Professional-Grade Audio Recording With A PDA

matt-fu writes "For a long time, live recording has been consigned mostly to the realm of DAT recorders, Minidisc recorders, or laptop computers. On one hand you have subpar sound quality, on the other you have a bulky rig with a big 'steal me' sign attached. Thanks to the folks at Core Sound though, mobile recording is about to take a huge leap forward with their PDAudio project. By using a hardware card that allows recording via S/PDIF onto Compact Flash, you will be able to use your iPaq or Zaurus alongside a decent A/D converter to portably get field recordings at up to 24bit/192kHz. The site includes WinCE screenshots, and there are Linux clients in the works as well."

Good!

[TerryAtWork]

How many great concerts have disappeared into the ether because no one recorded them?

A LOT!

And artists - if you are concerned that pir8's will swipe all your material remember that piracy makes the pie bigger and the bigger the pie the bigger your slice, and that the Grateful dead encouraged this sort of thing and they had the second most lucrative tour after U2 and that the pir8s are in fact working for you for free - all you have to do is grab their best stuff and publish it yourself ala Zappa in Beat the Boots.

Great

[Flunitrazepam]

With this, and cell phones the size of postage stamps that can stream live video, we are reaching a point where people are going to have to assume they are being recorded or filmed at all times.

Re:Provessional-Grade Video Recording With A PDA

[ericdano]

I do a lot of field audio recording on a minidisc with a Rode NT4 Stereo mic. The biggest problem is that you have to play the recordings back. You can't just transfer them off the discs like a file. That is a pain, and this device might solve that problem.

The other problem is that using the internal mic battery versus the phantom power there is a difference. Phantom power makes the mic sound better. And if you can record at 96Khz, thats even better. Better sound quality, etc, etc.

I'm a little skeptical about this product. My minidisc is real durable, and it works, and it's a small rig to take places. The pictures on core's website looks like a lot of gear to carry around....

This could become something much bigger

[l0ungeb0y]

I have to say I'm impressed with what appears to be a very good product for handhelds.

I can't wait to start seeing micro-editing and remixing suites available as well, I'm sure it will only be a short time before we have the ability to DJ or Master Music on a handheld as we do on a laptop today.

Also, what about effects?
It shouldn't take much doing to convert that application into say a reverb or delay peddle. An all in one solution for applying Delay/Distortion/Flange/Phaser/Reverb/EQ would quickly find itself in virtually all performers eqpt bag in a heart beat.

Woo! 7 Minutes of audio on a 512M CF!

[Anonymous Coward]

24kbits*192KHz*2channels = 1.152 MB a SECOND. If you compress it, then whats the point of having such high fidelity anyways? Your 512M CF card is going to hold 7 minutes of audio data.

Why not just buy a portable minidisc recorder, which is smaller than a PDA, cheaper than a PDA, would probably have 10 times the battery life of this PDA-based monster, and has media that costs $2 a pop? Add to that the media lasts for a 74 minute recording at a quality that will definitely blow that PDA solution out of the water and you've got a complete waste of time.

I can't understand why most geeks would lambast the general public for falling for the Megahertz Myth, and yet they get all starry eyed when someone starts throwing preposterous specs out at them. Do you honestly think that you can get an appreciable difference between 16/44 and 24/192 outside of a professional studio?

This product is targeted at clueless audiophile wannabes. Unless you are one, move along.

Re:Size Limitations

[mattkime]

you'd only use one channel anyway. how could one person record two channels of audio at a concert in the crowd? they'd both sound the same

Re:Woo! 7 Minutes of audio on a 512M CF!

[jokell82]

First, MDs suck for live audio recording. Why? Because it compresses the audio in a lossy method (just like mp3's). The MDs are the last in the line of quality, and this solution (although I don't think it will ever see the light of day, as it is Core Sound that's releasing it) would be much better than MD any day of the week.

And second, yes, you can tell the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/192. Try listening to a SACD or a DVD-A and tell me they don't sound better than a CD.

Re:Woo! 7 Minutes of audio on a 512M CF!

[DMaster0]

personally, I'd rather have a fully-digital device that can do 44.1/48 (which this can) and not have to deal with Minidisc, DAT's or anything at all that you have to transfer in real-time.

The potential is there though with this device, to work very well into the future as media gets cheaper and prices go down. 5 years ago, would you have assumed you could get a DVD-R for $2? 512MB of RAM for $50? 200gb of hard drive space for $150?

Of course not, with your thinking.

It's a shame so many people think that what exists now is the only thing that matters, and when someone shows you something that will likely be great a long time from now and is built with the expectation of advancement in technology, you say "bah, what is good now will always be good and who needs progress".

Re:What about an Archos

[Mononoke]

Professionally, very, very few people use 16-bit/44 KHz for anything serious.

Just every single CD audio disk mastered in the world. Damn professionals.

(It's 44.1 KHz, BTW)

Re:Bullshit

[torpor]

Ummm... sorry to burst your pretty bubble, but 'professional grade' field recordings of concerts *can* be done with sub-$1000 microphones, well rigged to a portable system such as described here.

There's nothing that says "Pro = digital multitrack with multiple busses from the house mix".

Re:Good!

[Sycraft-fu]

If record companies were smarter, they'd record all the concerts themselves. I mean, you already have a full audio setup for sound reenforcement. With just a little extra effort it could be setup to do a good job recording, or for 0 extra effort a DAT can by plugged into the main output and that captured.

Then, sell it all on your website. Let fans buy, either through download or purchasing custom burned CDs, all the songs from concerts they want. If they feel like getting a particular performance of a particular song, they can and you make money on it.

Of course this is all WAY too high tech and progressive for the record companies so it won't happen.

this is one of those times

[Anonymous Coward]

that a portable dat, which is smaller, and 1/4 the price of this rig, and can record 20 times as much, is much more sensible.

just because you *can*, it not a good enough reason.

Re:Woo! 7 Minutes of audio on a 512M CF!

[ericdano]

Um, I don't agree with that. I use a minidisc all the time to record groups that I play with. It works great. What really decides on how good the recording is going to come out is the microphone and microphone placement. I invested in a Rode NT4 stereo mic about a year ago. That with my minidisc player/recorder has resulted in many high quality recordings. They sound at least as good as recordings made with a pair of house mics (Neumanns I believe) going to a mixing board. Actually, they usually sound better.

I don't think this solution, a PDA and an interface, is going to boost the quality any more. And it looks less portable.

What I'd really like to see is something like a recordable iPod [apple.com].

Re:What about an Archos

[delta407]

Right, of course, the final product is almost invariably 44.1 KHz, two channels, 16 bits per sample. But this is the difference: it's downsampled to that, after EQing and lots of other DSP. Except for some live stuff, very few professionals use such low quality initial recordings, choosing instead to have greater precision through the entire mastering process until it is discarded (actually, dithered and filtered away rather than truncated) at the end.

Then again, I have seen some audio equipment capable of higher sampling rates advertised at Best Buy recently. Of course, it was claiming that 96 KHz would make everything sound better and clearer and grander than before despite limitations of speakers, acoustics, and the listener's hearing... nonetheless, the future of audio is sounding better.

Ummm...

[mindstrm]

So you use an s/pdif input card and record the data digitally on your pda... WHOPIE.

You still need, as it says, a DAC. Got a really small high quality dac? High quality mic? Got enough storage capacity for high quality recording on your pda?

A portable DAT recorder is still way better.

Battery Life?

[dimension6]

I think that before this can become a truly viable solution, PDA battery life must increase. Since this drains battery power (from what I understand), many PDAs will be unable to record an entire concert straight through. On a side note, I believe Sharp is going in the right direction with the Zaurus SL-5600's longer life battery.

Re:I'm confused

[dachshund]

Why would you need a balanced connection for a digital stream? Aren't errors handled with checksums and retransmissions?

Most digital audio interfaces are one-way, so no retransmissions. There is error correction, but it can only do so much in the face of heavy interference.

Re:Woo! 7 Minutes of audio on a 512M CF!

[jafuser]

What I'd really like to see is something like a recordable iPod.

Now that would be something to get me to part with some cash in short order. Someone must have one in develompent by now?