Field Recorder for also recording podcasts

Hey guys, slightly off topic, but we've been discussing different recorders in this thread so maybe you can offer some advice. For my last videography project, a community theater performance with actors not wearing mics in a tiny room not disireable for recording, I used an xlr microphone and recorded in camera with an xlr to 1/8 inch cable. The results were mixed, as I expected (the unbalanced cable picked up a ton of interference including radio and cell phones. Since then my budget has increased slightly, and I want to steer clear of the xlr->1/8th inch route. My options are to buy an adapter such as juicedlink, beachtek etc. or get a portable recorder (which I am leaning towards). I was thinking since I will eventually get a better camera with xlr input (in place of my canon hv20 which only has 1/8inch) the future proof choice would be to try dual system recording.

I've been looking into the oade brothers site since at the moment I have $600 to spend - perhaps the modded Fostex LE or Marantz pmd660?

Any advice for this transition period where I want better quality over the hv20's miserable preamps, but don't want to worry about the sync drifting as has been mentioned with the zoom h4. Consider that I would be again recording an hour or so nonstop and would have to sync in post.

Any other combination of ideas i'm not thinking of?
 
dan_aka_jack said:
48V phantom power was definitely on and I was definitely recording from the 416, not from the internal mics. And the 416 was very close to my mouth when I was doing tests and I found that the gain setting had to be at "high" (I wasn't talking very loudly; I was trying to talk as loudly as someone might talk during an interview in a quiet location). I was using the latest firmware.
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When you say the gain was turned to 'high', I assume you mean the switch on the side of the H4, right?

Before turning that up, did you adjust the recording levels via the internal menus? Those need to be cranked up. Also, did you have the compressor/limiter turned on? Or the auto gain control? Both are settings in the menus.

I've had no problems at all using the H4 with external mics -- both with and without phantom power -- even recording people several feet away from the mic. I suppose it's possible you had a defective H4.
 
One thing that always threw me in the early uses of my H4 was the menu setting for either the internal mics or external. For some reason, every time I saw "IN1&2", I thought it said "INT1&2", and thought that was the setting for using the internal mics. It took me a few botched attempts to realize my error.

Not that I expect anybody else is as stupid as I was.... :)
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
When you say the gain was turned to 'high', I assume you mean the switch on the side of the H4, right?
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yup

chapelgrovefilms said:
Before turning that up, did you adjust the recording levels via the internal menus? Those need to be cranked up. Also, did you have the compressor/limiter turned on? Or the auto gain control? Both are settings in the menus.
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I'm 99% sure I did turn the recording levels up (via the internal menus) before setting the gain to "high". I must admit that I don't remember if the compressor/limiter was turned on but I suspect I had it turned off (I did the test a little while ago. It's fairly safe to assume that, once I noticed the amount of noise I was recording, that I set about turning off everything in the signal chain that wasn't absolutely required). And yes, I think I had gain set to manual.

chapelgrovefilms said:
I've had no problems at all using the H4 with external mics -- both with and without phantom power -- even recording people several feet away from the mic. I suppose it's possible you had a defective H4.
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Just to be clear: I didn't have a *problem* as such. The voice recording was clear and the "signal" (i.e. the voice) was much louder than the noise. However, there was still too much noise for my liking. Are you saying that you have virtually noiseless recordings when using the H4's preamps?

And yes, I have a 48v 416 (well, actually, it's a T12 416 but it has a 48v-to-12v adapter. And, before anyone asks, yes I was using the adapter and yes the H4 was set to 48v!)

Maybe I should take the H4 for another spin.
 
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dan_aka_jack said:
Just to be clear: I didn't have a *problem* as such. The voice recording was clear and the "signal" (i.e. the voice) was much louder than the noise. However, there was still too much noise for my liking. Are you saying that you have virtually noiseless recordings when using the H4's preamps?

And yes, I have a 48v 416 (well, actually, it's a T12 416 but it has a 48v-to-12v adapter. And, before anyone asks, yes I was using the adapter and yes the H4 was set to 48v!)

Maybe I should take the H4 for another spin.
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Oh, if the gain is set to 'HIGH', you'll absolutely get plenty of noise. My understanding of the problem was that you HAD to set the gain to 'high' in order to get any kind of decent audio level from your mic. You shouldn't have had to do that at all, so I've been trying to narrow down why that might have been the case.

It sounds like you did everything right, assuming that you did set the input levels correctly in the menus. So my best guess is either there was a problem with that particular H4, or maybe an issue with the cable. (I'm not familiar with the whole "T12 416" issue, so I'll leave that to folks who are.)
 
OK. It looks like I might owe the H4 an apology! I think I've finally figured out why I was getting so much electrical noise when using an H4 connected to my 416T.

My 416 requires 12 volt "T-power". To convert from the 48v phantom delivered by the H4 to 12v T-power, I used an in-line converter. One of the big problems with "T-power" is that the 12v supply is applied across the hot and cold signal wires. Hence if there is any noise in the power supply then this noise will make its way into the audio signal (as long as the noise is of a higher frequency than the high-pass cut off).

Phantom power doesn't suffer from this problem. It's much easier for the system to reject power supply noise in a phantom power setup.

I suspect that most modern recorders which supply 48v phantom don't bother providing a totally clean 48v phantom supply. This usually isn't a problem when using 48v phantom mics. But if you use a 48v-to-12v-T-Power converter then the converter takes the noisy phantom supply and applies it across the signal wires.

I've noticed that I record a high level of electrical noise when I use my 48v-to-12v-Tpower converter with my Korg D888 or my Edirol R-44 or my Mum's H4. The noise often coincides with something happening on the recorder. E.g. the noise I record on my Korg D888 hard-disk recorder coincides with the rhythmic hard disk writes; the noise on the R-44 coincides with the flashing of the record light.

I must stress that I don't think that any of my kit is "broken" as such. The recorders all record beautifully when used with "normal" 48v phantom mics. And the 48v-to-12v-Tpower converter works fine when used with a quiet power supply. The problem comes when I use my 48v-to-12v-Tpower converter in conjunction with one of my recorders.

There's more conversation about converting from 48v-to-12v-Tpower (including a link to schematics) here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=85686

Any thoughts?
 
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