I hate to disagree on your mic choice, but 100 to 10,000Hz is an awful frequency response for an electret condenser mic. Sony unfortunately hasn't made a decent consumer mic in years. My minidisc has a frequency response of 20 to 20,000Hz, and I use a similarly priced ($10 more than the Sony) Reactive Sounds Delta stereo electret condenser mic with the same FR as my minidisc. I can even record live music with it, and it works and sounds great.

Reactive Sounds

I got mine from Overstock.com

Can anyone recommend binaural mics to go along with the portable recorder?

this might be good for you...

http://www.podcastpickle.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9530

Where would one find a line in splitter so I could plug in 2 mics for my iriver? I've done some google searches and have found nothing.

For a 1/8 jack? I like the Belkin line splitters. You can get them from Khols for $18 (no joke) or from Walmart of Target for 3 bucks.

I just searched the Radio Shack site and was amazed that I couldn't find anything like what you're looking for. Not too many years ago that would have been an easy thing to find there. Perhaps I gave-up looking too soon.

It's an easy-enough cable to make if you know how to solder and have the tools. Radio Shack does sell the parts.

The splitter you want separates the two mic channel inputs of the recorder into two mono or single-channel connectors. You NEVER want to try to mix two microphones by connecting them in parallel.

http://www.core-sound.com/lcmics/1.php

You can use a headphone splitter to accomplish this, and it'll sound fine. Actually, although a little messy, we run four stereo headset mics down to one 3.5 mic in, and although an abomination to most audiophiles, it works. Not for the meek, however.

I checked, Radioshack had crappy prices on these, check Walmart.

The U.S. Radio Shack now just sells cell phones and electronic toys. Interestingly the Canadian Radio Shack, called Source, is similar to the Radio Shack of old. In the U.S. Fry's is a good place to look for electronics, but buyer beware....


I like this one from Walmart. The little extra cord on the splitter is nice.

with all these splitters, the key point is to buy the stereo versions.

if you buy a mono splitter, and try to use stereo mics, it's going to only record the left channel from one mic and the right channel from the other. believe me, it's quite annoying.

What if you have a mono mic and use a stero splitter? Eek. I'm so confused

Coincedentally, aren't many "mic jacks" meant for mono mics, and will the ones meant for stereo mics screw up a mono mic? I'm blown away... although maybe that just means it's late at night.

Use headset splitters, they're in stereo.

My confusion with portable recorders continues.

Does anyone have any practical experience for comparison between the iRiver IFP-890 and Olympus WS-300M. Plus, I work on a Mac, so any advice, insight, recorder comparison would be most helpful. Thanks.

It depends on what you are recording with as to whether or not you have a mono mic in. Mono mics will not be torn up with stereo jacks, they will just produce a mono signal. Minidisc recorders have a stereo powered mic input, but the recorder can be set to record in mono and it doesn't harm the unit or the mic to have a mono mic installed.

The WS-series of voice recorders only record in WMA format. Not MP3. Unless you've got software that'll reformat WMA into MP3 on a MAC, you're out of luck.

http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/...t=1193&fl=4

Best bang for your buck, by far is the iRiver 895 or 899. Recording at 44/128 on an 895 (512Mb memory) will give you over 8 hours of recording capacity. As for the Mac compatibility of the 89x series, I'm not sure.

The Olympus WS-300M records in WMA. You will want to stay away from that if you use a Mac.

Does the iRiver record in MP3 or WMA?

mp3

Josh - technically the iRiver records in a propietary format, but is converted to MP3 upon transfer from the device.

The iRiver works on a mac.

Be very careful when using splitters. If your goal is to record two people, then you might as well capture the voices on two tracks, giveing you flexibility to edit one person without touching the other persons recording. If you have mono mics and use a splitter, chances are you will only get one channel recorded. Best bet? Get TWO stereo mics (lapel or otherwise) and a MONO to STEREO splitter, found at Radio shack. This ensures that you will have one mic on the left channel, and one mic on the right channel. A MONO to MONO splitter won't work. (You can tell, at least on the radio shack versions, as the MONO ->STEREO splitter has a gold female end indicating right, and a silver female end indicating left, and will terminate in a male 1/8" that you can then plug into your iRiver 8XX.

Trust me on this, I have messed up more than one recording trying to get it right. As I said earlier, it's what we use.

Thanks, now at least I feel somewhat less confused. I'm going to get the iRiver IFP-899. Time to go shopping!

I also found the binaural mics that I think I'm going to go with

http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-TFB-2

Actually, I think the format really IS mp3, but with a different extension depending on whether it was recorded from the FM, the internal mic or the external mic.

The reason that I suspect this is because I did the following experiment: I took a copy of an mp3 file recorded elsewhere, renamed it to match a file name created when recording on the iRiver, and transferred that file to the iRiver using their IMM software. Then, I transferred the file back to the PC using IMM so it could "convert" the file to mp3. Comparing the two mp3 files, they were, byte for byte, identical.

My guess is that iRiver's conversion algorithm is "rename the file"

The Giant Squid mics are great.

I saw one set at Dragon*Con that was a 2-in-one setup, such that 2 mics (one on the left channel, and the other on the right channel) come down to a single stereo source. Just plug it in your iRiver, you're in one channel, your interviewee's on the other, and it's all good. Of course you'll look like siamese twins connected by the wire, but it's all in the name of podcasting, right?

And for $55, how can you go wrong?

Cardioid version:
http://www.giant-squid-audio-lab.com/gs/gs...ioidstereo.html

Omni version:
http://www.giant-squid-audio-lab.com/gs/gs-stereo1.htm

When I explore my iRiver with Windows all my external recordings show up as mp3s.

Perhaps this changes based on the firmware in use. If the device is in MTP or UMS I wonder if the file format is different. This may explain why in UMS the bitrate is limited to 96kbps.

-Andrew

It's a T30.

easy boys. lets all take a time out. we can all agree that the end result is .mp3. no need to start pulling out the "guns".

Good point. One thing I forgot to mention is don't even *think* about upgrading the firmware. Doing so will limit your recording bitrate from a potential of 320kbps to the 96 (64?)kbps noted above.

No Guns here.

It seems the key factor here is the line-in pre amp, and because these devices are not really made for this purpose, they don't provide much information of what exactly you're buying. So, does everyone agree that the iRiver devices are the best choice for podcast recording, using a line-in mic?

Or are there other devices just as good (inexpensive mp3 based) or possibly even better?

It all boils down to budget.

For $300 (USD), with phantom power, xlr inputs, and more options than you can shake a stick at the Zoom H4 sounds quite interesting:
http://www.zzounds.com/item--ZOMH4

But for $100 on ebay an iRiver 899 will do the job too.

Hey thanks.

Compared to what I've seen so far of UK prices, that looks quite good. It would of course be in a different league to a li'l mp3 device.

Its still a bit pricey for me, but its got me thinking. Guess I just need some product ideas, and that was interesting....

Nothing like commenting on a thread a mere seven months after the last person....

This thread helped me out tremendously. I had my IFP-895 hooked up to my new lATR35s mics and was suffering through horrible noise problems. Making things worse, there was an awful chirp in the background of the recordings. So much for using the latest and greatest firmware.

I downgraded to v1.25 of the firmware and went back to using the iRiver manager. I was able to set my bit rate up to 320 (!) and with a little futzing with the settings, I recorded a clean and QUIET file. I normalized to -6bB and it sounded great.

Ext mic setting on (even with a condensor mic)
Recording level at 42
44.1/320 for the bit rate

Excellent!

Thanks, everyone!