Playing the Field

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

On the Job

I used the 722 for a variety of sound-design and audio-production tasks for about a month, and was very pleased with the results. The upcoming DVD rerelease of the film Titanic includes a new scene where a character is playing an old upright piano. I used the 722 on a variety of pianos in different situations and recorded mono from six feet away using a Schoeps cardioid mic to get an appropriate room sound. The 722's clean mic preamps picked up a good balance of room reverb and piano, creating a convincing image.

My favorite use of the 722 so far has been for recording natural ambiences in a quiet environment. I used Sennheiser MKH 30 and MKH 40 mics in an M/S configuration for recording crickets, wind in trees, and general rural ambiences. I was absolutely blown away by the level of detail afforded by that combination. The mics have exceptionally low noise floors, which worked beautifully with the 722's crisp, detailed preamps to give me a clear, subtle signal with no hiss. The 722's ability to decode the M/S signal through the headphone monitor while recording the unencoded materials to the hard drive affords a great level of flexibility. I'm absolutely sold on this pairing as a high-end audiophile recording solution for nature recordists and sound-design professionals.

The 722 does have a learning curve. Though it's obvious that Sound Devices carefully thought out the interface, certain idiosyncrasies take some getting used to. The VU meter calibration is different from that of most digital systems with which I am familiar, with only four LEDs representing the area between — 12 dBfs and 0 and 15 LEDs representing the region between — 50 dBfs and — 12. The result is that I calibrated my recording level lower than I normally would, creating fairly quiet files that sometimes needed to have gain added in Pro Tools. The 722 doesn't give you a way to delete files directly from the recorder; you must connect it to a computer and do so remotely. Sound Devices made that decision specifically to avoid undue hard-drive fragmentation. Nonetheless, users have requested the ability to delete files directly, and a future firmware update will implement that feature.

While the 722 is a deep and comprehensive box that I see as the de facto choice for many professionals, I still can't shake the feeling that the product got rushed to market before it was completely ready. Though the fit and finish is generally first-rate, the BNC connectors on the right side stick out farther than the protective paneling and are thus exposed to knocks. (Sound Devices assures readers that the connectors have been rigorously tested and should withstand any handling.) The lock washers holding them in place protrude asymmetrically to one side, which is a niggling detail but surprising considering the price of the unit. In the first unit I received for review, the FireWire connection did not work; Sound Devices immediately sent me a replacement. Transferring data through FireWire required a bit of futzing about before my Macs would see the unit. If I had the 722 connected to the Mac but powered down, powering it up will immediately crash the Mac, requiring a restart. I've discovered through trial and error that the most reliable method is to make sure that both units are powered up, connect the FireWire cable to the Mac first, and then connect the cable to the 722. The previous unit also crashed on occasion, though I experienced no crash problems with my current unit (firmware rev 1.37). According to the manufacturer, Mac OS X connectivity issues will be resolved in the 722's next firmware update.

My biggest gripe about the 722 at present is the lack of a dedicated switch for engaging phantom power. The default method for turning on phantom power is by accessing menu items, making what should be an instantaneous act require at least three button clicks and two twists of the Menu knob. Fortunately, pairs of buttons on the front panel, when pressed together, serve as navigation shortcuts to toggle phantom power on and off. Nonetheless, having friendly switches labeled 48V near the mic inputs would make the unit more intuitive and easier to use. Those issues aside, if budget is not as important a consideration as size and features and your primary purpose is portable field recording away from power sources, the 722 is tough to beat.

Apples to Apples

To get a relative sense of how these machines sound in comparison with one another, I recorded the same materials to each unit. I tried to exercise the full dynamic range of the preamps by recording a snare drum at close range, dialog at medium range, and a quiet nighttime exterior ambience. I recorded the snare using a Shure SM57 placed two inches from the rim of the instrument. I recorded myself reading the dialog — a scene from a movie script — with a Sennheiser 416 shotgun mic at a distance of 12 feet. I recorded the ambience in a suburban neighborhood on a quiet, breezy night using a pair of Earthworks QTC1 omni mics placed about ten feet apart. Though each recording was a unique performance, I took scrupulous care to make sure that the levels of the performances, as well as the VU meter readings on the recording units, were as closely matched as possible. Although 24-bit recording would have probably revealed additional differences, all recordings were made at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz.

Because the R-1 does not feature 48V phantom power, I used a Lunatec V2 mic preamp on the dialog test for that unit to power the mics. In addition, the R-1's mic preamps did not have enough gain to record the quiet nighttime ambience convincingly.

I transferred the recordings to a Mac using FireWire or USB 2.0 and then edited them in Pro Tools. The only processing that I performed was some slight level balancing to even out their loudness. Once I had completed that process, I sent the files to a number of golden-eared listeners without telling them which file was recorded on what machine.

As with any subjective experience, different listeners had different impressions; a few of their observations are listed in the table “Listener Comments.” There certainly were trends, though. Nearly everyone really liked the sound of the Fostex FR-2's preamps on all three record sources. No one cared for the PMD660's recording of the snare drum, which was no surprise because its preamps were not designed for recording music. Nonetheless, many people liked it on the ambience recording. No one liked the R-1's dialog recording, but it added a surprising amount of compressive rock punch to the snare recording that appealed to many. Most people liked the PMD671's dialog recording, but felt it was too noisy and had an unconvincing stereo image in the ambience recording — but again, that was not its intended application.

The Envelope, Please

If you want something inexpensive, portable, and easy to throw in your bag to capture that perfect aural moment, the R-1 is hard to beat. The built-in mics and onboard DSP make it the unit of choice for musicians and casual field recordists.

The award for best user interface goes to the Edirol R-4, whose big, clearly marked buttons; easy-to-read LCD panel; and generally good layout allowed me to get right in and record without cracking the manual. It's also the only field recorder in this price range that offers four discrete mic preamps. For a semiprofessional production sound gig that doesn't require SMPTE, the R-4 could be a great choice, allowing for three separate actors on lavalier mics and a boom mic. It would also have solid advantages for recording a live band from a board; you could record a stereo band mix, with two separate tracks for vocals.

The Marantz PMD660 is the unit best suited for news-gathering and interviews. Its small, fairly lightweight size; strong build; and built-in mics make it the choice for grab-and-go situations.

To my ears, the best mic preamp was a tie between the Fostex FR-2 and Sound Devices 722. Both preamps are whisper-quiet, clean, and detailed, with headroom to burn and the ability to record materials with a wide dynamic range. I'd feel comfortable using either unit to record anything from crickets to a rock concert.

The FR-2 and 722 are also tied in the contest for the most suitable for professional audio field production. If money were no object and I were primarily focused on field recording, I would favor the 722 because of its miniscule size and excellent battery system. If I were recording production audio, I would go for the FR-2, whose professional, no-nonsense knob and switch-based interface; ability to read and write SMPTE; external speaker; and sturdy, blocklike design make it a winner.

Just before this article went to press, three new tapeless field recorders were announced. For details, please see the M-Audio MicroTrack 24/96 and the Sony Hi-MD Recorders descriptions in this issue's What's New section.

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Nick Peck is a sound designer, jazz organist, composer/engineer, and interactive-audio consultant living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Special thanks to Al Nelson, Mac Smith, Tim Nielsen, David Hughes, Matt Gallagher, Agnes and Julian Peck, and all the intrepid surveyors (you know who you are) for their help in creating this article.

Contact Information

Edirol
www.edirol.com

Fostex
www.fostexdvd.net

HHB
www.hhbusa.com

Marantz
www.d-mpro.com

Sound Devices
www.sounddevices.com

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Click here to view listener comments.

Click here to view a table of recorder specifications.

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SIDEBAR
HHB MDP 500 MINIDISC RECORDER
No self-respecting article on field recorders would be complete without at least a nod to the venerable MiniDisc. Tiny, lightweight, and inexpensive, the MiniDisc is based on magneto-optical technology. It is capable of recording as much as 80 minutes of stereo, 20-bit, 44.1 kHz audio. The MiniDisc's primary disadvantage is the use of a lossy compression codec called ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding). ATRAC is similar to other audio compression algorithms such as MP3 in that it takes advantage of the psychoacoustic phenomena of perceptual masking to remove data that the listener is less likely to notice. Although any audio compression format is a compromise relative to linear audio, MiniDisc sounds pretty good and has been popular for years.

HHB's MDP500 ($1,712) professional MiniDisc recorder is a serious piece of equipment, designed for field and concert recording (see Fig. A). The MDP500 is loaded with pro features and is ruggedly built to last. Handy features include balanced mic/line inputs on XLR jacks with phantom power, a mono internal microphone, a monitor speaker, and optional limiting. Line outputs are stereo unbalanced RCA jacks, and S/PDIF in and out are available on either coaxial or optical ports. The MDP500's USB connection will stream audio in real time into your computer, though you can't access files on the unit as you can with the linear recorders in this article. Track editing in the box, a lockable record-level setting, a six-second prerecord buffer, an NiMH rechargeable battery pack, and user-configurable recording presets round out a comprehensive feature set.

I recorded a band rehearsal with the MDP500 and was more than satisfied with the results in terms of sound quality and ease of use. MiniDiscs are so cheap (around $1.50 each) and so small that they are an excellent medium for recording rehearsals and gigs. Their random-access nature makes it fast and easy to separate the wheat from the chaff, and 80 minutes of recording time is just right for an evening's rehearsal or a set at a club. The MiniDisc is particularly useful if you are on the road and don't have time to offload material from a CompactFlash card in between shows.