Portable recorder

From the 1960s to the beginning of the 1990s , Nagra portable tape recorders were the de facto standard for recording rough phonograms for film and single-camera television recordings. Outwardly, they resemble a small copy of professional and household reel tape recorders with a sound level meter on the front panel. The possibility of high-quality recording is realized due to the high speed of the magnetic tape - 19.05 cm / s. The possibility of synchronization with a movie camera was also realized, for which a special pilot tone was recorded on a separate track, later it was replaced by a time code .

The first prototype NAGRA I was made back in 1951 . In 1953, the NAGRA II tape recorder went on sale.

The first Nagra IV-S stereo tape recorder was released in 1971 . In addition to recording on two tracks, he had a limiter , equalizer and separate input level controls .

The development of digital sound recording has allowed developers to reduce the size of recorders, as well as offer recording not only stereo, but also multi-channel phonograms.

Dat

In 1987, Sony introduced the new digital audio format DAT (English Digital audio tape). DAT was conceived as a consumer sound format, as an alternative to the analog format of recording on compact tapes , but did not receive the same mass distribution. However, the format found wide support among professionals - for its compactness, high sound quality, convenient control functions, the ability to edit already recorded material, and also because of the low cost of equipment and media.

MiniDisc

In 1992, Sony introduced the MiniDisc sound format. Compact size, high enough recording quality with moderate sound compression, suitable for radio broadcasting, contributed to the spread of the format in reporter practice.

Solid State Recording Media

In the early 2000s, with the development of computer technology, solid-state media, such as flash cards, were used instead of mechanical media. This has helped to reduce the cost of recorders and the appearance of affordable models on the market. The devices are equipped with both built-in microphones and inputs for connecting external microphones with the ability to turn on phantom power. High-quality low-noise preamps along with high - precision analog-to-digital converters allow you to get almost studio-quality sound recordings with the relatively miniature size of the recorders.

Modern digital portable recorders have the following characteristics:

• analog inputs, the number of which corresponds to the number of ADCs. Sound conversion is carried out with bits of 16, 20 and 24 bits, and sampling frequencies of 44.1 / 48/96/192 kHz.
  • microphone - balanced with an XLR connector , possibly with +48 volt phantom power for connecting condenser microphones .
  • instrumental - for connecting power tools
  • linear - for recording from external sources
• analog stereo outputs / headphone output
• input level control
• recording / playback controls
• display showing necessary recording parameters
• Additionally may be present:
  • digital inputs / outputs
  • timecode support
  • Word sync and video sync feature
  • digital sound processing unit: compressor, equalizer, reverb

The main difference from the recorder is the increased recording quality, close to the studio. The recorder is designed to record speech only for decoding texts without subsequent public reproduction of this recording.

Portastudios differ from recorders by the presence of a mixer and sound processing functions . Using portastudiya you can get the finished mix directly at the place of recording in the field. Recorders do not have such a function, so the resulting recordings require subsequent editing in the audio editor .

• Digital Sound Workstation
• Portastudio
• Audio editor

• Alexander Trukhanov. Out-of-band sound recording devices (Russian) // “MediaVision”: magazine. - 2014. - No. 9/49 . - S. 84-96 .
• Anatoly Weizenfeld. Portable Recorders // Sound Engineer: Journal. - 2010. - No. 10 . Archived January 23, 2012. (inaccessible link)
• Lev Orlov, Andrey Stepanov. DAT tape recorders “under the microscope” // “Sound Engineer”: journal. - 1999. - No. 2 . Archived August 1, 2013.