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Portable DAT Recorder/Mic suggestions

by Matt Troup · in Technical Issues · 11/17/2005 (11:48 am) · 1 replies

Forgive the not-so-precise location. The hardware->audio forum nearly dead.

I've been eyeballing the Tascam DA-P1 for a solid 3 years. Now that I'll "soon" want an audio recorder I'm glad I held out on buying the DA-P1... I see it costs nearly half what it did before. However, I'm not in the same mentality I was a few years ago. I hate having extra little things around - tapes, etc. So, I'm more than willing to consider a straight Digital Recorder if it's well recommended. Besides having possitive reviews, the reason why I leaned towards the DA-P1 was because I could tell how to use it just by looking at detailed pictures. I've seen many other models of DAT recoreders where I wasn't familiar with the audio in/out hubs, dials, etc and I was put off by that.

My budget: I'd like to buy a used portable recorder for under 600$ - mic not included, of course (speaking of which, any suggestions... I've heard good things about various Sennheiser models).

Edit: I'll be using the recorder/mic mainly for atmospheric effects in uncontrolled environments (outdoors) and voice recording.
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Employee David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
#1
11/17/2005 (12:29 pm)
I just picked up a Marantz 660. It uses Compact Flash II cards and microdrives (same as my Canon D20). It allows you to record stereo audio (great for atmospherics) and mono (great for vocal) through balanced XLR inputs. It also allows you to record to PCM audio rather than a compressed format (MP3 being the most common). It can record at MP3, but many of the recorders I looked at in its price range recorded only to compressed audio. I've had good luck with it as long as I'm using an external microphone. The internal microphones pick up the sound of you touching the casing. Since it's a portable unit, that can be annoying. Oh, and it has phantom power. It sucks down the batteries quickly, though.

The Sennheiser Me66 is a great shotgun microphone. I have two of them and have been using them for the last three years for film work. You'll definitely need to looking into windscreens, though for atmospherics.

But that's the one I have and I'm happy with it. I also have a Tascam 788. It's quite a nice little recorder as well, but I needed something a little more robust.