Recorder Shootout

[quantum]

This is a shootout between various recording devices, some portable, others less so.  Hopefully this may also help answer some of the various questions on recording gear we get on Pianostreet from time to time.  Perhaps it may pose new ones.  The gear used ranges from moderate prosumer, to budget, to downright frugal.  Some of the choices represent gear that someone just starting out recording themselves on piano might use.  One might choose to use a device simply because it is all that is available at the time.  It is likely you will already have something similar to a device in this comparison.


All microphones or devices were placed as close together as possible avoiding any line-of-sight interference or physical contact.  Solid supports were used for all devices: mic stands, and a music stand for the CD2e.  The cluster of microphones was placed 2.5 m away from the fully open lid of a grand piano, and 1.8 m above the floor.  Since the CD2e has a fixed AB mic position the other microphones were positioned to match this spacing as able.  All gain levels were balanced manually to best match the group prior to recording.  

Some levels were adjusted in post to better match the grouping.  Other than that, there was no post-process done on the files. Noise and various artifacts are as they were recorded.  Recording was done at 44.1 khz, 16 bit.  Some recorders do not support higher settings.

Here is the list of recorders, it's up to you to match the sample mp3 to the gear.  I'll post the answers after a few replies.  Please share your thoughts on this.  In no particular order:

1) Studio Projects B1, Edirol UA-25.  Think of this as "reference", many of the recordings I've posted on PS have used this exact setup.

2) Zoom H4n (original), microphones at 90 degrees.

3) Roland CD-2e.  

4) No name karaoke mics, PreSonus Firepod. No labeling on the mics, so I can't tell you more.

5) X220 laptop, internal microphones.

6) Vintage computer mic, plug-in power, into computer.

[quantum]

5 and 6.

[furtwaengler]

This is difficult for me having never pursued real knowledge or experience in proper recording techniques. My methods of preservation when it has depended on myself went from a cheap tape recorder to a cheap voice recorder, to a lower end Tascam which I don't know the model name - it presented the first great advance in sound in the journey, but still greatly flawed compared to others who know what they're doing. When the Tascam was stolen (I always laugh that there was nothing on it at that time other than sermons and bible readings, whether the thief ever listened to it or not) I got the Zoom H2 I've had to this day. Never have I bought a mic or anything to make it professional as I thought the built in mics do well enough for my archival purposes, though I've even slipped in using it at all lately. Well my guesses are in order of the recordings with the number fitting the description of the recorders:

6, 4, 5, 2, 1, 3

Now an additional question for the group is how do these various devices effect the experience of the music for the listener? We know it's not 6 different pieces but one piece from 6 perspectives. Are any of them sufficient to represent the true event in the room, or how do the different vantage points shed different light on the event in the room. Part of this is my wondering whether recording has become a means to an end and conditioned us away from the thrill of taking part as a listener in a live event...and yet especially regarding improvisation I considered it in someways equal to the live event as I've experienced repeated listening to take on a life of its own. I also think about the fact I'm on this forum using the name of a famous conductor who died in 1954, whose recording grip me in a powerful spell. Does the sound world that survives from his career and other artists of that bygone era contribute to the imagination of the recordings, and how much greater or less great would it have been if I had been in the room with it. Would modern techniques of multi-miking and mixing utterly obliterated its power? (A good reference is the BBC Legends release of a Mahler 8 performance with Horenstein conducting. ONE! hanging mic in the center of the room captured all the wonder of that experience).

Okay I'm finished waxing poetic completely out of my league!

[ted]

I haven't the remotest clue which apparatus produced which recording, but I can offer my reactions to each one. I downloaded them, sat in my usual listening chair, and played them through my Pioneer hi-fi with my usual treble and bass settings. There are many variables aside from equipment anyway - furnishings, carpet or the lack of it, drapes and so on, in the listening room as well as the recording room.

No 1: Overall the clearest recording, although the setting is not the intimate one I am used to.

No 2: Sounds further away, more centred stereo, like a commercial CD, as if it is playing outside the wall of my lounge, but seems to lack the clarity of No 1.

No 3: Unsatisfactory, with background static, odd frequencies and interference throughout.

No 4: Wider angle stereo, more intimate, sounds closer, but less resonant than No 1.

No 5: Sounds like No 4 but recorded with slightly too high a recording volume or too much gain.

No 6: This seemed to lack overall richness of sound, as if it had been flattened or normalised.

So my personal order of preference is probably 4,1,2,5,6,3 but I haven't the faintest idea which is which except that 3 is probably the crudest. But as Dave implies, beyond the obvious things get very subjective.

[ted]

Now an additional question for the group is how do these various devices effect the experience of the music for the listener? We know it's not 6 different pieces but one piece from 6 perspectives. Are any of them sufficient to represent the true event in the room, or how do the different vantage points shed different light on the event in the room. Part of this is my wondering whether recording has become a means to an end and conditioned us away from the thrill of taking part as a listener in a live event...and yet especially regarding improvisation I considered it in someways equal to the live event as I've experienced repeated listening to take on a life of its own. I also think about the fact I'm on this forum using the name of a famous conductor who died in 1954, whose recording grip me in a powerful spell. Does the sound world that survives from his career and other artists of that bygone era contribute to the imagination of the recordings, and how much greater or less great would it have been if I had been in the room with it. Would modern techniques of multi-miking and mixing utterly obliterated its power? (A good reference is the BBC Legends release of a Mahler 8 performance with Horenstein conducting. ONE! hanging mic in the center of the room captured all the wonder of that experience).

Okay I'm finished waxing poetic completely out of my league!

I do not think you are out of anybody's league, Dave, although many others could well be out of yours.

But is the purpose of a recording to accurately represent "an event in a room" anyway ? I assert that it is not, and that it is a sound entity in its own right. I also submit that music contains no universal or externally common meaning at all to human brains, and that such meaning which is deemed to exist is entirely the result of social, historical and educational conditioning. Therefore, I have never been seriously encumbered by these considerations. Whether I hear the sounds at a public concert or via my hi-fi while sitting at home in an easy chair is irrelevant. Personally, I cannot be bothered with travel and expense and I loathe crowds of people, so I haven't attended a big concert in almost fifty years, but these reasons are not based on actual sounds.

Personal improvisation is in a different class altogether. It is a lifelong mapping of the individual psyche, consciousness, soul, whatever you like to call it, onto abstract sound. You are so right when you say that repeated listenings imbue it with a continuing life of its own. Yes, of course the process is solipsistic, but so is all artistic creation, it doesn't matter.

I don't want to waylay quantum's thread, so I'll leave it at that, but your post deserves serious consideration. Good to see you here again, I thought you had pegged out.