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[Barendhoff]

TIGSource Audio fellows, I need your advice! I'm setting up a field recording kit, but as I'm rather new to the subject, I find it hard to make a sound judgment about what gear to gather.

What I want to be able to do
I need a versatile set of equipment suited for recording in various environments, such as:
- Construction sites;
- Forests;
- Mountain areas;
- Urban areas;
- The insides of machines.

Ideally, I would have the tools to make both general ambience recordings as well as close-up recordings of outdoor objects. For example, I'd like to capture the ambient sounds of the construction site but also make detailed recordings of, say, machines operating there. In forests, I'd want to do the same: capture both ambient sounds and make close-up recordings of running creeks. So the microphones would need to be diverse in both recording direction and max. SPL.

Equipment I've set my eyes on
- Tascam DR680 MKII field recorder;
- Shure SM57 to capture sudden sounds with a high SPL;
- Røde NTG2 as a shotgun mic;
- DPA 4061 F34 to record sounds in hard to reach spaces;
- Røde NT4 to record general ambient sounds.

Additionally, I've yet to look into boompoles and blimps. I'm hoping to stay within the bounds of my €2k budget, although that seems increasingly unlikely.

Any thoughts?

[TopherPirkl]

Well, for my money the best feature set for the money is a Sony PCM-m10. It's a small form factor recorder with stereo onboard mics.

Pros:
-It fits in your pocket. Seriously, this is one of it's biggest advantages. The best tool is always the one you have on hand, and I've grabbed a lot of audio I never expected to catch purely because I tend to carry it on me at all times. Also I use it all the time for "stealth" recording because it looks like a phone or mp3 player from a distance.
-The onboard mics blow just about any other recorder out of the water, it's significantly better than the H4n/DR-40, and I've heard it even outpaces the H6 mics in some respects.
-The battery life is OUTRAGEOUS. I got it months ago and I think I've changed batteries once, and that's with near-daily usage.
-It works great for both ambient recordings (the stereo field is nice and wide) and more point-source recording (Either you can record in mono, which I think is the case, or just record in stereo and ditch one channel later)
-It has the fantastic feature of being able to roll over recording between internal memory and a microSD card, so if you have the recording destination set to the internal memory and run out (which can and will happen, with long ambience records), it'll automatically continue recording on the SD card

Cons:
-It's a little more complicated to use external microphones. It does have a line-in, but it's a 3.5mm jack. XLR-3.5mm adapters exist, but even then I couldn't say whether the recorder can deliver enough gain to effectively use some dynamic mics. I personally have a Sound Devices MixPre that I use when I want to record external mics.

So I guess whether it's a good fit comes down to how badly you want external mics. I can tell you that it definitely outpaces the SM57 in recording quality, and definitely gives the NTG2 a run for its money. I haven't used the NT4 in forever, but it's big, bulky, and heavy. I strongly strongly recommend that you start small and build from there, rather than piecing together a whole huge kit, especially if you're new to this. The lighter weight your kit is, and the quicker and easier it is to pick up and go, the better. Also be warned that with any of the mics you've listed, you absolutely need to invest in wind protection or they'll be worthless outdoors, so consider that cost when you're pricing things out.

Some thoughts specifically about the kit you mentioned:

Tascam DR680: This is a solid recorder, a friend of mine uses it for car recordings. Be warned that it's a battery hog, and it runs on 6 or 8 AAs, so you need to account for that and have a lot of batteries on hand. Personally I feel unless you get deep into car or gun recording, anything more than two channels is huge overkill. Some of the best recordists in the world regularly only use a two-channel recorder.

Shure SM57: While a great, resilient mic, it's tubby and has a very slow slew rate, so it won't give you very detailed recordings. Just about any pro-level recorder with an onboard stereo pair would be better than an SM57. It's great on guitar amps, high-SPL sources, and any potentially dangerous sources, but don't rely on it for fantastic recordings.

Rode NTG2: I haven't used the 2 specifically, but I do have the NTG3 and its my main mic for SFX recording. Be warned that if you want to use it in the field, you absolutely must invest in a shock mount and wind protection, and I really couldn't recommend anything less than a blimp + furry with a shockmount, like a Rode or Rycote kit.

DPA 4061: Fantastic mic, extremely fragile. If you're totally new to mics and recording, I'd be hesitant to recommend this mic. It sounds great, but if you're not careful with it you'd be out a lot of money very quickly. A friend, without thinking, used it to record water boiling and fried it with the steam, even with the mic at a reasonable distance.

Rode NT4: Like I said before, big, heavy, probably not a huge advantage over a recorder with an onboard pair of mics. EDIT: I asked around, and had a few people laud this mic as an all-in-one stereo option, so I think the quality is better than I remember. That being said, the three people who said it was great also said they sold it off and bought a stereo pair of something else instead.


Other things: I've had a boompole for a long time and never used it. YMMV but they aren't totally necessary.
Also just sort of gathering all these words into a TL;DR: Tons of very great sound designers get bitten by the desire to do tons of field recording, and unfortunately find out very quickly it's not something they enjoy doing. It's labor intensive, and unless you're meticulous about your organization and metadata, you'll end up with hours upon hours of recordings that you never use. I say that not to warn you away from field recording, but instead to encourage you to ease your way in. Buy the bare minimum (in my mind, the M10 is more than the minimum, but plenty to get started with in a small package) and then if you love it, save up and make the jump straight to the major pro gear: Sound Devices 702/744/788, Sennheiser or Schoeps high-end mics. Buying mid-range gear for field recording tends to be a mistake, as either it's an overinvestment for how deep you want to go, or an underinvestment for once you have cut your teeth and want to devote a lot of time to field recording.

And if you want small mics that you can put in strange places, look for stuff like Line Audio and Naiant, they aren't quite as small as the DPA you're looking at, but they get close, and are WAAAY cheaper.

[Pete301]

Hey, good to see that you want to get into field recording, I share the same view as Topher in that you should ease into it first. Don't go all out before trying your hand with a portable recorder (such as the PCM m10), you can still get fantastic results with onboard mics.

I don't think that you will need a boompole unless you are going to be recording video and need to stay out of shot, otherwise you can just get nice and up close to whatever you want to record.

I think Topher has covered pretty much most things...

SM57 - Only really needed if you know it's going to be a bloody loud/dangerous source. I don't think I'd take one on a field recording trip.

DPA 4061 - I've never used one! But I know the brand and they do great mics.

NT4 - Good solid mic, used it a lot and it is pretty much the go to stereo mic of the industry afaik.

One thing I need to mention is to shy away from getting the NTG2 for the exact reason that it seems like it is an ideal field recordist's mic - the fact it can use its own battery for phantom power. I bought one along with a Tascam DR-40 originally and thought I could save some battery usage by having a mic that powers itself, however it turns out that because it has extra circuitry to house the battery it increases the output impedance by a factor of 5 over the NTG1 (NTG1 - 50 Ohms to NTG2 - 250 Ohms) but they use exactly the same capsule. This ordinarily isn't a problem if you are in a studio environment and have kick-ass pre-amps (Neve 1073s or something) that have ~10k Ohms input impedance. BUT you are out in the open with a portable recording kit, the DR-680MKII has an input impedance of 2.4k Ohms which causes an impedance ratio >1:10 (before taking into account the cable) which means you will get voltage attenuation on your signal when recording compared with trying to record the same signal with a lower impedance mic and achieving <1:10. So you will probably end up increasing the gain on the recorder and relying heavily on the SNR of the preamps to not screw you over - in my case the DR-40 was too noisy when the gain is turned up a lot.

I ended up sending my NTG2 back and swapping for the NTG1 after finding out how quiet the signal was when recording, fortunately I found the reason was the impedance and did not make the same mistake again . I now have the NTG1 and I get plenty of use out of it and it is a really nice mic to work with, just be sure to get a wind protector/blimp to use with it.

Basically what I'm saying is if you're thinking of getting the NTG2 just get the NTG1 instead and take extra batteries for the recorder. You'll get a cleaner signal in the end.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan03/articles/impedanceworkshop.asp - TL:DR go to the voltage matching heading!

Last thing to mention is make sure you get decent cables, otherwise the whole exercise could be ruined by a noisy cable.

[Barendhoff]

@TopherPirkl
Dear Topher, thanks a lot! I didn't dare hope for such an extensive answer, and should've added that I'm currently using a Zoom Q3HD, which is about as small as the Sony PCM-m10. You're completely right about the utility of small recording equipment: we won't be carrying a full set of recording gear each time we leave home, but a tiny recorder isn't much of an encumbrance!

Do you happen to know how the PCM-m10 holds up against the Zoom Q3HD in terms of audio quality? From what I hear, it's pretty good, but I can't seem to find a detailed comparison. The Zoom has been a great friend for the past few years, but I fear wear and tear are slowly deteriorating the recording quality, plus I've always found it a little weak on the lows. In any case, the PCM-10's ability to record in mono is an awesome feature!

I'm a little wary of attaching external microphones to the Q3HD, as it's got but one 3.5mm line-in slot. Constantly switching microphones because there's just one input sounds rather inconvenient when trying to record a single sound with multiple inputs. Do you use the Sound Devices MixPre when you're going out to record, or is that a device you keep in your studio? Looks like a studio device to me, but I might be wrong.

For many applications, I'm using the handy recorder. I realize now that I should've been clear about that right at the start. The kit I mean to assemble will be used for planned and prepared outdoor recording expeditions rather than on-the-fly recordings. Outdoors, I'll need both ambient and point-source recordings, so if the PCM-m10 can handle both (as you mention), it's definitely worth checking out.

As for your per-item considerations:
- Tascam DR680: good point about the abundance of inputs. I can imagine using two, maybe three inputs at a time, but I'm nowhere near the point of having to do detailed car or gun recordings. Then again, it's way cheaper than the two-input Sound Devices 702, so it feels like I might as well go for the DR680, even though it has more inputs than I probably need. Or do you know of any other portable recording interfaces with XLR inputs and phantom power?
- Shure SM57: point taken. I only mean to use it to record sounds from high-SPL or dangerous sources, so I'm not having the highest expectations about sound quality. I'm not sure about what slew rate means for a microphone though; does a slow slew rate mean that a recording can be irregular when it comes to volume, sample rate and what not?
- Rode NTG2/3: roger that!
- DPA 4061: sounds like I'd better start off with sharpening my recording techniques before accidentally destroying this one. Thanks for the heads up! Also good to know there are cheaper alternatives.
- Rode NT4: interesting to hear that all the people you asked said they sold it. I wonder why! Could it be that this is the kind of microphone that's in the medium level? Too expensive for starters, not good enough for high-end professionals?

I greatly appreciate your practical advice and warnings about not just technical aspects but also the job itself and the appropriate investments. As of yet, I'll admit that my main focus is on music. Still, I've come to increasingly enjoy sound design and would love to gain more experience with other devices than just the portable Zoom device.

@Pete301
Hi Pete! Interesting point about the boompoles. Since I've little to do with video, I hadn't considered that boompoles' primary use might be just to stay out of sight, which I suppose they are originally used for. Rather, I figured they are useful for getting your mic to open but hard-to-reach locations, such as the middle of a running stream. And hey, I'm a short guy! Gotta reach that bird's nest up in the tree somehow.

Gah, impedance! I hadn't even considered that. Good to know about the fatal flaw in combining the NTG2 with the DR680. I'd be awfully disappointed if I'd find out about this after purchasing the tools! I'll make sure to check impedance on devices from now on, especially when it comes to outdoor recording. Will dive into the Sound on Sound workshop asap!


Both of you, thank you so much! This helps a lot in preparing the right decision.