[Steve Topper]

Hey Ty, I’m in North Carolina, Charlotte area.

[Steve Topper]

Thanks! Great advice David and Eric. As much as I love good sound, it would be great to let someone else deal with it entirely. But if anyone else has experience working with any field recorders, please throw your comments this way. The more I know, the more confident I will feel no matter what situation I end up in.

Knowlege can be depressing though…I remeber when I bought an sm57 some years ago and thought “wow, $100 for a microphone! This is EXPENSIVE” ha, little did I know.

[Steve Topper]

Right, points well taken. Believe me this is what I hope/plan to do. But even on a budget, I may not be able to afford the best of the best of a sound man. I simply won’t be able to pay someone a thousand bucks a day no matter how good he is, so I would still like to know what I’m getting into with any guy I negotiate with. Hiring a pro does not solve the budget problem; if anything it exacerbates it (understandably for a worthy payoff)

So, for the sake of information gathering, let’s assume that I have a seasoned sound man without any gear, or that I’m stubborn and insist on doing it myself (I’m not and I don’t). If I want close to pro sound, could you clarify some of these options on viability:

SD 302 running into an h4n (~$1500)
Tascam H2-P2 (~$750)
Fostex FR-2Le (~600)
a different handheld recorder like marantz 661 of sony pcm-d50

Basically would any of these give me audio I could be happy with for an indie feature quality?

Like any ignorant filmmaker, at the end of the day, I have that familiar instinct to want to drop all my money into lenses, but growing up playing in bands and doing “home recordings” I understand the basics why that is a bad idea. So I need to find the right balance with the wrong budget.