handheld digital recorder

[King Cheung]

Hi, all, I am thinking to buy a small handheld digital recorder for recording ambient sound, as well as doing some interviews for journalism purposes. I do have a SD 702 for film shoot.

I am considering the following options:
Tascam DR-100
Sony PCM-D50
Marantz - PMD660 or 661

On B&H page, people seem not satisfying Tascam's pre-amp. Any experiences and suggestions, please?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Milan Nikolic]

Tascam works fine for me!

 

[King Cheung]

Tascam works fine for me!

Actually, I am thinking about this one, too. It looks cute, but people say the pre-amp is very noisy making me hesitated.

Thanks.

 

[Tom Visser]

Any reason why you wouldn't use your 702? It seems to me the best for the job of all the units you mention. Sure it is not as compact, but if your willing to carry a small shoulder bag with you, then you just have to wield the mic. For ultimate convenience, use a wireless Tx, which you could also repurpose for film use. Think Jodi Foster in "The Brave One".

As far as truly dedicated portable recorders, I think people are generally pretty impressed with the Sony unit. Also check out some of the Olympus LS series, some have compared them favorably to the Sony. Nagra also made the RCX and currently has an ML line which was marketed for this application.

 

[King Cheung]

Thanks, Tom. Exactly, I am just looking for compactness. In fact, I am seriously thinking about Sony D50.
Thanks.

 

[Andrew Rieger]

Zoom H4N, one of the best reviewed handheld recorders ever made. Plus, it has 4 channels and 2 Xlr inputs of you want to use a shotgun, lav system. With a mixer, the zoom can pretty much capture all the audio a small production would need. I have used, the 2 onboard mics to capture ambient and for the price, the quality is hard to beat.

 

[Perry Wilson]

Zoom H4n =, amazing I love it, it picks up every sound.

 

[Alex Donkle]

I own an H4n and it's pretty good. That said, I would rather have an H2 for quick work and a 702 for real recording. Or just a D50 as the preamps of the H4n are junk (the one real plus of the H4n for me is 4 track recording)

Reason being, if you want to record ambiences discretely, an H2 looks like an iPod and no one questions it. An H4n, with clearly visible mics, gets people to say "hey are you recording stuff".

 

[rod bradley]

Hi, I use the Marantz 661 -- a huge improvement over the 660. You can get some custom pre-amps installed for a very reasonable price at http://www.oade.com/digital_recorders/hard_disc_recorders/PMD-661.html

Although the stock pre-amps have proved very acceptable with Sennheiser MKH 60 & the ME 64 & 66 as well as a Neuman 81 --

The built in mics are fairly good, the ALC is pretty ajustable to avoid pumping. I almost always run on manual and find one advantage is that the two channels can be individually adjusted as to level, so I sometimes will feed one mic and "protect" for clipping by spreading the gain 6-12 dB -- if that's the situation.

The menu system is very intuitive and the controls fat and responsive and the readout large and seems pretty accurate. Very well built. Like any of these small recorderes, if you run with phantom, the battery life very shortened. If I'm in a field, battery only situation, I will tend toward the self-powered mics.

The Zoom and Tascam 100 are also good.