happy new year!

a little gift on new years - turn your speakers up so the voices sound right, and you'll get a feel of how loud the fireworks were. :) at the beginning of this year I set a goal to blog once a week for the whole year - and I fell short of that. The launch of tonebenders made some of my blog ideas redundant, but I think it'll help re-define what I do in this space a bit.

here's to a happy 2013!

uptown trolley

Yesterday I ventured out to uptown to record a trolley for The Sound Collector's club. The trolley I was after was one of the restored mckinney ave trolleys, and I found pretty much what I was after.

The trolley is free to ride and makes its entire circuit in about 40 minutes. when I got onboard the conductor said "hello" to everyone, and then rolled us down the rails. He had a footpedal that would ring the bell before he took off from a stop, and the trolley had pretty nice sounding airbrakes as well. The door opened in a classical bus/trolley lever move and had a nice old sounding squeak to it.

Because I picked a sunday afternoon to do my recording I ended up on a pretty busy trolley, with lots of people getting on and off at every stop. I never had a stop on the entire circuit that didn't have kids on it.

At the end of the tracks near cityplace we all changed our (ancient creaky wooden seats) over to the opposite direction by moving the back to the other side on a hinge, resulting in us sitting in the same seats but facing the opposite direction.

That trolley is a thoroughly interesting sounding car because of just how creaky and squeaky it all is, and I really need to charter the thing to get a proper recording done. All in all it was good fun though, and is a treasure sitting right there in my own backyard.

quickie shootout-744t vs PCM D50 with phantom power

Last week I sold my Tascam DR-100. While its a good recorder, it wasn't meeting my needs with regards to ergonomics and battery power.

This left my portable rig a little short handed since my PCM D50 is now my only capture device and it doesn't have XLR inputs or phantom power.

After some reflection I decided to forgo grabbing another handheld recorder and instead to just roll with the D50 plus a phantom power unit for now. The question became, which one?

The market is pretty broad. Phantom power units run from ARTs $70 Phantom II on up to Sony's $450 XLR1 with just about no change in feature set.

My initial thought was "hey, it's phantom power. what's it going to do to the sound? probably nothing." Then I found this website. Whoops. Eyes opened. ART, Juicedlink and Beachtek entirely out of the question now. Only a video guy could love those things.

The rolls was serviceable, but I'm not really looking for a serviceable rig. I want the D50 to give me all its got, and I don't want anything in the way. I decided to grit my teeth and get the XLR1, so I started price shopping. Along that route I found this page, which showed the lengths an XLR1 owner had to go to in order to get the thing ergonomically workable with his D50. He extended the factory mounting plate and still wasn't exactly in love.

F.



Then I remembered a little box that we have in the office. The Denecke PS-2. $135, stereo, smaller than the XLR1, solid brand name, made of metal but still incredibly light, and I'd have to mod a mounting plate anyway. Seems pretty straighforward, but how does it sound?

Time to test it out.

I ran this test similarly to how I did my handheld shootout test, though more low key and less extensively.

To set up I ran an AT 4050 through a whirlwind splitter. One side went to the Denecke and into the D50. The other went into a sound devices 744t.

I rolled pink noise through the studio speakers and calibrated 75dbspl to equal -12 dbfs on both devices. Then I did a little speaking into the mic and struck a noah bell. The results speak for themselves.

sample 1 by Rcoronado

sample 2 by Rcoronado

So this kind of turned into a D50 vs 744t shootout as well, and I think its pretty interesting. There's a little diff in the midrange, which is at least interesting. Its visible in izotope and and most pronounced in the pink noise test.

Outside of that its pretty darn close. The D50s pre's are as clean as the 744t, and seem to handle transients and the human voice similarly.

The final verdict for me is that the Denecke has the same feature set and sonic quality as the sony XLR1 but $300 cheaper. Both units would take some modification to any mounting plates, so I call that a clear win for the Denecke.

Secondarily, the Sony performed very well sonically vs the much more expensive 744t. The ergonomics of a Sony D50/Denecke rig are not close to what you'll get with the 744t, but once the recordings are done you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

In the end I'll be very proud to roll on anything with that little rig when it's all put together and buttoned up.

poker room ambiance

The poker room at the Winstar Casino is one of my old haunts, though I haven't visited in quite some time. This past weekend I decided to head out to play some cards because new year's weekend is always a crazy weekend up there, and I wanted to record some sounds and have some fun.

Winstar Casino is right on the other side of the Texas/Oklahoma border and is almost exactly one hour from my house deep in Dallas, so the drive has its own kind of tempo and ritual to me. One thing I've been doing recently is driving around on the weekends and scouting remote recording locations, and what I've discovered is that West, South and East of Dallas is pretty thick with family farms and other densely packed private property - even out in the rural areas. North towards Oklahoma is a different story though, and its something that I intend on exploring further. Lots of wide open expanses of nothingness up there, and those empty winds will find the edge of my mics soon enough. Until then, it was time to play some poker.

The poker room at Winstar is incredibly unique sounding for a few reasons: First off it is seperated from the rest of the casino by a long hallway, meaning there are no sounds of slot machines, sports casts, or other typical casino pollutants. Second it's a very popular room, typically hosting a few hundred players at any given moment. Third, they don't turn on the music or sports sound in the poker room unless its a big game either. The players are polite and the dealers are lively, so its nothing but pure, clean poker in there.

As you walk down the hall from the casino to the poker room you can hear the shift from clattering slot machines to the smooth drone of hundreds of people stacking chips and playing cards very distinctly. By the time you get to the back of the room the rest of the casino is completely out of earshot.

I took a seat and bought in for obvious reasons: I wanted to play, I didn't want to look suspicious, and I wanted the cameras to forget about me.

After about an hour and a half, I took a break from the table and went to the grill to order some food. While I was waiting I took a seat in the back of the room, pulled out my D50, propped it on my leg (as you can see in the pic), plugged my ipod headphones in and started rolling. Now I was a little nervous because I was positive that the players at the tables near me wouldn't approve of me rolling in their vicinities and I didn't want the floor to get involved and toss me out. Also I was up a couple of hundred bucks and had most of my table read pretty well.

I consciously had iPhone headphones out and I had them plugged into my D50 and not my iphone so that I could try to pass it off as a music playback device, which are ubiquitous in poker rooms. I also had the fuzzy on top of the mics to conceal them. Further, I had my phone out on my leg and was web surfing and emailing so that the cameras and passerbys would have something to look at. Then I sat still, set levels and rolled.

Poker room amb-winstar by Rcoronado

After ten minutes of gold I figured I was set so I put the recorder back in my pocket, grabbed my sandwich and went back to my seat. After playing for a few more hours I was still ahead so I packed up and left. I considered catching the sounds of the casino down the hall, but I realized that I already had the more interesting sound in my possession and my dog was going to need to go outside and do her business pretty soon.

All in all a great trip, and I'm more inspired than ever to continue heading North and trekking for sounds.

found sound-metal turnstile

While out exploring and looking for a rubber track to record some footsteps this week I came across a little elementary school in suburban Mesquite, TX that has the potential to really be a sonic gold mine.

It's several miles from any highway and surrounded by a sleepy neighborhood with decent building cover, so the traffic noise is pretty minimal as settled areas go. It also has a wealth of surfaces - thick wood, grass, dirt, a tennis court with basketball rims at either end, and of course my coveted rubber track.

I found this school the day after Christmas so it was pretty deserted at the time. (side note, Christmas day is an ideal recording day. Downtown Dallas looked like some post-apocalyptic movie with all of the empty stillness. I will be rolling next year...) The track was surrounded by a chainlink fence that had a metal turnstile entryway to it. As I walked through the turnstile towards the track I knew that I wouldn't be able to walk back out without recording it.

I'll let the video do most of the explaining, but the bottom line here was that it was pretty loose at the top joint and made this crazy rattly ringy jackhammer sound when I spun it. In this vid my voice is recorded with the iphone mic and the turnstile is recorded with the Sony PCM D50.

Metal turnstile from rene coronado on Vimeo.

pretty crazy. Here's what it sounded like at 20%:

Revolving metal gate-20percent by Rcoronado

Even though I now know exactly where this metal gate is, I had to record it right then and there because I've learned through experience that if you let a recording pass you by you may never get a second shot. I do plan to return here though, if only to do exterior foly. I need to find out who the groundskeeper is. :)

handheld recorder shootout-part 1-specs

This is the first in a series of posts that will cover a recent shootout done with three popular handheld recorders against a reference setup. This test is not in any way exhaustive, and in no way constitutes my endorsement of anything - all opinions are my own.

The portable recording device market has exploded in recent years, and everyone is looking around wonder which one to buy - so I’m here to help! The specific purpose of the shootout is to evaluate the recorders through the lens of sound designers and field recordists, and to measure them against an industry standard field recording setup. I’m testing out three recorders against a reference setup - the test includes:

• Sony PCM D50
• Tascam DR-100
• Zoom H4n
• Sound Devices 744t with Sure SM81s in XY setup (reference)

Part 1 of this review is measuring stats and features. Listening test comes in part 2.

I’ve owned the D50 almost since it came out, having purchased it to replace my plasticky H4. The DR-100 is a recent acquisition for me, but I’ve taken it out enough to be familiar with it. The H4n has been at use at the office for a while, and I’ve taken it out on several shoots. The sound devices rig speaks for itself, and is included as a pure benchmark against which to measure the other recorders.

Lets start with the bottom line:

Price (via B&H)

Sony D50	$441
Tascam DR-100	$272
Zoom H4n	$299
SD 744t/sm81	$3193 (priced 702 instead of 744t)

The D50 is nearly 1.5x the price of the other two, though the price point for each of the handhelds is peanuts compared to the big boy Sound Devices rig.

I/O

	built in mics	mic in	line in	remote
Sony D50	stereo electret condenser	3.5mm stereo jack	3.5mm stereo jack	wired
Tascam DR-100	stereo electret condenser and stereo (pzm?) omni	stereo XLR	3.5mm stereo jack	optical (12 ft range)
Zoom H4n	stereo electret condenser	stereo Neutrick XLR or 1/4 inch	3.5mm stereo jack	wired
SD 744t/sm81	none	Stereo XLR		none

The D50 sorely misses XLR inputs, as the 3.5mm stereo jack lacks phantom power and is just about unusable in my experience. The DR-100 has adequate I/O, but the Zoom wins with its Neutrick combination jacks. The Sound Devices rig has 2 XLR inputs, but goes into specialty jacks quickly after that.

Battery Life

	battery system	battery life
Sony D50	4 AA batterys in a sled	incredible
Tascam DR-100	Proprietary Li-Ion battery with 2 AA battery backup	passable
Zoom H4n	2 AA batteries	poor
SD 744t/sm81	Sony InfoLithium	very good

I have not run a scientific battery life test on these devices, but after a few months of usage for each the battery life ratings are what I believe to be accurate. The bottom line here is that D50 is the single most battery efficient piece of electronic equipment I own. The factory batteries lasted literally weeks of heavy use initially, and at 24 bit 96k the batteries far outlast the storage capacity, usually by an order of 3 to 6x depending on if I’m driving headphones. The H4n is the other end of the spectrum, sucking down batteries quickly and feeling a bit underpowered considering the size and brightness of the LCD screen and the ability to roll on 4 channels simultaneously. The DR-100 uses a proprietary battery that charges via USB and lasts long enough to be ok during a medium length record session. The ability to seamlessly switch to the AA backup is a plus.

Storage

Sony D50	internal 4gigs of flash memory - expandable with memory stick
Tascam DR-100	SD card
Zoom H4n	SD card
SD 744t/sm81	internal hard drive, CF cards, DVD Ram, Firewire

The built in internal storage on the D50 is a nice touch IMO, but the implementation of memory stick as the expansion media is outdated and crappy. Not only is memory stick a dead format, but the device mounts both as separate drives for recording and data transfer. With that said, 4 gigs is plenty for most hand held recording type gigs, so its not exactly a deal-breaker. SD cards on the other two devices are more standard.

Mic Mounts

Sony D50	swivel mount from wide to X/Y, protective bars on top
Tascam DR-100	both mics straight ahead with speaker in between (pseudo binarual?)
Zoom H4n	fixed XY with variable pickup patterns
SD 744t/sm81	none

The D50 wins the mic mounting and versatility contest, which is important considering how much it relies on the built ins. The protective bars are both reassuring and useful for mounting wind protection, and the wide mic setup sounds very wide compared to the XY setup. The DR-100s unorthodox setup may make for stranger stereo imaging than the others.

External Switches

	transport	48v	hi pass	limiter	ext/int mics	pad	Hold
Sony D50	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Tascam DR-100	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
Zoom H4n	Y	N	N	N	Y	N	Y
SD 744t/sm81	Y	N	N	N	N	N	N

While the DR-100 has more external switches than the D50 does, the D50 has more that are of use to a field recordist that is looking to adjust record settings quickly. The H4n relies more heavily on the menu system, and compensates by having multiple ways to navigate the menu and the largest LCD screen of the three. I give the edge here to the D50, but not by a wide margin.

Preamp dial

Sony D50	continuous side mount-protected
Tascam DR-100	continuous side mount-split
Zoom H4n	up and down arrows-splittable with latest firmware
SD 744t/sm81	continuous front mount-split and recessable

The way that a recordist interfaces with a preamp is an important part of a device, and here we have less a clear winner than we do a clear loser. The DR-100’s ability to recess channels by splitting the preamp knob is a clear advantage over the D50, but the feel of the D50’s smooth metal knob really deserves points over the plastic counterparts of the competition. The H4n’s up and down arrows are functional, but

completely inadequate when one needs to make quick preamp adjustments in the heat of recording.

Most distinctive features

Sony D50	swivel mics, battery life, metal construction, quality components
Tascam DR-100	split preamp knob, extended battery life
Zoom H4n	4 channel record mode, neutrick dual mode xlr inputs
SD 744t/sm81	build quality, meters, preamps, AD converters, I/O

So based on pure stats and functionality the decision still depends entirely on how you plan to use it. Here’s how I would break it down:

Sony PCM D50:

Excellent build quality, just the right switches built into the chassis, swivel mics and a great preamp mean that this is a perfect candidate to always have by your side as a stand alone recording system. External mics are a no-go so more specialized applications like foley and voiceover recording should go to a different device, but this device is hard to beat for spur of the moment or low profile ambiances, music, crowds and other close or medium distance stereo sound sources.

Battery life means you can plant this device in a location and roll while waiting for audio to develop minutes and hours later.

Tascam DR-100

This device is a workhorse when used in conjunction with external mics, and can make a great lightweight capture device for DSLR filming, VO recording, moving vehicle recording, etc - especially when recessing one channel for safety in critical situations. The built in mics aren’t as solid as the other devices, but are usable if in need.

Construction is plastic but solid and navigation is quicky and easy.

Zoom H4n

The 4 channel record mode makes this the only device that can record both a board feed (thorugh the line in) and the

audience response (through the built in mics) of a live show. This is a functionality that the DR-100 lacks, and I’ve had great success using the H4n in that context. The built in mics are very good on their own right, though they don’t quite reach the level of quality of the Sony (while being better than those on the DR-100).

This device has become the industry standard for DSLR video shooters, though I’d still personally recommend the DR-100 over the H4n for that specific purpose both because of the recessed channel function, battery life, and preamp quality.

This is not to say the H4n has poor preamps, because it does not. Its just that the DR-100s are that much better.

Poor battery life and capacity are the biggest issues here.

So that’s how these things do on paper. In part 2 we’ll do a listening test that focuses on the built in mics. Stay tuned!