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.

[intunetown]

You can record with anything you want so long as it ouputs a digital signal and has the hardware connections to match your computer. It's not necessary to have an all in one unit that also does the computer end. Obviously the USB or Firewire hardware is already on the computer to bring that sound in. That only leaves you needing something to convert the samples to wave forms. I've been using Amadeus for years. It is an inexpensive wave form editor that can manipulate (trim, amplify, nomalize etc.) audio and save it in a ton of different formats. It is share ware and is about $25 or $35 I think. The guy that runs it has given me at least 6 free upgrades including the OSX version. These days, it's hard to beat a deal like that. I think his name is Martin Hairer. If you do a search for Amadeus and his name you should be able to find him easily enough.

[dten]

A friend of mine uses a Sony minidisc player/recorder with an attached microphone. It's quite a small package, and he's satisfied with the quality. That's just the recording part, though, not the converting-to-samples part.

[Artist]

Well the mini disc players do have an optical out, and the newer NetMD players have a USB connection, not sure if audio can be sent from the MD to the computer tho, might only be the other way round.

[drjimuk]

Well the mini disc players do have an optical out, and the newer NetMD players have a USB connection, not sure if audio can be sent from the MD to the computer tho, might only be the other way round.

you can send it back using sonic stage, its really easy, would be a good idea... there good i have one

[Kev_K]

I am keen on sampling- cars going by, a girl crying, everything

I have a friend in college who does this all the time. He uses an MP3 recorder from Samsung which has a built in mic for recording anywhere. You can then transfer your recordings onto your mac/pc for editing;

http://www.lightav.com/home/mp3/mp3.html

[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

[DEVIOUS]

Thanks for the useful advice. I reckon, with my budget being on the thin side I might go for a second hand md recorder. I was hoping to get something which recorded into wav format or an equivalent so that I could just drag it straight into my project, but then again it's not so much trouble to record it in. I have been looking into the new mp3 flash players with recording functions- www.iriver.com - they look pretty well kitted out for this job yet I am not sure whether they can only encode to mp3 or whether I can keep it uncompressed. The types of samples I want are short but clean and high quality.

Thanks again

D.