Olympus LS-10 Recorder

[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.

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


Chris

I got 2 preamps Chris , SP-PREAMP and MM-PREAMP .

[Arni99]

Samples online on page 6 of this thread.
Normalization with Adobe Audition 3.0 but nothing else was done.

[Dede2002]

Samples online on page 6 of this thread.
Normalization with Adobe Audition 3.0 but nothing else was done.

Sounds really, really great,Arni.
The Line In sample is my favorite.

P.S.: This club has a very good PA and sound guy! Of course you know where the sweet spot is, but
the sound on your samples is always clean and the instrument mix is perfect. You're a lucky guy!

[Albert Skye]

I'm wondering if anyone has disassembled the LS-10 (perhaps Chris, as he mentioned that it is likely made by Panasonic due to the prevalence of Panasonic parts). I removed the front and back plates (and was very impressed with the quality of construction) but I decided leave further disassembly for another time. Beyond my curiosity to see inside, I'd like to shorten the microphone cages to reduce the protrusion. So, as it wasn't clear to me on initial inspection, can anyone advise as to how the microphone cages are attached?

[Arni99]

Samples online on page 6 of this thread.
Normalization with Adobe Audition 3.0 but nothing else was done.

Sounds really, really great,Arni.
The Line In sample is my favorite.

P.S.: This club has a very good PA and sound guy! Of course you know where the sweet spot is, but
the sound on your samples is always clean and the instrument mix is perfect. You're a lucky guy!

The LINE-IN sample was amplified ~+20dB.
With dpa4060s or sp-cmc-8 or your HLSC mics line-in won´t be an issue.

Or as Chris said, low-sens mics like my dpa4061s+preamp on line-in.

Here the technical equipment of this club:
http://www.reigen.at/Download/RGLV_Technical%20Rider0808.pdf

[SparkE!]

I'm wondering if anyone has disassembled the LS-10 (perhaps Chris, as he mentioned that it is likely made by Panasonic due to the prevalence of Panasonic parts).

Yeah, like any good techie, Chris takes all of his toys apart.  He will probably know how that mic bodies are attached, but I think his main curiosity right now is why the low end response through the mic input is so much worse than through the line input.  My bet is that he'll find coupling caps that are too small (electrically) in the front end of the mic path.  I also bet he'll find that it's going to be pretty hard to replace them with caps whose capacitance is much higher, due to space constraints.  No bigger than that thing is, it's got to be packed pretty tightly.

[Dede2002]

Samples online on page 6 of this thread.
Normalization with Adobe Audition 3.0 but nothing else was done.

Sounds really, really great,Arni.
The Line In sample is my favorite.

P.S.: This club has a very good PA and sound guy! Of course you know where the sweet spot is, but
the sound on your samples is always clean and the instrument mix is perfect. You're a lucky guy!

The LINE-IN sample was amplified ~+20dB. Am sure silent parts would show white noise due to low-peaks.
With dpa4060s or sp-cmc-8 or your HLSC mics line-in won´t be an issue.

Or as Chris said, low-sens mics like my dpa4061s+preamp on line-in.

Here the technical equipment of this club:
http://www.reigen.at/Download/RGLV_Technical%20Rider0808.pdf

Great info, Arni.
Thanks for sharing 

[Arni99]

here another sample from the Steve Lukather concert:
sp-cmc-8/bbox/line-in
07 07 Steve Weingart Solo.mp3 - 5.26MB

[Arni99]

Started a battery-life test yesterday on my ls-10.
2x Sanyo 2700mAh rechargeables 1,2V
15 hours yet at 44,1kHz 16bit and still running.....recording radio on line-in

[John Willett]

Started a battery-life test yesterday on my ls-10.
2x Sanyo 2700mAh rechargeables 1,2V
15 hours yet at 44,1kHz 16bit and still running.....recording radio on line-in

I knew it was good, but I hadn't realised it was *that* good. 

[Arni99]

Just taped some minutes of a "school-band" with my sp-cmc-8 cardioids(standard sensitivity) + bbox on LINE-IN of the ls-10.
Used 10/10 full gain.
Nice levels in a small club peaking between -12 and -6.
Now I did some bass boost in post and also the silent parts with talking only show extremely low noise(actually I can´t hear any noise!) although i used full gain.

=>Don´t fear using 100% (10/10) gain on the ls-10´s LINE-IN .

[Arni99]

info-update:
With a 16GB-SD(HC)-card(Transcend), the max. recording time(2GB limit) at 24bit 44.1kHz increases from 2h09min to 2h 15min compared to a 2GB SD-card or the built in 2GB flash-memory.
Don´t ask me why  !?

I don´t want to miss the analog rec-level-wheel anymore, much more convenient than digital buttons IMHO.

With 16GB+2GB internal, there´s plenty of space:
3h22min x 9(at 16bit 44.1kHz)=>30,3 hours or 2h15min x 9(at 24bit 44.1kHz)=>20,25 hours.

[Will_S]

info-update:
With a 16GB-SD(HC)-card(Transcend), the max. recording time(2GB limit) at 24bit 44.1kHz increases from 2h09min to 2h 15min compared to a 2GB SD-card or the built in 2GB flash-memory.
Don´t ask me why  !?

Because with a > 2GB card, there is a full 2 gigabytes available to each file, where a gigabyte is 1024 megabytes and a megabyte is 1024 bytes.

By contrast, on what is legally sold as a 2 "gigabyte" card, they are measuring capacity assuming 1 GB = 1000 MB and 1 MB = 1000 bytes.

(1024x1024)/(1000x1000) = 1.049
135 minutes / 129 minutes = 1.046

The slop can be accounted for by rounding error, and perhaps settings or other hidden files taking up a couple bytes that make even less of the 2 GB card available.

[Arni99]

Another thing that should be mentioned:
When using a 16GB SD card and you turn on the ls-10, the boot-up takes considerably longer....about 15sec.

[John Willett]

Another thing that should be mentioned:
When using a 16GB SD card and you turn on the ls-10, the boot-up takes considerably longer....about 15sec.

I use an 8GB SDHC card - I think that two 8GB cards are cheaper than a single 16GB.