We have reviewed several recorders over the last several years at various price points and with different feature sets. While I attempted to be very thorough in those reviews, nothing can replace the experience of working with a recorder over a longer period of time. Now that I have more experience with each of these audio mixers/recorders, let’s talk about what I’ve found since I posted the reviews.

Recorders Covered:

Zoom H1

Tascam DR-05

Tascam DR-60DmkII

Curtis Judd 9/9/16 Curtis Judd 9/9/16

Sound for Video Session: Managing Reverb, Live Music, Zoom F8 and F4, Blimp Covers and More

We covered a lot of questions submitted by our little community today including items on audio to video sync, managing reverse with reflection filters, recording live music, battery life of the Zoom F8, the Zoom F4, wind covers/blimps, and several others.

One reflection filter I have experience with is the sE Electronics Reflexion Filter Pro. I'm not in a position to say this is the ultimate reflection filter to manage reverberant rooms, but it works pretty decently.

We discussed the Rycote Cyclone wind cover for recording outdoors. This is the medium model which fits most short shotgun mics like the RODE NTG2 - 4, Sennheiser MKH416, Schoeps CMIT5U and most other 28cm long shotgun mics.

A more budget friendly option which costs less than half the price is the RODE Blimp. It is a bit heavier, needs a furry cover in lighter wind than the cyclone, and takes a little longer to open but gets the job done nicely.

Curtis Judd 8/25/16 Curtis Judd 8/25/16

Sound for Video Session: Aiming Mics, Loudness, and Batteries

In this week's sound for video session, we addressed several questions:

Should I aim my boom mic at the talent's mouth or at their chest?
What are the loudness wars and are they over?
Tell us about batteries: Sony NP-F/L Type and Anton Bauer
How come when I loudness normalize audio clips, sometimes their peaks hit -3dB and sometimes they hit -6dB? Is this right?

This was our first week trying this on YouTube since Google Hangouts on Air is going away. A few lessons learned. Talk with you again next week!

Curtis Judd 8/20/16 Curtis Judd 8/20/16

Which Microphones Do I Use?

We’ve done a bunch of microphone reviews over the last few years. One question I get is, “So which microphones do you use these days?” That’s what we’ll look at in this episode!

If you’d like to learn how to record and post process your sound, be sure to have a look at my sound for video courses at the Learn Light and Sound School. My Dialogue Sound Post Processing with Adobe Audition course will launch in the next few days, so be sure to create a free account at the school now to be notified when it is released and to receive a discount code!

Gear mentioned in or used to record this episode:

RODE VideoMic Pro (my favorite camera-top Shotgun Microphone)

RODE NTG4+ Shotgun Microphone

RODE NTG2 (favorite sub $400 USD XLR shotgun microphone)

Audio Technica AT4053b Hyper-cardioid (My favorite microphone for indoor dialogue)

RODE NT5 (good, less expensive mic for indoor dialogue)

RODE smartLav+ (Most convenient lavalier for recording to phone)

Aputure A.lav (Best sounding budget lavalier for phone or audio recorder)

JK MicJ 044 (Very good budget lavalier for recording to camera or audio recorder)

Sanken COS-11D (My favorite lavalier microphone)

ElectroVoice RE20 Dynamic (My favorite voice-over microphone)

Audio Technica AT2005 (Good budget dynamic mic for voice-over. XLR and USB output)

Shure SM58 Dynamic (Legendary dynamic microphone which sounds rich and works well for voice over)

Curtis Judd 8/17/16 Curtis Judd 8/17/16

Sound for Video Session: Hiding Lavalier Microphones

This week we covered options for hiding lavalier microphones and answered a quick question regarding audio loudness in Premiere Pro CC.

Here are links to some of the items we covered in this session:

Sanken COS-11D Lavalier Microphone

And here is the episode on YouTube where we discuss loudness normalization in Premiere Pro CC.

Curtis Judd 8/13/16 Curtis Judd 8/13/16

Zoom H4n Pro vs H4n (Original)

Zoom recently updated their very popular H4n Handy Recorder with the H4n Pro. So what’s different on the new Pro version? Let’s take a look and a listen!

This entire episode was recorded with the Zoom H4n Pro and RØDE NTG2 Shotgun microphone outdoors on a summer evening. There is some ambient noise. But don’t worry, we also have a few clips in my studio where there is very little ambient noise. All of the audio was normalized to -24 LUFS and no other processing was applied - no noise reduction, EQ, compression, or anything else.

Curtis Judd 8/7/16 Curtis Judd 8/7/16

JuicedLink Little DARling Review: Like Wireless Lavalier but Different

Wireless lavalier kits are expensive. And they are sometimes finicky. They drop the audio when the transmitter is too far from the receiver. RF interference can cause problems as well. Wireless has its place, for sure, but sometimes you also need a backup. Or perhaps you don’t have the budget for a wireless system just yet.

This is where the JuicedLink Little DARling comes in. It is a tiny little audio recorder which looks very much like a wireless lavalier microphone transmitter body pack. But instead, it records the audio from the lavalier microphone. Then when you’re done shooting, you sync the audio recorded by the DARling to your video clip in your video editing app.

This entire episode was recorded with the Little DARling and a Sanken COS-11D lavalier microphone hidden under my shirt collar. For this review, B&H lent me the JuicedLink Little DARling DAR123.

Curtis Judd 8/7/16 Curtis Judd 8/7/16

Sound for Video Session: Dialogue Processing Demo in Audition

My audio doesn't sound all that great straight out of my camera or recorder. What can I do to make it sound better?

Here's a demonstration of how I processed the sound which was recorded with a JuicedLink Riggy Assist 222 into a Panasonic GH4 using Adobe Audition.

Curtis Judd 7/29/16 Curtis Judd 7/29/16

3 Audio Adapters for Mirrorless and DSLR Cameras: JuicedLink, beachtek, and Saramonic

If you shoot with DSLR or mirrorless cameras and you want to connect multiple lavalier or XLR microphones, an audio adapter may be a good option for you. But can you really produce high quality audio with one of these adapters? Let’s have a listen to three adapters and see: The JuicedLink Riggy Assist 222, the beachtek DXA-Micro Pro, and the Saramonic SR-PAX2.

The audio for this episode was recorded entirely with these adapters (noted for each clip) along with a decent to good quality condenser microphone (RODE NTG2 and Audio Technica AT4053b).

So that you can evaluate the sound quality from each of these adapters, we did not do any processing of the audio clips aside from loudness normalizing each clip to -23 LUFS, the European broadcast standard for TV loudness. No EQ, no compression, no de-noising, etc.

Full disclosure: For this comparison, B&H lent me the JuicedLink RA222, beachtek gave me the beachtek DXA-Micro Pro, and Saramonic gave me the Saramonic SR-PAX2.