Subject: Re: digital recording media From: "Steven M. Boker" <sboker(at)CALLIOPE.PSYCH.ND.EDU> Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 09:55:16 -0500At 1:10 pm -0600 11/1/99, Sheila Williams wrote: >Dear list, > >I would be most grateful for advice from anyone with experience of using >portable digital recording equipment? > >There seem to be two choices available now, Digital Audio Tape or Minidisc. > I agree that minidisc is not a good match due to compression. Even if you don't think you are going to process the signals as part of the current research project, you or someone in the future might want to do signal analysis on the streams; especially if you find an interesting psychological phenomenon in your experiment. I use a TASCAM DA-P1 DAT recorder. This is a nice semi-pro level machine that is small, portable, can be battery operated, and can accept input from low impedence microphones. I generally use cardiod pattern lavaliere microphones (Audio Technica makes a nice one) which have the desirable characteristic of unobtrusively isolating the speaker from the environment. If your people need to move around, you can use a wireless mic adapter. NADY is one company to look at. This will allow you to attach the lavaliere to a small device the size of a pager and the person will be free to walk around. When a lavalier cannot be attached to the individual, I use a cardiod condenser mic such as the one made by Earthworks. I really like the Earthworks mics because they are very "flat", that is they don't attempt to color the sound in order to make it sound more "musical" or "intelligible". Coloration is a bad quality if what you want is exactly what was in the room. Mic placement is critical in this case if you want to attempt to isolate a speaker as much as possible. This solution does not work _nearly_ as well as the lavaliere for speaker isolation, although it produces a much better recording of what is available for the listener to hear. Good luck! Steve --- Steven M. Boker 219-631-4941 (voice) sboker(at)nd.edu 219-631-8883 (fax) http://www.nd.edu/~sboker/ 219-257-2956 (home) Dept. of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 from the environment. Email to AUDITORY should now be sent to AUDITORY(at)lists.mcgill.ca LISTSERV commands should be sent to listserv(at)lists.mcgill.ca Information is available on the WEB at http://www.mcgill.ca/cc/listserv