Recorders
In general, recorders have become far cheaper and most have become better as time has passed and advances in technology were made. In the early days of wildlife sound recording, heroic individuals hauled equipment weighing nearly half a ton on carts to record the sounds of nature - nowadays you can record at a quality matching the best with a recorder held in the palm of your hand.
If you are buying new, you have a choice between some of the solid-state recorders, and a HiMD recorder. HiMD is an good choice for a modest cost of £150 to £250. Many successful sound recordings have been made using MD, and the uncompressed recording option on HiMD has exactly the same parameters as CD. You can take your recordings and transfer exactly the same data via your computer onto a CD without any change and play exactly what you recorded on your hifi. In practice you will usually want to edit it and correct volume levels.
Sony's RH1 HiMD recorder
If you want to save more, then consider buying used - these do not keep their value well and you can save more than half the cost going used. Also consider the orignal MD format (which includes NetMD) - used MD recorders can be had even cheaper. Check for a microphone input first - not all MD models have one! You should also bear in mind that some of the earlier MD models had microphone inputs that were rather noisy for nature recording, particularly with budget mics which have a lower sensitivity than pro models.
Solid State Recorders
Solid state recorders are attractive for their compactness and lack of mechanical noise, but at the time of writing suitable ones are more expensive than HiMD new. There is a bewildering array of solid state recorders on the market, and only some are suitable for wildlife sound recording. The next page describes the essential features you will be looking for.
Some MP3 players offer a record option but this is often at the level of a digital voice recorder. Hard disk based models, such some Iriver products, can record in PCM and will give you a phenomenal uncompressed recording time, due to the 40Gb storage capacity on some models.
With all modern recorders, but particularly with those where the recording facility is not the primary function of the recorder, you should bear in mind that the low sound levels in wildlife sound recording are a minority interest. Commercial pressures often drive the quality of the microphone stages down to levels that are not satisfactory for wildlife sound recording.
Specifications can be misleading - for instance the signal to noise ratio is usually specified with the microphone input driven at maximum signal level, so the noise is at its smallest compared to the signal. The problem with that is you need to be recording a rock band, not a robin, to achieve these levels in practice!
other options
You can use older alternatives - some cassette recorders can be used successfully, and DAT recorders in good working order will give you excellent results. Open reel was a stalwart of wildlife sound recording for a long time, though you will find the equipment quite large and a lot heavier than a solid state or MD recorder!
Recorder requirements
Any recorder you get must have the option of manual recording level setting, and some kind of display of recorded level. It must also have a microphone input. It needs to be designed for music recording, rather than speech recording. You should confirm that the device is capable of recording in at least CD format [1] before considering it. If you see the format described as ADPCM you are dealing something pitched as a voice recorder. It is preferable if your recorder gives you the option of recording uncompressed, and this is mandatory if your aim is to do scientific research into vocalisations using the recordings. It is not absolutely required if you are trying to match what you hear with recordings or recording for the aesthetic qualities. The original Minidisc format, although compressed is well worth considering at an entry level, and the recorders can be had cheaply on the secondhand market. Let us next take a look at the essential features of a recorder suitable for the wildlife sound recordist.
| prev Wind protection | guide top | next Essential recorder features |
