Gizmodo
Glenn Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee, Instapundit blogger, and author of Army of Davids. He's also a musician, and audio geek, and waaaaay smarter than everyone at the Gizmodo staff put together. So we had him take a looksie at the Edirol R-09 audio recorder, which we wrote about in January. Read his brilliant, egg-headed take, right after the jump.
The Edirol R-09 looks like the holy grail for people doing live recording. I tested it out and it's pretty close, with the exception of some flimsy construction in places.
For $399 list, the R-09 is a digital device that records audio to a Secure Digital memory chip. It can record, compressed, in various flavors of MP3, from 64 kbps to 320 kbps. It also records in uncompressed WAV files at 16 and 24 bit resolution, at either 44.1 or 48 khz sampling frequencies. With a 1GB SD card, you can record 88 minutes in CD-quality 16/44.1 WAV or 392 minutes in 320kbps mp3. It has two built-in stereo condenser microphones, with provisions for external microphones, too. There's no internal speaker, so you need headphones to monitor or play back sound. It's compact, and fits easily into a shirt pocket. It doesn't come with a case.
Microphone sensitivity is adjustable — though the gain reduction on "low" is dramatic, and likely to be useful mostly if you're bootlegging live concerts or something — and recording levels can be adjusted manually or automatically. There's also a switchable low-cut filter to remove rumbles or wind noise. There are no balanced inputs or outputs, but the R-09 is really too small to have room for them. It will supply phantom power to an external microphone. Conveniently, it uses AA batteries, which are easy to find anywhere, instead of proprietary rechargeables.
The controls are easy to use, and pretty self-explanatory; nobody who's familiar with digital recording devices will have much trouble navigating them even without the manual.
I tested it out doing some live podcast interviews — you can hear them here — under challenging conditions. One was recorded at a local brewpub, with lots of background noise; the other was recorded in an office with noisy air conditioning equipment. Both turned out pretty well. Recording under pristine conditions is quite good.
You can compare the sound quality in those with the recording quality in this podcast, recorded entirely with the Olympus DM-20 that I reviewed here a while back. The Edirol definitely produces better sound — my wife, no audio engineer, noticed that immediately — but the Olympus, at half the price, is definitely good enough.
Interestingly, the build quality on the Olympus seems better, which leads me to my main complaint with the Edirol: Like a lot of gear, its manufacturer has paid more attention to the electronic aspects than to construction. In particular, the battery cover, which has to be opened to remove the SD card, too, is flimsy, and requires an awkward two-step procedure to fully open it. Do it wrong, and you're likely to wreck the cover, ruining the device. (And getting it fixed probably costs a substantial fraction of the price). That's not enough to make me warn people off the Edirol, but it's the only major drawback I found, and it's one that was completely avoidable. This seems to be a problem with a lot of small electronic devices — I'm not sure why.
Still, if you're willing to spend in the neighborhood of four hundred bucks, you can make NPR-quality recordings for podcasts or radio shows, or quality concert bootlegs. Not bad for a gadget that fits in a shirt pocket.
Comments
I'm not asking for a lot here... I mean, I could ask for things like a hard drive for longer uncompressed recording projects or anything... but the least they could do would be to provide a balanced input for an external mic. I wouldn't trust that built-in thing that it comes with and their mic-in line according to what I can tell is an unbalanced minijack?
When are these digital recorder people going to make digital recorders like this which can handle professional mics?
I would say that if it was actually a professional audio recording device, then it would support balanced mics. But, since this is an Edirol device (something that Roland Corp doesn't want to put the Roland name on, kinda like their Boss guitar equipment) I would have to say that you're always going to be forced to use a matching transformer and a spaghetti mess of adapters to connect professional mics to these Edirol recorders.
Forgive me, but "glen reynolds" is a douchebag.
His "instapundit" tows the bush party line.
For instance, he's helping to spread the republican idea that Lieberman's loss to Lamont shows the "dems are going extreme."
AHAHAAHAHAHA!!!.
My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.
ann coulter
should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.
ann coulter
"The swing voters -- I like to refer to them as the idiot voters because they don't have set philosophical principles. You're either a liberal or you're a conservative if you have an IQ above a toaster."
ann coulter
You know, that's not all. O'reilly saying go ahead and bomb a city in California. republicans talking about killing doctor's who perform abortions, and killing homos.
This neo-con group built on an authoritarian philosophy, built on Leo Strauss' crazy ideas, supported by dominionist nutjob christians like james dobson, and his crusade to have all Americans follow his beliefs, no, "glen" Democrats voted Lieberman out, because he needed to be replaced with someone who actually did something.
The only party around here that is allowing extremists to take control, are the neo-cons in the republican party...James Burnham is rolling in his grave...even Buckley has spoken out about the hijacking of his party by nutjob. Supporting the little guy with a minimum wage increase, supporting the rights of all Americans, those are not fringe ideas. Sorry to hijack this thread, but the f*ck cares what this joker has to say, when he perpetuates the division (downfall) of America, by calling 50% of its citizens "terrorists, traitors, and abettors." SHOVE IT!!!
Oh, by the way...Lamont voted with republicans 80% of the time on the city board, in CT.
Look it up.
(sure is "extremist," right?)
Destardi, you are so lame you can't even stick to the topic.
Desardi nails it. Instapundit is a pathetic joke of a man. This site used to be way better edited, relevant content with just the right touch of satiric banter. These days we have to read sophomoric gay baiting, woman bashing and now right wing lunatic worship. I'm starting to wonder if it just jumped the shark.
Arken: the problem with external mics is phantom power (a decent mic usually wants phantom), which is 48V and has to be supplied by the battery of the device. That drains it very quickly.
M-Audio solved the problem by cutting the phantom power back to 34V (or something), so the battery holds out a bit longer. But: not all mics like this. Some just stop to work, others will distort heavily.
So, the internal mic solution is probably much more reasonable.
Destardi and Bakafish are too busy drinking the Purple Kool-Aid to care to stick on topic.
Thanks for the heads up on the battery door, Prof.
------Forgive me, but "glen reynolds" is a douchebag.----- Desardi
My, my, you really sold your point well there. Your ability to persuade is unmatched. I'm convinced. Where do I sign up to join and do you have any refreshments available?
HilariousHilario: There are plenty of professional microphones which come with their own power supplies and plenty of microphones, dynamics for example, which don't need phantom power. Furthermore, phantom power doesn't take THAT much more battery life.
If the R-09 doesn't have enough horsepower for ya, then check out the Edirol R-4 Pro... That has all the bells and whistles that the R-09 is missing, except that it doesn't exactly fit into your pocket. :)
It should be out September '06 and it looks like street price will be around US$2k! (It better have all the bells and whistles at that price!)
I saw one comment for an upcoming review that mentioned that it's one drawback is that you can't switch between battery and AC power on the fly. It requires a stop and restart. (ugh!)
Destardi, put a sock in it. This isn't your political soapbox.
Looks like my Braun electric shaver.
For $400; I need the following on this bad boy to even begin considering it:
- Less buttons (why the F would I need a dedicated reverb button? - just put it in GUI - Newsflash: 90ies are over)
- A bigger OLED screen to accomodate that GUI perhaps
- A trimmer (I'm gonna enter your photoshop contest with this one and win you'll see)
s4zando: That R-4 is bad in the other direction! Too much. A 4-track with a wave-editor? How about a plain old 2-track digital audio recorder with decent inputs?
I wasn't aware that your political bent as a private editorial commentator precluded you from making a intelligent decision on the worth of an electronic gadget.
Who's da real douchebag here?
It doesn't preclude one's ability to make a rational judgement on an unrelated topic. It's just that persistant and willing ignorance on his part in regards to topics such as, say, the Iraq war being a good idea - makes me and a lot of other people question his better judgement in a lot of other arenas. Call it political, or call it observation as to tendencies. I wouldn't buy anything this guy said was good, he still endorses the iraq war and only simpletons or salesmen are still doing that.
So basically, Doug, what you're saying is, "people who don't agree with me are stupid."
How very "progressive" of you.
It was late..I agree..won't do it again. Just felt like my gadget-nirvana was interrupted by political pundits.
My only apology, is not framing my point right.
Doug crystallized my feelings. I'm not writing to win over converts; if I wanted to do that, I'd lie like glen reynolds, and whomever else doesn't live in reality.
My point..was...that if this guy can't be trusted on matters of life and death, why the hell do I care what he thinks about gadgets?
And wanting to hear 'truth' from people, doesn't make a person a 'progressive,' or a 'conservative,' it makes you a concerned citizen.
HAHAHAAH, if 'purple kook-aid' is bad, I'd hate to see what ann coulter is drinking..if a progressive would say the crap she is, neo-cons would be whining and crying like little babies.
If ya don't know who leo strauss is, it's ok...I won't mix politics and gadgetry if you don't criticize my so-called progressiveness.
All ya get is hate if you view things one way, and not the same as the other person..so I ask you, who planned that to happen? I don't hate fellow Americans...I hate the people who invented "blue state/red state." You'd better wise up.
Destardi, Douggie and Bakafish are just looking for a little attention. If they had anything worthwhile to say, they'd have a forum somewhere and people would be listening. Instead, they need to bust up a comletely apolitical product review with completely off-topic vulgarity and cheap character assasination.
You're looking at the very best they can do right here, folks. The pinnacle of their lives' achievement. Poor little things.
Comment on this post
Reply by EmailLogin with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?