Sampling The World Around Us Options

[DEVIOUS]

I wonder if I am posting this in the right section?

The thing is I am a complete newbie but my ideas are developing more and more everyday I think about the portable studio I want to set up. Something occurred to me the other day however. I am keen on sampling- cars going by, a girl crying, everything. I want to have a neat small piece of gear to take everywhere with me so I can bring fresh sounds from everywhere. Does this exist?

I have looked at some samplers but they all offer very small recording times and too many knobs and fiddly stuff. All I want is a way to grab sound and then put it on my computer to be messed about with. I am thinking of a digital 4-track- there are a couple around at the mo that record to smartmedia cards, yet in terms of importing files I am unclear- some say it is converted to mp3 and no mention of being able to import individual tracks. The thing is what I really want is one of those digital dictaphones with 44.1HZ recording and the ability to connect a high quality microphone.

Any ideas? This would really open up the world of music- I really believe solving this problem could be a breakthrough!

Thanks people!

D.

[volxs]

I have done some location recording like this for various projects with my girlfriend who is studying sound art and design, on her course they tend to use either portable md or dat systems with a stereo mic, then transfer the results onto a computer for editing.

Whenever I've done stuff like this I've used a mini disc. I reckon things to look for in a mini disc recorder are the i/o options, it's handy having digital i/o options on the player but I don't think it's absolutely neccessary. I use the analog line out from my md and as long as I use good leads the sound quality is fine. It's a good idea to have a line out rather than use the headphone output (although you can work around all that stuff if needed) as you tend to get a better balanced signal without colouration from the internal amp. Also the ability to change the record levels on the md is really good, I'd definitely look out for that.

We Use different mics depending on the situation, but my favourite is a small stereo lapel mic which actually records really well if you position yourself properly and it's not that noticeable so you can record people and situations without them playing to the mic. It's also cool for bootlegging live gigs with.

This is just my way of doing things, there are loads of ways to do this but I know that this way definitely works well and it is probably the most common way of working for most sound artists.

Hope this helps