TINY TRACKERS
Jun 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Erik Hawkins
Whether you DJ or play in a band, there are several good reasons to make a simple stereo recording of your gig every time you play out. For example, the ability to review your performance after the fact is an excellent tool for refining your show because it lets you plainly hear (versus word of mouth) what works or doesn't work. Recording lets you archive all of your shows — good, bad and ugly — purely for the sake of posterity. Perhaps your great grandchild wants to release a compilation of your infamous live act, or you may have a performance that's the best show of your career. If so, it's only a relatively simple matter of editing and mastering the recording to produce a solid live album.
With all the gear to set up and details to work out before a show, if you can't plug in a recording device quickly, you probably won't plug it in at all. Consequently, it's crucial to have a simple and hassle-free recording system. The recorder should be small enough to throw in the side pocket of a backpack and shove next to a mixer on an overcrowded equipment stand. Its inputs should accommodate a standard connector type (such as RCA or ¼-inch) to make plugging it into the tape outputs of the main mixer a snap. The recording quality should allow for an uncompressed format (such as WAV) and audio CD quality (44.1 kHz/16-bit) or better. (Always record at the highest possible bit and sampling rates to start because you can't recapture fidelity lost during compression.) The recorder should have the ability to run on batteries, so you don't have to hunt for a free AC socket. And there should be a quick and painless way of transferring the recording to your computer. Given those prerequisites, there are a few devices on the market that fit the bill.
RECORD IN A FLASH
M-Audio's MicroTrack 24/96 ($499; www.m-audio.com) measures 2.4 by 4.3 by 1.2 inches and weighs just 4.9 ounces. It records to CompactFlash (CF) cards in 32 to 96 kHz at 16- to 24-bit depths. Alternately, it can record MP3 at 96 to 320 Kbps, 44.1 or 48 kHz. An included rechargeable battery gives you four to five hours of recording time, but the unit can also be powered via USB bus or its wall-wart adapter. MicroTrack features ¼-inch balanced inputs, which is a very nice touch on a unit of this size. With its USB port connected to your computer, the MicroTrack's CF card will be recognized as a standard mass-storage medium, allowing superconvenient drag-and-drop file transfer directly to the hard drive.
CF media used to be fairly pricey, but its cost has dropped considerably. A 1GB CF card now costs between $58 and $138, depending on the brand. The CF+ Type 2 card format, available in 2, 4 and 6 GB, is supported and provides an even better storage size-to-cost ratio. For example, a Hitachi 4GB Microdrive generally sells for between $130 and $200. A one-minute stereo recording at 44.1 kHz/16-bit requires about 10 MB of storage space. Leaving a few MB for formatting, you can expect at least 95 minutes of recording time from a 1GB CF card.
MINIDISC GOES BIG
The big news regarding the Sony MZ-M100 Hi-MD MiniDisc recorder ($400; www.sony.com/professional) is that it can record at audio-CD quality (44.1 kHz/16-bit), quashing my past complaints about MiniDisc (MD) audio compression. It can also record in the compressed ATRAC3plus audio format. The unit's analog inputs are minijack connectors (sort of a bummer), but there's a digital optical input and a USB port that make up for the consumer-grade minijacks. With its included rechargeable battery and one AA battery, it will reportedly run for 33 hours. It measures 3.3 by 0.8 by 3.4 inches and weighs in at 5.2 ounces.
The MZ-M100 supports older MD formats and can also record to the new 1GB Hi-MD media, which cost between $4 to $6 each and record about 94 minutes of CD-quality audio. You can upload and download audio as well as other data from the MZ-M100 to a computer via a USB port and using the included software (PC/Mac). That allows Hi-MD media to be used as handy 1GB data storage discs, and it's a great archival medium that is more robust than CD-R and DVD-R due to its sturdy plastic shell.
THE KEY MASTER
A new wonder box on the block is the Gemini iKey ($229; www.geminidj.com). It functions as an audio interface for any USB mass-storage device, from a finger-size flash drive to an Apple iPod. Simply plug a source signal into the iKey's RCA inputs and record audio directly onto a connected USB storage device. If your computer recognizes the USB device as a standard mass-storage medium, the recorded audio files may then be dragged straight to your computer's hard drive for editing and processing. The drag-and-drop process is not so straightforward with an iPod because audio files from the iPod's playlists cannot be dragged (copied) directly onto your computer. While more annoying and tedious, in principle the operation is the same.
The available recording formats are CD-quality WAV files or MP3 at 128, 192 or 256 Kbps. The iKey draws power from its wall-wart adapter or four AA batteries. Expect four to five hours of recording time when running on the batteries alone. The iKey measures 5.4 by 1.1 by 3.3 inches, and with four AA batteries installed, it weighs about 4.5 ounces.
HOOKUPS
Make sure to have the appropriate cables you need to connect your recording device to the tape outputs of the main mixer. Stay away from jerry-rigged adapter getups and poor-quality cables because your recording will only be as good as the weakest link in your signal chain. If there isn't an audience-response microphone running through the mixer, and your recorder has a microphone input (as do the MicroTrack and the MZ-M100), you may also want to record a few minutes of the audience, so you can mix in extra crowd noise later.
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