder

[lpmaskman]

^ Try it without the battery box on something loud.  The built-in PIP is 5V.  Not as much as 9V battery box but more than most any other PIP equipt recorder

I don't have mod cable for my mics. Maybe later make one sometime, I just need to research.

[Gutbucket]

Gotcha. You'll be good to go as is.

[lpmaskman]

Did anyone manage to use is as USB audio interface? when I switched to that mode, the device manager in Win10 says unknown device. I can't find drivers for this.

[cleantone]

Looks like I have some catching up to do in this thread. I was popping in to mention that I tried a dual recording scenario last night. It my wives birthday so I wanted to travel light for recording. We went to Ryan Montbleau solo. I have two Deity PR-2's. I still haven't used them too much. Previously I wondered if we used two units with synced timecode, if it would be a viable four track recording method. Well, without much experimentation or testing, it appears no. Quick version is that I we sat in the balcony and I used AT853's to PR-2 (A) and had a sbd feed to PR-2 (B). I used the app to sync time code and let them roll for 3hrs. I wasn't really expecting this to "work as desired" in terms of having actual frame lock sync. It didn't. I aligned the recording at the top and there was definite drift by the end of the show. Compensated with time stretching pretty easily though.

Now, it's been a little while and I can't even recall what show, or event I did this for. But I did a successful version of this using the two PR-2's but one was running in TC mode with a TC cable feeding a Zoom F8. This configuration works.

[cleantone]

https://archive.org/details/james-mcmurtry-20240915/20240915+T01+-+Painting+by+Numbers.flac

acoustic show with a pa.  Not a super loud show, and I recorded at 0 gain.  kk14->pr2

I don't want to be unkind here because I think it sounds really good otherwise, but if I had made this recording, I'd be really bummed out that such a good capture had so much hiss. When I tape really quiet shows and then try to apply some sort of compression, I can often hear the hiss surfacing, disappearing and resurfacing. I try to go easy on the compression in that case. But I listened to "Ain't Got a Place" from your recording, and not only can I hear quite a bit of hiss throughout the entire file, but I can also tell the exact points at which the compressor was working due to the hiss getting louder or quieter (but never transparent).

I'm running the risk of sounding like a fool here if you go and say you didn't actually use a compressor and that I'm hearing things. But I don't think I'm wrong, it just sounds that clear to me.

Just chiming in to say I agree. It's a decent recording and enjoyable but it does sound like it was recorded on tape with this level of noise. The noise is fluctuating too. I'm guessing from compression or upward compression. I don't know how much the levels were adjusted but it obviously brought the noise floor up with it. In my little use with the recorder I am finding it can have a bit too much noise in 24bit mode and levels should be set appropriately to whatever degree possible.

[Gutbucket]

Looks like I have some catching up to do in this thread. I was popping in to mention that I tried a dual recording scenario last night. It my wives birthday so I wanted to travel light for recording. We went to Ryan Montbleau solo. I have two Deity PR-2's. I still haven't used them too much. Previously I wondered if we used two units with synced timecode, if it would be a viable four track recording method. Well, without much experimentation or testing, it appears no. Quick version is that I we sat in the balcony and I used AT853's to PR-2 (A) and had a sbd feed to PR-2 (B). I used the app to sync time code and let them roll for 3hrs. I wasn't really expecting this to "work as desired" in terms of having actual frame lock sync. It didn't. I aligned the recording at the top and there was definite drift by the end of the show. Compensated with time stretching pretty easily though.

Now, it's been a little while and I can't even recall what show, or event I did this for. But I did a successful version of this using the two PR-2's but one was running in TC mode with a TC cable feeding a Zoom F8. This configuration works.

Thanks for this, as I've been wondering but I still only have one PR-2.

Can you tell me more about connecting the PR-2 and F8 with a timecode cable? Direct connection? Which port? Didn't need to use a TC-1 box?  One time jam sync at start or continuous? 

Are you able to timecode two PR-2s together for continuous with a cable connection between them?

[lpmaskman]

Gotcha. You'll be good to go as is.

I have a pair of Panasonic WMA61A unmodded caps that I built many many years ago. They seems to work with the PIP, but gonne try them sometime with something loud, but they can't handle high SPL's, so I will try it something not really interesting.

[cleantone]

Can you tell me more about connecting the PR-2 and F8 with a timecode cable? Direct connection? Which port? Didn't need to use a TC-1 box?  One time jam sync at start or continuous? 

Are you able to timecode two PR-2s together for continuous with a cable connection between them?

I haven't even really scratched the surface and had only the one trial that I honestly can't even really remember. I used a 3.5mm TRS to BNC TC Cable. One Deity gets put into TC mode and in this mode acts like a TC-1 and cannot record. My Zoom F8 would have been set to accept external TC. I need to work with the workflow some more to be able to speak to it better. https://deitymic.com/blog/deity-pr-2-timecode-settings/

You know, it's possible I didn't "do it right" on Saturday. I should do some more testing before I can more confidently state it didn't work. I just fired up the devices and I see one was set to AUTO and one was set to ONCE. I didn't double check the units to try to ensure they were running in sync. In fact I used my phone to film the set, so the app was not accessible. I'm tinkering with it right now and the timecode seems to lock. That said, I didn't change anything and as I mentioned earlier, it was a 3hr recording and there appeared to be drift in post. I'll try to come up with a better test.