[Dave Haynie]

They’re tapping into the software-driven-hardware phenomena… it’s relatively cheap to fix or add new features that can be software-only features. And this gets cheaper still as you get a larger installed base.

This also builds brand loyalty. Think of PC-based apps… when I spend real money for a tool that ships with bugs, I’m not happy. But if it’s a reputable company and they quickly ship out an update, I’m not just happy about that, I’m more likely to buy again. Thus, I owned one revision of any ULead tool (Media Studio Pro was buggy and never fixed), one revision of any Pinnacle tool (worse still was Impression). And nearly every version of Sony Vegas/Acid/Forge and Cakewalk/Sonar since they started, or close to it.

The Zoom won me over a little even on software-driven features, such as the portastudio mode. My old field recorder is a Tascam DR-1, and I looked at the DR-100. While I generally use the field recorder for video and very small audio projects, the ability to use this as a 4-track is very cool. And well, other than the LED they have to show you’re in MTR mode, totally software driven.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Hi-
I’ve been hanging out in other areas of the Cow for years, but doing more audio these days, I decided to poke around here. Hope that explanation was useful.

The guitar is the Martin “Backpacker”, designed by my friend Bob McNally for Martin. I keep this one in my computer room for quick access, and do actually take it backpacking on occasion.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

[Frank Nolan] “Your post did more to confuse the issue than to explain it. Eric’s explanation in a couple of sentences did more to explain than your entire 4 or 5 paragraphs.
It does not matter whether you are referring to old tape machines or a new digital device, there is a definite difference between a track and a channel.”

Yeah, sorry, I really did mess that explanation up. I’m sure I had some actual point to make to start with, but managed to dodge that very nicely in that first part.

A channel is simply an audio path. In the real world, this is fixed in hardware: a mixer may have 32 or 48 input channels, eight general output buses (which are also channels), four auxilary buses (which are also channels). In the computer world, you’ll have a fixed number of hardware channels in and out of the computer. In software, things are generally more flexible.

A track is basically the recording of a channel. You set up your gear, press “record”, you get N tracks of audio in nonvolatile storage of some kind (tape, HDD, flash).

A mixer is a device that aggregates channels: that 48 channel mixer takes up to 48 input channels and creates at most 8 output channels. The purpose is to fit that audio to a smaller channel format: your recorder, your PA system, a CD or DVD, etc.

A switch or distribution amp are devices that multiplies channels: one input channel can become many different output channels.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Nope.. you need to be close up.

Why not record separately from your video shoot? Here’s a very low tech way to do this. Start by recording (on a PC, with a field recorder like a Zoom or Tascam, on the camera) a “scratch track”. That’s not intended to sound perfect, but just get the timing of the song down the way you want it.

Next, put this on an MP3 player: iPod, smartphone, whatever. Now your guitar player can play against that track (well, heck, if I can do it, I assume most musicians can) and you can record overdubs, multiple takes, etc. without the need to have your mics in the video, or invest in higher end audio gear.

Here’s one example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNmfm-BAwzs&feature=player_profilepage

This was a quickie for a contest (which got a little less quick once I got to playing with the video). I hadn’t actually learned the original song, when I shot the video, but I had one day of sunlight before the contest ended. The audio’s a little muddier than I’d like, it was recorded on a Tascam DR-1 using the built-in mics and a guitar pickup on the Martin you see in the video.

So one question… what are your recording resources? Just the camcorder? My suggestions will work here… just use the camcorder for audio to get the track down the way you want it (I’m assuming you have an audio or video sequencer that can do multitrack mixing). Then use that in the room, or the earphone, to sync your mic-free video shoot to the audio.

As for mics, it’s kind of like the video world: you get what you pay for. Just about any “real” mic is better than what you have built-in… in the case of field recorders like the Tascams and Zooms, this may be true just because you can vary the position of the mic, chose the right mic for the job, etc., even when they have built-in capsules that don’t completely suck.

If you do want to get a couple of good, general purpose mics, start out with the basics. Someone suggested a Bluebird, which is certainly a nice mic, but also probably overkill for the scale of your first project. I’d recommend a couple of Shure SM57s… that’s one of the most popular instrument/vocal mics of all time, used on stage and even in recording sessions. They’re about $100 each.

If you’re really on a budget, check out Amazon for the GLS Audio ES-57. This is a blatent clone of the SM57. I suspect the only reason it doesn’t sound exactly like an SM57 is that it’s got better magnets. And they cost $30.

Of course, I’m a guy with over 20 mics in my collection. And yet, I still use SM57s on some instruments, even though I wouldn’t necessarily choose it for recording vocals. Of course, for performance, I pretty much want my condensers off the stage. There are pleny of pros who use pricey condensers on stage, but I can’t afford the chance that the mic stand might fall down. So having a few extra decent, rugged (relatively) mics like SM57s or even the ES-57s around is always a good investment.

-Dave

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[Dave Haynie]

“Track” is just old timey recording engineer speak, dating back from when each channel you could record on was an actual, physical track on a multi-track tape.

The story is simple: how many different inputs can you record simultaneously. With my Tascam DR-1 or any numbers of camcorders, I can have at most two mic inputs at the same time. The Zoom H4n allows four at the same time. If I’m actually recording a band for a “live in the studio” type thing, I bring out my laptop and Tascam US-1800, to bring in up to 14 inputs at the same time.

What’s the purpose? A better final mix. You’re probably going to mix down to stereo (though you could use a multi-track recorder for surround sound, that’s another story entirely). But the more individual inputs you have on the same sound, the more control you have. For, example, my sister plays keyboards in an 11 piece band. I want a mic for the lead, a mic or two for the backup singers, mics on the guitar cabinets, a couple for the brass section, a direct input from the keyboards, at least three mics on the drum kit (two overheads, one on the kick drum). This gives me much greater control over the final sound in that stereo track.

But it’s not just for big bands. When I record myself on guitar, I’ll put two mics on the guitar (one close, one back a little to take in more room sound), another feed from the guitar’s pick-up, and one for voice if it’s a live thing (if not, I’ll layer the vocals and harmonicas on later).

I actually bought the Zoom H4n over the Tascam DR-100, based on my experience with the DR-1. The DR-1 has great sound, but the mic preamps are pretty weak, to the extent that it was kind of useless with at least some of my dynamic mics (and of course, the DR-1 doesn’t support condensers via phantom power, you need an external preamp for that).

The H4n has more usable gain for dynamic mics (I get good levels with the preamp still in a good place, gain-wise), and it’s possible to use directly with condensers. It’s not perfect — the phantom power circuit in the H4n (voltage multiplier to take the AA battery power up to 48V) is less efficient than the phantom power circuit in the DR-100. Not an issue if you run on AC (the H4n comes with the power supply, mic stand adapter, and a plastic case; the PSU for the Rolands are extra). What finally sold me on the Zoom wasn’t just the 4-track, but the “portastudio” mode… it can work like a four-track portastudio (eg, you can record one or two tracks while playing back the others).

I did not consider the R-44… I was looking for a more capable field recorder, largely to augment video work.. the R-44 is about 3x the price, another category of device.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

You have to keep in mind that “dB” itself is a dimensionless ratio between two different logarithmic quantities. You only get something akin to an actual unit (eg, like volts), which the basis for your ratio is a known quantity.

For example, in my day job I do digital radio design. We usually work in dBm, the “m” being shorthand for milliwatt. That means my “zero” is at one milliwatt… 10dBm is thus 10mW, 20dBm is thus 100mW, 30dBm 1000mW = 1W, etc. (if you didn’t understand logarithmic scales, hope that makes it a little clearer).

For digital VU meters, you set the 0 point at full scale, whether that’s going to be a numeric reading of 65,535 or 16,777,215 or whatever depends on your bit resolution. But these numbers get large and meaningless, the log scale is a far more useful scale, and lets you concentrate on relative signal strength, regardless of the resolutions involved.

For sound level meters, you probably measure in dB(spl), spl = sound pressure level. If you do recording, you’ll find ratings on your microphones in db(spl)… you probably want something in the 120-140dB(spl) range on that kick drum. Technically, on this scale, the zero is set at 0.0002 microbar of sound pressure, which is more or less the threshold of human hearing.

The reason we use log measurements for hearing is simple: the human ear has about a trillion to one dynamic range. Rather than dealing in large numbers of crazy and meaningless precision, we can do the same thing in dB(spl) from 0 (threshold of hearing) to 120 (“The Raconteurs” in concert, also, where permanent hearing damage can occur).

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Yeah. When I was growing up, electronics was a pretty common hobby. My Dad (an engineer at Bell Labs) taught me to solder. Then I had four courses on electronics in High School, majored in EE + Math in college, had summer jobs involving soldering, occasionally built electronics prototypes entirely by hand (including a couple Amiga 2000 computers; my last one was two weeks ago, a filter for something slightly higher than audio… a 700MHz five pole low pass filter, using 0402 components).

But I digress. Certainly, if you’re making cables, solder or criming, you best know what you’re doing. I’ve had the occasional kids working for me who prove to not know the basics. So I give them a free lesson. It’s a useful investment. And while I only have a very nice Weller here, I got a Metcal for the office. Now that’s soldering heaven!

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

If you have access to power, I’d strongly recommend the Line 6 XD-V30L or XD-V70L wireless lav systems. The big win here is that it’s a digital ISM link. These are really an on-stage thing; they’re not yet too on-camera friendly, but their technology blows away just about every other wireless mic at the moment. They also make cool guitars…

ISM means you don’t need a licence. Which you do with systems like the Sennheiser G3 or most ubiquitous Shure systems… most users don’t get them, but they are legally required for any television band radio, 300-600MHz. And the 700MHz units are now illegal… that spectrum, which used to be the top of the UHF TV band up to channel 69 or so, is now the 700MHz band that Verizon and AT&T bought for LTE cellular.

This is an all digital system. The quality of audio is higher, and you’ll get a much more reliable audio link. And it probably costs less.

As for the shotgun… I’m really happy with my Rode NTG-1. I also own about 20 other mics for stage and audio recording, and the general rule is that more money will, at some point, make you happier. But it depends. When I do a serious audio project, I’m recording from up to a dozen mics at 24-bit/96kHz uncompressed.

When I shoot on-camera video, it’s all compressed (digitally) by the camera. If you have a higher end camera, maybe it’s recorded 16/48, but it’s via the camera’s mic preamps, which are at best not the main focus of that camera design. So you’re going to hit a point of diminishing returns with an on-camera mic.

If you’re spending a grand on two mics, hopefully have another $300-500 or so for a decent quality field recorder. And better still, an audio guy for the project.. at which point, you may not actually be looking for a shotgun mic anymore.

I’m also one for fail-safe shooting/recording. Even with that sound guy, I want a decent shotgun mic on the camera. I usually have an extra recorder or two going, if I’m in a fixed enough location (stage production, wedding) to allow one. Just in case something else goes wrong, I may have a 2-3 mics working that I don’t expect to need. You want that for audio sync, anyway.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Yeah. Well, somewhat.. you want the app that you need. You don’t necessarily care if there are 10 or 529 that do the same job. Apple’s got kind of a year’s lead on tablet apps, but it’s not really that big, because Android wasn’t limited to a single resolution, anyway. So plenty of apps from today will work on larger screens, even if they won’t yet take full advantage of Honeycomb. But that also means there’s less of a growing pain, in all likelihood. Yeah, Android has some catching up on the software side… and there are others also shooting for the tablet (WebOS, RIM’s new QNX-based tablet OS, and Microsoft, once they figure out what they’re really doing about touchscreens).

The 720p could just be to sync up with the camera and iMovie — Apple’s always far more concerned about their internal formats than what might come from my camcorder. On the other hand, you can’t even play 720p on a tablet using just the processor. Maybe not even two… and you certainly don’t get 10 hours of video that way. Even many 2-core PC desktops can’t play 1080p AVC using just the CPU. Now, on a PC, you have GPUs with stream processors, but on these small SOCs, the GPUs aren’t usually that programmable. nVidia and TI, for example, both include dedicated H.264 decoding hardware on their chips (well, it’s dedicated DCT decoding… works on MPEG-2 and maybe even VC-1 as well). Could be Apple’s got the hardware for 1080p but hasn’t written code to support these new engines (then again, with their budget and reputation for polishing the code before release, I think that’s unlikely).

Then again, you can only buy 720p in the iTunes store. The camera only does 720p. So maybe that’s just the only thing on their radar right now. There’s zero benefit to 1080p on the device itself, only via HDMI. Given that’s a $40 accessory, it’s not going to be all that popular, I think.

Otherwise, this was probably a pretty smart release. There’s not a single revolutionary thing in there, but it’s without question a nicer device. It’s managed to more or less keep up with the hardware of the competition, at least as of today, close enough that no one’s going to choose a Xoom over an iPad 2 just based on performance. And yet, it’s not such a jump up that iPad 1 owners are going to go crazy over upgrading.. but they might draw in a bunch of fence sitters.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Well… yeah… the HDMI output is via an $40 adapter cable. And it’s rather odd. I was following the conference, and they claimed the output can be 1080p. But apparently, that’s just for stills. The online specs still call a maximum of 720/30p video, for either AVC or MJPEG.

There are a few other indications that this is pretty much just an incremental update, despite the insistence during the conference that it’s “all new” and “unbelievable” and other tripe. They claim “up to 2x faster CPU”, they didn’t reveal any details of the A5 SOC, they didn’t talk about RAM (and most of that’s not online, anyway).

The core of the competition on Android tablets is around the nVidia Tegra 2. While this can’t do full blown AVC High Profile, it can do 1080/60i or 1080/24p AVC at main profile, and at very low power consumption. It’s hard to believe Apple improved their CPU and included a whole new GPU (probably a dual core model from PowerVR), but ignored video acceleration. Ok, sure, some folks (like me) care more about video than games, anyway, but clearly that’s not the core of the iOS user base. And CPU, for the Tegra 2, rates “up to 2.5x” faster than the crop of 1GHz systems out today. These are already shipping, under $400 (Viewsonic G-Tablet… yeah, the Android 2.2 implementation on this one needs some work, and no one should buy one without a guarantee of an upgrade to 3.0).

-Dave