Summary of available recording devices
(This material was originally going to be part of the book but was removed to save space and because it dates quickly.) As of 2011, my impression is that almost everyone is using compact flash recorders from various companies. The Edirol R-09 and Handy Zoom H2 and H4 are commonly recommended as being good value for money, easy to operate, reliable, and produce excellent recordings.
- Compact Flash recorders - current best technology
- (Analogue) Cassette - obsolete, but still popular in some areas and amongst older fieldworkers.
- MP3/MP4 recorders and Ipods
- DAT - now obsolete
- Minidisc - now obsolete
- CD recorder - now largely obsolete
- Recording directly to computer
- For another summary, see also: http://bartus.org/akustyk/rec.html
I do not recommend recording directly to computer. Despite gains in computing sound card quality, it still seems to me to produce worse recording than a dedicated recorder.
Summary of microphones
- David Nathan’s ELAR Advice Document: http://www.hrelp.org/archive/advice/microphones.html
- Bartek Pycha’s Microphone summary: http://bartus.org/akustyk/microphones.php
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Analogue.pdf | 33.72 KB |
| DAT.pdf | 33.89 KB |
| EquipmentSetup.pdf | 45.1 KB |
| Minidisc.pdf | 39.67 KB |
| MP3.pdf | 37.73 KB |
| SolidState.pdf | 36.61 KB |