Edirol R-1

farss wrote on 1/12/2005, 1:36 PM

Anyone had a serious look at this unit. It looks like it might be useful although at the same time it seems like a bit of a toy, the built in mics put me off and the 'effects' leave me cold as well. The price is good, I don't know about the 44.1KHz sampling and I'm wondering if I'm going to need additional mic pres if I want to use external mics.
Maybe I've missed something, this devices looks like it could have been so good until someone in marketing decided it needed more 'features'.
I'm looking around for a decent field recorder to use with our HDV cameras, the Fostex FR-2 look the best so far but it feels so Tonka Toy with all that plastic.
Bob.

Comments

logiquem wrote on 1/12/2005, 2:03 PM

Maybe this look better?

PMD670 Professional Solid State Portable Recorder

Laurence wrote on 1/12/2005, 2:42 PM

Did you listen to the acoustic guitar and sax demos? They sound pretty incredible!

FuTz wrote on 1/12/2005, 3:02 PM

Good one! I noticed the product and was asking myself the same questions... :)
Concerning the PDM, I'm not sure if I wouldn't choose the HHB minidisc recorder instead (check it out!). Not very expensive and about the same size.

farss wrote on 1/12/2005, 6:06 PM

Except the HHB unit is recording ATRAC 4.5 not wave.
Bob.

FuTz wrote on 1/13/2005, 3:22 AM

o_O oops...I'm surprised now; from HHB...

farss wrote on 1/13/2005, 3:59 AM

I know,
you'd think a have decent field recorder that didn't cost the earth would be a hands down winner yet no one seems to build one. You can throw a cheap laptop and a firewire audio box togother for less that an all in one box, all that you loose is the convenience.
Bob.

Laurence wrote on 1/13/2005, 5:37 AM

I have a little Panasonic AV-100 which is basically a tiny consumer grade camcorder that roecords mpeg2 video on to SD ram. What this has in common with the Edirol R-1 is that it has a small stereo mic built in but since it records to a chip it has none of the regular motor noise that usually plagues such a setup. It sounds surprisingly good. It's amazing how much the noise of a camcorder's motor destroys it's audio recordings. My experience with the AV-100 is what got me seriously considering the R-1. They make a point on the Edirol site of saying how good quality the built-in omni stereo mics are. I'll bet that if you stick with distances like 15 to 20 inches, you can get a pretty decent interview recording.

Laurence wrote on 1/13/2005, 6:13 AM

By the way, here's a product link:
http://edirol.com/products/info/r1.html

and here's the more expensive version:
http://edirol.com/products/info/r4.html