Danielvilliers
Veteran
Do anyone has any feedback on the Olympus Ls-100. I was first going to buy a Sound devices Mixpre D but it is no more possible from BH outside of the USA. As I need a way to record for a project, I did some research and wanted something value for money, in case someday I might by forwarded mail or a trip to Asia buy a better mixer, more so that in the mean time I got a good deal on an open box Rode Ntg 3.
I wanted to discuss this audio recorder because I did not see much info on it. I find it strange because during my research for an external audio recorder this looks like the best small/affordable handheld recorder from all the reviews I have seen. At $ 400 it is about the same price that many bought the zoom h4n, and looking at the video bellow it is a vastly superior recorder in terms of build, ergonomic and most importantly sound quality.
The only advantage of the zoom apart from the price now which is more like $ 270, is that it can record 4 track from its 2 xlr and 2 internal mics. But as a filmmaker, I will always choose to have two quality preamps than some crappy zoom ones because most of the time we will use only one microphone. From everything I saw and heard the zoom XLR preamps are very noisy, unfortunately it is those thing/brand/model that gained traction from the early days of hdslr filming that would never go away.
Furthermore if you look at http://www.avisoft.com/recordertests.htm test, the Ls-100 is at the top part of the list, the best handheld recorder with XLR and better than the Rolland R-26 which is about $ 100 more. The internal microphone seems to be very good quality also. From what I read it had problem of latency for the headphone jack, but Olympus has remedied to that with a firmware update.
Test of the Olympus Ls-100 compared to the zoom h4
I wanted to discuss this audio recorder because I did not see much info on it. I find it strange because during my research for an external audio recorder this looks like the best small/affordable handheld recorder from all the reviews I have seen. At $ 400 it is about the same price that many bought the zoom h4n, and looking at the video bellow it is a vastly superior recorder in terms of build, ergonomic and most importantly sound quality.
The only advantage of the zoom apart from the price now which is more like $ 270, is that it can record 4 track from its 2 xlr and 2 internal mics. But as a filmmaker, I will always choose to have two quality preamps than some crappy zoom ones because most of the time we will use only one microphone. From everything I saw and heard the zoom XLR preamps are very noisy, unfortunately it is those thing/brand/model that gained traction from the early days of hdslr filming that would never go away.
Furthermore if you look at http://www.avisoft.com/recordertests.htm test, the Ls-100 is at the top part of the list, the best handheld recorder with XLR and better than the Rolland R-26 which is about $ 100 more. The internal microphone seems to be very good quality also. From what I read it had problem of latency for the headphone jack, but Olympus has remedied to that with a firmware update.
Test of the Olympus Ls-100 compared to the zoom h4