The EM Poll

Playing the Field

Oct 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Nick Peck

           

Thanks to the popularity of notebook computers and digital cameras, evolutionary technology has led to new, relatively low-cost products that are extremely useful for the music, film, and broadcast-audio communities. Solid-state removable RAM cards and small, high-capacity hard drives have improved by leaps and bounds as prices have dropped steadily. Many audio professionals will remember 2005 as the year that tapeless field recording became affordable.

For decades, film-audio professionals have used the legendary and ubiquitous Nagra analog field recorders. Though large, heavy, and somewhat cumbersome, they sound incredibly good, conveying all the richness (and inherent hiss) of analog tape. In the '90s, portable DAT recorders made serious inroads among field recordists. The cost and size of DAT tape, as well as the lack of noise and the price of the units, were tough to beat. But DAT also has at least three disadvantages: the tiny tapes are fragile, you must transfer your field recordings to a DAW for editing in real time, and DAT is limited to 16-bit, 48 kHz audio. Over the past five years, excellent hard-drive-based field recorders have emerged from companies such as Nagra, Deva, and HHB, moving the industry into the random-access age. Those specialty products, however, are priced out of the reach of most individuals.

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