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Field Recording


Ryan Ball

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Just wondering what most of you use for your double system field recording. I've used the Marantz PMD cassette recorder in the past and was considering getting one on ebay, but the price seems a bit high for analog cassette technology. Is there something else I should be looking at?

 

Thanks

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You're right! I've been seeing on eBay lots of Marantz tape recoerders and its prices are on the roof! I can recommend the Marantz PMD-660 Compact Flash recorder or the Zoom H4 SD card recorder. The first has a price tag of around 400 bucks and the latter 300 bucks. Both have XLR inputs. It is said, in a thread I started on the Sound department that the Marantz has a better mic preamp, whatever that means!

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These days its makes the most sense to record digitally, I can't see any benefit to recording sound to tape.

 

I've used a very nice DAT recorder before but will be moving to one of the much smaller compact flash recorders for my next project. (back up, back up, back up)

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These days its makes the most sense to record digitally, I can't see any benefit to recording sound to tape.

 

I've used a very nice DAT recorder before but will be moving to one of the much smaller compact flash recorders for my next project. (back up, back up, back up)

 

 

But is digital, namely SD storage, an archival format? Will I be able to go back 20 years fom now and use those SD cards to do new cuts of my films? I know cassette tapes degrade over time, but they still seem more reliable than digital technology right now.

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But is digital, namely SD storage, an archival format?

 

 

That's an important concern, SD may not be practical for archiving but after your .WAV files are in your computer, obviously you can output to whatever media format you feel safest with. For me I keep the files on a hard drive and also output to data DVDs, so I have multiple copies. Going to a cassette would represent a serious step down in audio quality from your native .wav material.

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