Tascam Recorder (1 Viewer)

[Fred_Eric]

Hello everyone, I'm new here and I'm from the Black Forest in Germany.

Since I would like to record bird calls in the field (currently still for later determination, maybe later for recordings overnight), I need your opinion. I chose the Tascam DR-05x and the Tascam DR-22WL for this.Does the DR-22-WL have significant advantages over the DR-05x? Which do you think is the better one for my project. Maybe there is someone who uses these devices? Or recommend something similar! I look forward to your opinions and say thank you.

Kind regards
Frederic

 

[iveljay]

Just so you don't feel we are ignoring you I can give a brief opinion. I have owned a DR-05 in the past, but not a DR-22.

From my perspective the first obvious difference is that the DR-22 is obviously optimised for music recording:

If you notice the microphones turn inward (x-y configuration) as opposed to the DR-05 with them pointing outwards (a-b configuration), this gives someone recording a group of performers an optimised stereo image. For your probable intended use this will make no difference at all.

The control dial on the top is clearly designed for musician use, but sometimes these things can be useful for other uses, but without further investigation I am not able to comment. I suspect that its will have no potential for you than other than being accidentally turned, but someone who has used this may wish to comment.

Moving on:

The rotary input level control should be a nice feature, much nicer than that of the DR-05 press button approach hopefully.

The Wi-Fi feature clearly has potential, especially if you are intending to leave the recorder close to a favoured perching spot for a bird of interest while you control it from a portable hide. Again I havn't tried it so I cannot comment how useful this will prove in practice.

The DR-05 has a better battery life than the DR-22, important if you are leaving it running for long periods.
22.5 hrs compared to 9hrs for WAV 96.5 Khz, 24 bit recordings as an example.

Otherwise the connector for external microphones and other aspects of the recorder look very similar between the two models.

Both appear to have some sort of pre-rec feature that allows the recorder to record a sound occurring slightly before you actually press the record button, this can be useful.

I havn't compared the menus on the two machines, but suspect they will only differ in minor ways.

From my perspective, the two recorders retail at vaguely similar prices, with the 22 costing more to cover its added features, some of which are not relevant to your likely usage. The Wi-Fi may be of use to you.

Summarising, unless you want the WiFi of the DR-22, or the lower battery consumption of the DR-05, there is little practical difference between the recorders for your probable usage.

Reiterating, this is just my personal opinion, based on a cursory look at their specifications, an actual DR-22 user may be able to provide a more informed view. I have simply given a very rough comparison between the two and not advised you whether either is more or less suitable for your likely usage than some other recorder.

The probable reason for the shortage of replies is probably that other members of the birding community also have little experience in the DR-22 and there is an increasing tendency for folks to purchase recorders with the larger XLR microphone connectors rather than the 3.5 mm connector on this, however you can make both work for you.

Good luck with your future endeavours.

 

[Jason Bugay Reyes]

Just so you don't feel we are ignoring you I can give a brief opinion. I have owned a DR-05 in the past, but not a DR-22.

From my perspective the first obvious difference is that the DR-22 is obviously optimised for music recording:

If you notice the microphones turn inward (x-y configuration) as opposed to the DR-05 with them pointing outwards (a-b configuration), this gives someone recording a group of performers an optimised stereo image. For your probable intended use this will make no difference at all.

The control dial on the top is clearly designed for musician use, but sometimes these things can be useful for other uses, but without further investigation I am not able to comment. I suspect that its will have no potential for you than other than being accidentally turned, but someone who has used this may wish to comment.

Moving on:

The rotary input level control should be a nice feature, much nicer than that of the DR-05 press button approach hopefully.

The Wi-Fi feature clearly has potential, especially if you are intending to leave the recorder close to a favoured perching spot for a bird of interest while you control it from a portable hide. Again I havn't tried it so I cannot comment how useful this will prove in practice.

The DR-05 has a better battery life than the DR-22, important if you are leaving it running for long periods.
22.5 hrs compared to 9hrs for WAV 96.5 Khz, 24 bit recordings as an example.

Otherwise the connector for external microphones and other aspects of the recorder look very similar between the two models.

Both appear to have some sort of pre-rec feature that allows the recorder to record a sound occurring slightly before you actually press the record button, this can be useful.

I havn't compared the menus on the two machines, but suspect they will only differ in minor ways.

From my perspective, the two recorders retail at vaguely similar prices, with the 22 costing more to cover its added features, some of which are not relevant to your likely usage. The Wi-Fi may be of use to you.

Summarising, unless you want the WiFi of the DR-22, or the lower battery consumption of the DR-05, there is little practical difference between the recorders for your probable usage.

Reiterating, this is just my personal opinion, based on a cursory look at their specifications, an actual DR-22 user may be able to provide a more informed view. I have simply given a very rough comparison between the two and not advised you whether either is more or less suitable for your likely usage than some other recorder.

The probable reason for the shortage of replies is probably that other members of the birding community also have little experience in the DR-22 and there is an increasing tendency for folks to purchase recorders with the larger XLR microphone connectors rather than the 3.5 mm connector on this, however you can make both work for you.

Good luck with your future endeavours.

May I know, for bird recording, 24 bit and 96.5 khz is better or at 48 khz? This is with Sennheiser ME66/K6 mic.

 

[Vollmeise]

@horukuru,

even if you should still be able to hear 20 kHz with your hearing, in most cases a sampling rate of 24 kHz is sufficient because there are hardly any birds that call higher than 12 kHz.

However, since most audio applications can play back recordings in 24 bit / 48 kHz, I recommend exactly these values for your recorder.

 

[Jason Bugay Reyes]

@horukuru,

even if you should still be able to hear 20 kHz with your hearing, in most cases a sampling rate of 24 kHz is sufficient because there are hardly any birds that call higher than 12 kHz.

However, since most audio applications can play back recordings in 24 bit / 48 kHz, I recommend exactly these values for your recorder.

Aha thanks a lot for the tips!

 

[Jon.Bryant]

Horukuru,

As per my post on the Zoom F3, the bit depth is all to do with the difference between the loudest and quietest sound in the recording. If you have a good signal to noise ratio (i.e. and loud bird vocalising close to you) and you adjust gain towards the top of the meters (without going over), then 16 bit should be fine. I actually have a Wildlife Acoustics SM Mini, which with two mics fitted, at high sampling rates drops at about 14 bit and still sounds OK. CD quality is actually only 44.1KHz at 16bit.

There has been much debate about HD streaming music, and whether humans can detect any difference in higher bit and sample rates. I saw a post on the internet where someone took a 24 bit music file, converted it to 16 bit, then played the two track 180 degrees out of phase, so that they cancelled each other out. The result sounded like silence, with just a small amount of noise visible if you really magnified the wave diagram. I suppose this makes sense, as the silent bits in a 16bit CD sound to all intent and purpose like silence!

As per the other post, I think 24 bit gives a more headroom to increase levels in post production, in the case where the gain setting was a bit low, but you still had a good signal to noise ratio at the mic.

Sample rates are more of a puzzle to me. Basically say you have a 10KHz sound, then the sound is oscillating 10,000 a second. If you sampled the wave at the same rate, you would always be sampling the same part of the wave (i.e. the crest or the trough etc.). From this sample information it would be impossible to recreate the wave signal. As Vollmeisse states, as a minimum you need to sample the wave at twice the frequency of the sound. Some people will say that you are still only sampling an analogue wave digitally at two points, so the sound is not as good at the original analogue signal. Others will say that the sound wave that is created from the digital sampling at twice the sound frequency is indistinguishable from the original. I don't have the expertise to comment, but what is for sure is that even with 48KHz sampling rates, the argument of limited sampling would only apply to high frequency sounds - a wave of a bird calling at 4Khz would still be sampled at 12 points along the wave!

After making an overlong response, to be honest, there isn't much of a downside to recording at the highest bit and sample rates available on your recorder. I generally record at 24 bit 96Khz, for no better reason than my recorder can do it and 192Khz seems OTT - I have however recently ventured into 32bit float, which is a different issue altogether (see Zoom F3 post). Basically the only downside of high sample rates and bit rates is perhaps file size and battery life. It is for this reason that passive recorders for long term deployment for days or weeks, normally record in 16bit 48kHz. But for normal recording work, you probably won't see a massive difference in battery life, and memory should not be a problem - a 32GB card should give you over 15 hours of stereo recording at 24 bit 96Khz - you may want to reduce the sample rate if you are away on a trip, and want to make your cards last longer - halving the sample rate will halve the file size. In you make the original recording at a high sample and bit rate, in software you can generally save a version at a lower bit rate or sample size, so can easily save to CD quality once you have completed any edits.

Regards

Jon Bryant

 

[Jason Bugay Reyes]

Horukuru,

As per my post on the Zoom F3, the bit depth is all to do with the difference between the loudest and quietest sound in the recording. If you have a good signal to noise ratio (i.e. and loud bird vocalising close to you) and you adjust gain towards the top of the meters (without going over), then 16 bit should be fine. I actually have a Wildlife Acoustics SM Mini, which with two mics fitted, at high sampling rates drops at about 14 bit and still sounds OK. CD quality is actually only 44.1KHz at 16bit.

There has been much debate about HD streaming music, and whether humans can detect any difference in higher bit and sample rates. I saw a post on the internet where someone took a 24 bit music file, converted it to 16 bit, then played the two track 180 degrees out of phase, so that they cancelled each other out. The result sounded like silence, with just a small amount of noise visible if you really magnified the wave diagram. I suppose this makes sense, as the silent bits in a 16bit CD sound to all intent and purpose like silence!

As per the other post, I think 24 bit gives a more headroom to increase levels in post production, in the case where the gain setting was a bit low, but you still had a good signal to noise ratio at the mic.

Sample rates are more of a puzzle to me. Basically say you have a 10KHz sound, then the sound is oscillating 10,000 a second. If you sampled the wave at the same rate, you would always be sampling the same part of the wave (i.e. the crest or the trough etc.). From this sample information it would be impossible to recreate the wave signal. As Vollmeisse states, as a minimum you need to sample the wave at twice the frequency of the sound. Some people will say that you are still only sampling an analogue wave digitally at two points, so the sound is not as good at the original analogue signal. Others will say that the sound wave that is created from the digital sampling at twice the sound frequency is indistinguishable from the original. I don't have the expertise to comment, but what is for sure is that even with 48KHz sampling rates, the argument of limited sampling would only apply to high frequency sounds - a wave of a bird calling at 4Khz would still be sampled at 12 points along the wave!

After making an overlong response, to be honest, there isn't much of a downside to recording at the highest bit and sample rates available on your recorder. I generally record at 24 bit 96Khz, for no better reason than my recorder can do it and 192Khz seems OTT - I have however recently ventured into 32bit float, which is a different issue altogether (see Zoom F3 post). Basically the only downside of high sample rates and bit rates is perhaps file size and battery life. It is for this reason that passive recorders for long term deployment for days or weeks, normally record in 16bit 48kHz. But for normal recording work, you probably won't see a massive difference in battery life, and memory should not be a problem - a 32GB card should give you over 15 hours of stereo recording at 24 bit 96Khz - you may want to reduce the sample rate if you are away on a trip, and want to make your cards last longer - halving the sample rate will halve the file size. In you make the original recording at a high sample and bit rate, in software you can generally save a version at a lower bit rate or sample size, so can easily save to CD quality once you have completed any edits.

Regards

Jon Bryant

Thanks a lot Jon for the detailed explanation