Originally uploaded by Immagina.
I love getting something shiny and new to play with. I’d been looking to replace my dictaphone (wasn’t bad for recording, but playing back on a PC was a little fiddly), but I wanted to get something for doing more professional sounding recordings.
I’ve recently started a blog about my local area and would like to record some podcasts. So after toying with the idea of getting a Zoom recorder or a Kodak Flip Killer Zi8 (actually a video camera) I went for this bad boy.
The Tascam DR-07 is an entry level digital stereo recorder. It has more settings than I am used to so it takes a bit of fiddling around to get the right sound. My first attempt to record was spoiled by picking too high a recording level (and also by a coughing fit in the middle) but I put a useable bit on Audioboo to check out the results.
Incidentally, the guy speaking in this clip is a bit of a veteran when it comes to using podcasts and other social media to cover big events. He was behind The Berlin Project and is launching his own journalism cooperative specialising in events coverage. More about that another time.
Back to the recording. I found that there was too much white noise and that the audio occasionally drops out on one channel. I played with the settings when I got home and discovered that the dropouts was caused by one of the settings, which I have turned off. Turning the recording level down helped with the noise.
I’m hoping to get out over the weekend and record an interview for my other blog. Watch this space as I continue to experiment with my new toy.
*If you are a musician you might be able to pick up one of these through an interest free loan from the Arts Council.
Sounds like a great start, Rosie. 🙂 I currently use Olympus VN-2100PC but when trying to record larger meetings/conferences, I get frustrated as it tends to pick up coughing, scratching, even the sound of my own pen running on paper far more than the actual speech…
I too am keen to learn how to make podcasts. Is there a podcast guide you would recommend? Hurrah to multimedia skills! 😉
Thanks for the comment Chie. I can’t wait to upload some more podcasts. I’ve not seen many podcast guides, but this is a popular one apparently.
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/beginners-guide-to-podcast-creation/
There is also some good advice about recording audio on the BBC College of Journalism site. Will add more as I find them.
Great tip, Rosie. Thank you. 🙂
[…] week I blogged about the launch of a journalism cooperative by the team behind The Berlin Project. There’s been a lot of talk about new business models for journalism, but the idea of […]