Item |
Description |
Price |
Recorders |
| Fostex FR-2LE |
A really decent self-contained field recorder using CompactFlash (CF) solid state memory cards. It has low-noise, high-gain microphone pre-amplifiers and phantom power on board. The battery life is very good (8 hours) with four AA batteries. |
$600 |
| TASCAM HD-P2 |
This is a really decent CompactFlash (CF) recorder with a SMTPE timecode capability. Really a bargain at $1000. |
$1000 |
SONY TCD-D100 |
It is an excellent DAT digital tape recorder. Very small and dependable. Get a used one cheaply on eBay and enjoy! |
$900 |
USBPre |
Digital and Analog Audio Computer Interface. It lets you digitize audio from tapes, microphones, as well as transfer digital signal from the SONY DAT recorder to a laptop. It's a digital I/O "Swiss Army Knife." |
$600 |
Digi I/O-A cable |
Special active cable to connect the SONY tape recorder with other devices via the S/PDIF interface [IMAGE]. Available from http://www.oade.com |
$170 |
Microphones |
| Beyerdynamic Opus 55 Mk II |
This is my microphone of choice for detailed, unbiased speech recordings. Make sure to get it with the CV 18 in-line power adapter. Worldwide availability might be an issue. |
$400 |
| Shure Beta 53 |
One of the three great close-talking microphones available today. The reason I picked the Shure is because of its worldwide availability and good technical support. Be sure to purchase it with a battery-powered phantom power adapter. |
$500 |
AT831b |
Lavalier microphone. Good quality, unobtrusive. It comes with a very handy battery pack and high-pass filter. |
$160 |
Sennheiser HMD 25-1 |
Head-set microphone. Excellent quality. The best microphone I have ever used to record speech in noisy environments. |
$400 |
Earthworks MB30X |
Flat-response, measurement microphone. Does not need phantom power. Omnidirectional pick-up. This microphone can be a bit flaky, but once you get it to work, you will love it. |
|
A96F Line Matching Transformer |
The A96F transformer connects microphones with an XLR-type connector to the mini-plug inputs. It increases the signal level from the microphone, provides a balanced input, and prevents distortion due to the d.c. bias.[IMAGE] |
$54 |
Preamplifier |
MixPre |
Very small 2 channel mixer to mix 2 microphone feeds by Sound Devices. My favorite small field mixer and microphone pre-amplifier. |
$840 |
Laptop computer |
IMB (now Lenovo) X-series notebook |
Very small and light laptop. Despite the Lenovo takeover, the X-series ThinkPads are as good as they used to be under the IBM label. Get either Windows XP Pro or Windows 7 Pro. |
$2000 |
Accessories |
| CF cards |
SanDisk Extreme Pro series or Lexar Professional CF cards. Either will work just fine. Make sure you ask your recorder manufacturer tech support about CF card compatibility |
$40 |
DAT tapes |
60 Minute tapes work best, though you may want to buy 90 min. if your interviews are going to be that long. Generally, one tape per interview works best. |
$4 |
| Connectors, gender changers, adapters, etc. |
I have been very happy with Hosa products. They make every audio and video cable accessory known to man. |
$20 |
Pelican Case |
Those are, lightweight, heavy duty cases to carry your equipment in the field. They come in different sizes. They choice depends on how much equipment you want to put in them. |
$60 |
Cables are as important as all the other devices in the recording circuit. If you use poor-quality, unshielded, unbalanced cables, you are likely to get a noisy recording with a high probability of 60 Hz hum from electrical circuits. Below is a photo of three most commonly used cables in the field. The mini-plug (a.k.a. 1/8-inch) interface is used with the SONY DAT recorder, the RCA interface is, typically, used with the digital S/PDIF standard, and the XLR connector is most commonly used in professional microphone interfaces and the AES/EBU digital audio standard.
Below is a field recording starter kit. I have personally tested all of the items below in the field. If you're interested in more details, please, 
