Portable surround recording equipment?

[tsvisser]

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I actually own one of these... Zoom H2. I like it even better than the H4. Built in surround recording and there are plugin tools available to easily convert it to 5.1 in post. With a little hotshoe adapter, could be mounted directly to a camera, just remember wind protection....

[James0b57]

Originally Posted by tsvisser

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I actually own one of these... Zoom H2. I like it even better than the H4. Built in surround recording and there are plugin tools available to easily convert it to 5.1 in post. With a little hotshoe adapter, could be mounted directly to a camera, just remember wind protection....

That sounds really good. I wasn't aware that anyone made single unit surround sound recorders. That is way better than two DR-7's for surround sound applications.

I second the H2
H2 Handy Recorder

[James0b57]

Zoom has added an interesting product. looks to be perfect for location surround sound on a budget.

Samson - Zoom - R16

It runs on batteries for remote recording. can record eight tracks. The SD788t won't have to fear, but at least the little guys have an option now.

[ghellquist]

Again, it is worth mentioning that recording four channels on two separate stereo recorders is not necessarily as easy as it might sound. The reason is that they are recording at slightly different speeds due to variations in components. And not only that, the speeds are changing due to temperature and battery voltage and any amount of other factors.

The resulting effect is that you loose the ambient effect and instead get phasing effects or even hearable echos.

In most good computer audio software, say Samplitude, you can easily adjust for the fixed part of the speed difference. It takes careful alignment of some prominent sound in the beginning of the recording as a first step. Then use the "rubberband" tools to lenghten or shorten one of the recordings aligning on a prominent sound at the end of the recording.

Of course the tool is not called "rubberband" but it serves as an illustration if you have not seen it in use. The idea is that it can lengthen a sound without changing the pitch. There are variations using different algorithms. All of them create artifacts, changing the sound, but they might be good enough to not be an issue.

The varying part of the equation, that is the two recorders changing their speed over time might or might not be a problem. It can be sometimes solved good enough by chopping up the recording in shorter slices, and then "rubberbanding" each slice separately. It can quickly turn very tedious though.

Of course the good solution is to not have the problem. Either by going to a multi channel recorder or by synching the two recorders using wordclock. Alas, very few of the budget boxes supports wordclock.

// Gunnar

[James0b57]

Quote "...Of course the good solution is to not have the problem."

Agreed. But that never stopped Macguyver! lol.

(ps. trying to do surround with seperate recorders is very very tedious. I do not recomend it unless you have no other choice. )

[LenM]

Originally Posted by John Willett

OK - this will work - side-fire again, though.

No, TetraMic is not a side-fire mic. It can be used end-fire just as easily.

With an ambisonics mic like TetraMic, the orientation of the mic is selected in post-production.

Add an Edirol R-44 (or any good quality four-channel recorder), and you'll have a very fiine, portable, surround setup.


Len Moskowitz
Core Sound LLC
Core Sound