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Sound recording - novice (1 Viewer)

mblank

Well-known member
Hello,
I am going to record birds.
There are several affordable sound recorders.
I can choose between Olympus ls-P1, LS-P2, LS-12 or Tascam DR-22WL.
Which one is suitable for birds?

Regards,
Mariusz
 
Strictly speaking they should all be capable of recording birds.

What is a bit more important is what you mean by recording birds, if you have read previous threads you will see that this ranges from hanging your recorder out of your window to record the dawn chorus to trying to pick out an individual bird from the background noise some distance away.

As purchased it is likely that they will all satisfy the the first requirement and with additional equipment they should be able to do the latter. They will all suffer from a degree of wind noise so some kind of furry or sponge wind break device will come in useful.

The nearest recorder in my possession to any of them is an LS-14 which hasn't been used for recording birds, simply because I have better (from my personal point of view) and older recorders for the job.
The Tascam spec looks nice, simply because it has a rotary input volume control, however without trying it I cannot comment further, though if you read the reviews the WiFi feature drains the batteries extremely quickly.

I assume that the LS-P1/P2 are cut down versions of the LS-12/14 and have the advantage of portability, my personal view is that they might be a bit too small and fiddly for me as their width is 39.6 mm as opposed to 52.5 mm for the LS-12 and the Tascam, others may find this an advantage.

My advice is to read previous threads in this forum to get a feel for what people are doing and start by copying them where possible. The instruction booklets for all these recorders are downloadable from their manufacturer's sites and it wouldn't hurt to have aread to see how they work.

To reiterate, they are all capable of recording birds, however some may be easier to use than others and some may be marginally better at it. It is unlikely that there are many(any?) people who have actually compared them in the field so advice may be a little thin on the ground. I hope this helps a little.

J
 
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I haven't looked at the specs of those, but I would make sure it can take an external microphone in case you decide you want one (3.5mm jack is ok, XLR jacks are only found on more expensive recorders), that it can record in wav format (better for spectrogram analysis than mp3) and that you can disable automatic level control if it has it. The latter can make it frustrating to record quiet calls if there's something else making a lot of noise. But all those things depend on what you'll use it for, and may not be necessary.
 
The Tascam spec looks nice, simply because it has a rotary input volume control, however without trying it I cannot comment further, though if you read the reviews the WiFi feature drains the batteries extremely quickly.
I've got one recorder with a level dial, and one that uses the menu and buttons to change the level. But I've found in practice that I rarely change the level, so I'm wondering if the conventional wisdom that a dial is good is still true for digital recorders.
 
They all have 3.5mm stereo jack inputs.

I use my digital recorders for many things as well as bird recording, from recording live music, important telephone conversations, occasional meetings and once contemplated clean audio for my video recording. So I agree that my needs are somewhat broader and I use recorders that suit me.

I have recorders with both rotary and clickable controls and much prefer the silent analogue feel of rotaries (and on digital multitracks analogue controls are a must), but if you rarely use the control then there is no reason why it should influence what you buy at all.

The Tascam is a bit different as the WiFi feature may appeal to many people, however its apparent ability to eat battery power if you use it rather negates its usefulness in the field.

For starting out something simple is usually the best best and I would personally buy the LS-12 from the initial list as I prefer its bigger size and I assume bigger screen over the LS-P1.

On the other hand the LS-P1 has stripped out a lot of the music recording functionality of the LS-12 and may be far easier to use, it also has some kind of variable directionlity in a zoom mic feature that may be very useful for bird recording (this is not available on the LS-12).

The LS-P2 has more features than the LS-P1, but costs more and none of the extras is vital to bird recording.

All the recorders in your list take external memory so the differences of built in memory isn't a critical factor.

The Tascam is a bit different because of its WiFi, but in many ways it is an added complication from my point of view.

Its horses for courses, but at the end of the day they will all record birds.

N.B.I am a bit tempted to get an LS-P1 for personal use as it is small enough to take anywhere.
 
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