Hi!
My interest is in making Binaural feild recordings. I have had great success using in-ear mirophones and an old min-disc recorder.
It sounds quite stunning actually! However the mini-disc has its disadvantages (like being mechanically fragile, having to carry discs around, the fragility of the discs, difficulty getting recordings onto a computer, constantly waiting for it to write to disc/write a 'TOC', eats batteries).
So I am thinking about using my Cowon S9 portable media player ( which is amazing by-the-way) as a recorder. It is a 32gig Flash memory recorder and certainly plays audio back amazingly well.
I am intending to make a good mic preamp-amp from plans on the web (commercially sold ones cost a fortune) which should even improve the quality of the recordings as I keep hearing that mic preamp-amps are of paramount importance.
My only worry is that the maximum bit-rate on the S9 for recording is 256 KHZ, but it doesn't say in what format. I am assuming for the moment it is MP3. I have e-mailed Cowon for Clarity on this.
What I really need to know is; Will the S9 recording at 256KHZ sound as good, worse or better than my mini-disc recordings. I am not sure what kind of compression /recording format was used on portable mini-disc machines.
Can anyone help?
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Mini Disc is a dead format. You are much better served moving t
Mini Disc is a dead format. You are much better served moving to flash recording since it's just as portable and you eliminate all moving parts.
The best recorded sound is always done in uncompressed formats, either wav or aiff files. MP3 is a compressed format so whether it is utilized at 128k or 256k it is still less desirable. The most realistic current method is 1 bit DSD. The next best is 192k/24bit to wav or aiff files. Most of us however will record either straight to destination CD format of 44.1k/16 bit or 88.2k/24 bit. For a convenient portable device with built in XY microphones and expansion for two more microphones w/phantom power, look at the [="http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/H4N/"]Zoom H4n[/]="http://www.sweetwat…"]Zoom H4n[/]. For kicks you could look at the Korg DSD recorder, the [[url=http://="http://www.sweetwat…"]MR-1000[/]="http://www.sweetwat…"]MR-1000[/].