The Big City

Here’s a list of all the Flash recorders that I know about, from cheapest to most expensive, with pros and cons and the reason why I haven’t bought each one. My priorities are pretty specific and won’t apply to everyone: I want to use the recorder for interviews and for recording binaural sound so it needs a stereo and a mono input, I have a lot of large Compact Flash cards so it needs to be able to take those, I sometimes work in the middle of nowhere so it needs to use rechargeable batteries, preferably AAs, and I’d like to be able to set the recording level manually. If you have any experience of any of these machines, positive or negative, I’ll be very grateful if you’ll add your comments at the bottom.
The prices are the best I can find, include VAT and were correct in January 2008. (Click on the pictures to see bigger versions.)

Zoom H2 - £149

This amazingly cheap recorder is actually fairly impressive and seems to be a big improvement on its big brother, the H4. It records onto SD cards, which puts me off, but it does take AA batteries, you can use it with an external microphone, it can record in MP3 and WAV formats in stereo, mono and a fancy four channel format and it even has a 2 second pre-record buffer, for goodness sake. All the reviews I’ve read say that the mic pre-amps are good for a recorder in this price range which I take to mean they aren’t great, and the one person who has tried to use it with the OKM binaural mics that I use said that it was impossibly noisy, but even so, this seems like a great buy for the podcasting and educational markets and I bet they’re going to fly off the shelves. There’s a very comprehensive review at O’Reilly, which has some sound samples you can listen to.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
2 x AA	SD	2 x TRS stereo mini jack + Built-in Mic.

Zoom H4 - £195

Zoom mostly make equipment for musicians so this recorder has loads of gizmos and gadgets in it, including a metronome! It’s rather cheap and people say it feels flimsy. It’s difficult to use because it has a complicated menu system, in particular it’s hard to set recording levels manually, which I generally want to do. It records to SD cards (bad) but it does use AA batteries (good) and it has proper XLR microphone connectors. One review I read found that it has very high noise levels on the preamps, a very limited adjustment of recording levels and a possibly intentional non-linear frequency response designed to mask the high noise levels. I’m ashamed to admit that the main reason I wouldn’t buy one is that it’s so tacky looking that I would be embarrassed to be seen with it, but it also seems that it may be a very poor quality recorder.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
2 x AA	SD	2 x XLR or 1/4″ TRS jack + Built-in Mic.

Olympus LS-10 - £269

Announced at CES but with no confirmed shipping date, this could be a surprise hit. It has 2Gb of built-in memory and also takes SD cards up to 8Gb, it records in WAV, MP3 and WMA formats, it uses 2 AA batteries (and Olympus claims that it can record for 12 hours on just those two batteries, which I find hard to believe) and it can record from its built-in microphones or from an external mic. There is a little dial for adjusting the recording level while you’re recording and two little speakers for playing the incriminating interview back to your editor when she doesn’t believe your amazing story. All in all it looks quite promising, I look forward to a real-world sighting, please let me know if you see one!

Battery	Memory	Inputs
2 x AA	SD	1 x 1/8″ mini jack + Built-in Mic.

M-Audio MicroTrack 24/96 - £200

The M-Audio MicroTrack is very small and pretty. It uses CF cards and lets you record WAV and MP3 files, in other words compressed or uncompressed. The main problem with it is that it uses a built-in battery so if you are out and about recording and you run out of juice then you’re stuck; you just have to go home. They claim eight hours life for the battery but I’ve seen reports of only three or four, it’s obviously going to get worse as the battery gets older and I can’t see any obvious way to replace it. Apart from that it’s OK, but the battery issue completely rules it out for anyone who wants to use it professionally. You can power it via USB so it might be possible to use an external battery pack but it would be a bit of a hassle.

There’s a new version of this recorder coming out in the next couple of months, same shape, different colour, but it looks like it still uses a built-in battery.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
Built-in	CF	1 x 1/8″ TRS stereo mini jack + 2 x 1/4″ TRS jack

Edirol R9 - £211

Edirol are really Roland, a pretty decent maker of musical instruments and synthesisers and this recorder seems to be fairly well constructed. It can record MP3s or WAVs, takes two AA batteries and manages to make them last quite a long time, according to a few reviews I’ve read. If only it didn’t use SD cards I might consider buying this one because it’s really small and solid looking.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
2 x AA	SD	Internal Mic. + 1/8″ stereo mini jack

Marantz PMD620 - £278

This newish machine looks like it’s going to be the way to go if you want a small recorder. It ticks nearly all the boxes and I know that many organisations, including the BBC, are considering buying them in large quantities. There is a very comprehensive and pretty favourable review at transom.org. It is reported to have better pre-amps than the pmd660 (below) and although it lacks a level adjusting knob is does have little switches that let you change the level while recording. It uses SD cards not CF, but SD seems to be becoming pretty standard on a lot of things now so that isn’t so much of a problem. It is powered by two AA batteries and can record in real mono. There used to be a problem with the monitoring because there was a noticeable delay in the sound that you heard in the headphones while recording but this has been fixed in a firmware update.

I recently took one of these on a trip as a backup machine for an important recording. I wanted to make sure that it would really last four hours on 2 AA batteries, as Marantz claim so I left it recording music from my MacBook until the batteries ran out. Not only did it manage a whopping five and three-quarters hours but it also shut down cleanly when the batteries died and successfully saved the whole file to the card without corrupting it.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
2 x AA	SD	2 x TRS stereo mini jack + Built-in Mic.

Marantz PMD660 - £290

The Marantz range has been around for a while and is well-established now. The PDM660 is popular with a lot of people, BBC News own quite a few. It’s expensive but it has several professional features, lots more record formats than the cheaper recorders, including mono recording, more bit rates and voice activated recording for snooping on people. It feels very well-made and there’s a big knob for adjusting your recording level while you’re recording, something none of the cheaper models let you do. The downside with it is the microphone pre-amplifiers, which were outrageously noisy in the one I tried. Other people have had some success with it but you’d certainly have to use a powered Mic with a high-level output like a Beyer MCE58. It uses 4 AA batteries and records onto CF cards. I’d probably buy one if the pre-amplifiers weren’t so bad.

 

Battery	Memory	Inputs
4 x AA	CF	2 x XLR + 1/8″ stereo mini jack + internal mic.

Fostex FR2 LE - £365

This is the closest competitor to the Marantz PMD 660 and it seems to be worth the extra money you’d have to pay for it. Like the Marantz it has professional features like XLR inputs, a proper level control and phantom power. It also has a 2 second pre-record buffer, which the Marantz doesn’t have, and connections for a wired remote. The microphone pre-amps are very good although some people have reported that the headphone amps are very noisy. It can record Broadcast WAVs or MP3s onto CF cards. The problems with it are that you have to commit yourself to a recording format when you set-up the CF card and you can’t delete files to free-up space on the card. I’d say this machine is the one I’d buy if I was going to spend some money right now.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
4 x AA or battery pack	CF	2 x balanced XLR or unbalanced 1/4″ jack

Korg MR-1 - £449

I haven’t found out much about this recorder, all I know about are its disadvantages. It uses a built-in battery pack, it only records to its own hard-disk so once it’s full you have to download the audio somewhere else, it records audio in a very high-fidelity 1-bit format which sounds great but before you can edit it for broadcast you’ll have to convert it which will make the process nearly as slow as dubbing from a mini-disc and some people have reported that the mic pre-amps aren’t very good. It does look very pretty, it’s very encouraging that people think it’s worth making such a high quality recorder in a small package and I love the idea of 1-bit recording but it’s just not suitable for the sorts of things I do.

 

Battery	Memory	Inputs
Built in battery	Internal Drive	2 x balanced 1/8″ mini-jack

Sony PCM-D50 - £509
This is a much more sensible version of the too expensive PCM-D1. It is still not actually available, the most recent ETA was the end of November. I suspect every available Sony plant is currently busy making PS3s to capitalise on poor old Nintendo’s Wii shortage. Anyway, this might be a good if still too expensive, little replacement for those people who want to stop using their mini-discs. It uses AA batteries, has a 4gb internal memory but you can also use removeable memory sticks and the record level can be adjusted while you’re recording. It can only record in linear formats, there are no mp3 recording options available.
Maycom HandHeld II - £549
This recorder looks a bit wacky because it’s designed to be used as a microphone with a built in recorder rather than with a separate microphone. It is easy to use, has several fancy features, records audio in every possible format onto CF cards and although it is designed to use an expensive Maycom battery you can also use AAs. This machine seems like a good choice for a rich journalist in a hurry but it doesn’t have all the features I’d like for the price, in particular there’s no proper connector for an external microphone.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
Internal or 4 x AA	CF	Built-in mic. + Maycom JAE connector

Marantz PMD670 - £500

The bigger Marantz, PMD670, or PMD671 which is nearly the same, is the one I’d probably choose to take on a field trip if I had the chance. It’s expensive, but it does everything and it does it all very well. It takes 8 AA batteries, which obviously means you won’t run out of power on a normal day, but if you want to take a spare set with you it’s going to be very bulky. I have seen some reports that this model has the same poor microphone pre-amps as the PMD660, which is an outrage if it’s true. In any case, this is too big for me. If I wanted to lug a great big box around I’d be using my Nagra III.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
8 x AA	CF	2 x XLR + 2 x RCA phono

Nagra ARES-M - £599

Nagra used to make the best portable recording equipment in the world. Their solid-state recorders aren’t quite so great. The ARES-M, like the Maycom recorder above, is designed to be used like a microphone rather than a stand-alone recorder. It can only record to its own internal 1Gb memory so you’ve nowhere to go when that’s full. It looks pretty rugged but I’ve been told by two people that it’s unreliable. Apparently there is a design fault which means that the battery connectors sometimes break off the circuit board. This alone was enough to put me off.

There is a new version of this recorder available for around £700. It has 2GB internal memory and voice operated recording. I haven’t heard if it’s more reliable than its predecessor.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
2 x AA	Internal	Internal mic or mini jack

HHB FlashMic - £618

It doesn’t look like much, just a microphone with three buttons on one side and a little screen on the other, but this is a posh piece of gear, with a posh price to match. It uses a high-quality Sennheiser DRM85 microphone capsule and it makes very good quality recordings. One person I know who’s used one says that the buttons are fiddly, the menus are hard to navigate through and because the level meters are on that tiny screen on the side you can’t see if you’re recording yourself too loud. Someone else said that its construction seemed OK until he found out how much it costs, at which point it started to seem a little ’shoddy’. He also wondered about its suitability for doing interviews with ‘big cheeses’ and I know what he means, I can’t imagine sticking it in front of Kofi Annan. In any case, you can’t use it for stereo recording, you can only record to its internal memory and you can’t use it with any other microphones so it’s no use for me. Maybe another one for the rich journalist in a hurry.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
2 x AA	Internal 1gb memory	Built-in mic. only

Tascam HD-P2 - £700

Like the Marantz PMD 670 this is a machine for the professional sound recordist. It has great big buttons, solid connectors and records its audio in very high resolution (up to 24-bit 192kHz) as time-coded broadcast WAVs. There’s a nice big dial for adjusting the recording levels when your interviewee gets animated or starts walking away, and a good sized screen. The battery life isn’t that good, people say they only get 4 hours from the 8 AA batteries and that means you’d need to pack another 8 to be on the safe-side. One weird thing, with all the other fancy options, is that it can’t make mp2s or mp3s. It is sometimes useful to be able to use a compressed format when you’re recording something like a press conference where quality isn’t all that important but you can’t afford to suddenly run out of space on your card. This recorder has been around for quite a long time now and I think that its age is showing a bit with the poor battery life and limited range of recording formats.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
8 x AA	CF	2 x XLR + 2 x RCA phono + Internal mono mic.

Mayah Flashman - £995

I took a Flashman to the Sahara Desert in Mali to record a Tuareg music festival and it was utterly reliable. It feels unbreakable, the batteries last forever, the menus are really easy to use, it can record in every format imaginable and it sounds great. It weighs a ton though and costs a million pounds, well all right, a thousand but anyway - too expensive for me, plus the price seems to be going up rather than down, a first for a solid-state recorder! Same goes for the Nagra Ares-BB which I bet is cool but is very big and expensive.

 

Battery	Memory	Inputs
4 x AA	CF	XLR + stereo mini jack

Sony PCM-D1 - £1000

This Sony recorder looks hilarious, it’s so camp that I started really wanting it for a while when it first came out. It looks like it was made as a prop for Flash Gordon. It’s all shiny and solid, the body’s titanium,  with real VU meters and amazing specifications and plenty of features, although I’ve read reports that the battery life isn’t great and that the microphone amplifiers aren’t as good as those found in other machines as expensive as this. Also, sadly, it only works with Sony memory sticks, which are quite expensive compared to CF cards.

 

Battery	Memory	Inputs
4 x AA	Memory Stick Pro	Built-in Stereo mic. + stereo mini jack

Sound Devices 722 - £2225

This is the top end, the pinnacle of portable recording devices. It has a built-in hard disk and can record to CF cards as well. The microphone pre-amps are second to none and the case is chunky aluminium. This is the solid-state version of the Nagra IV reel-to-reel tape recorder: Bomb proof, fantastic sounding, easy to use, utterly reliable. Maybe I’ll be able to afford a second-hand one when I’m 80.

Battery	Memory	Inputs
Camera battery packs	Internal drive + CF	Every possible combination

Thanks to the following people for contributions:

• James West
• Giles Booth
• Hugh Featherstone