Hi!
Sorry to have been so absent recently. Why is the organ world so apparently dead here? Very few posts. Is everyone lurking or have they turned to the ephemeries of Facebook?
Luckily the pipe organ lives to the extent that there's a recording studio in the US devoted purely to recording organs!
http://arafel.org/audio/
Hopefully perhaps he might join here and enthuse about the instruments and performers he's been recording?
Certainly his webpage is most interesting. I have inherited a Tascam 34B recorder and had been looking up the details of the DBX unit forgetting how noisy open reel recording seems to be. Is this merely 1/4 track or is 1/2 track significantly less noisy?
Best wishes
David P
Hi
Most of the mailing lists & forums seem to be quiet at present - maybe it's too cold?
As to tape machines, yes, 1/2 track is quieter than 1/4 track, and in general, higher speeds give better performance. The machine needs to be adjusted for correct playback response, and the record side needs aligning to the type of tape that you're using. The microphones & pre-amps/mixer also have a large influence.
The studio looks interesting - must try and have a proper look at the web site during the week.
Every Blessing
Tony
Hi,
with regard to the Tascam 34b well at least you should be able to download the user manual which will give the setting up instructions. DBX or Dolby can help with the background noise but need to be set up correctly otherwise they can make things worse !
I agree the snow does seem to have reduced the amount of postings / emails generally.
regards Peter B
P.S. " if " I was going to record Pipe Organs I would want to use a digital recorder as well as an analogue machine in case anything broke down !
I would recommend the Zoom h4n as a digital recorder that can handle organ music well.
Review here http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun09/articles/zoomh4n.htm (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun09/articles/zoomh4n.htm).
It is small enough to carry to a church in a pocket, has reasonable stereo microphones built in and can record in quality which transfers well to CD
Hi!
I used to be a great fan of the Zoom H2. Mine then failed on me and I bought another, to find that it distorted on high peaks that the previous one handled with ease. Perhaps the H4n is better than the H4 but finding an H4 at a reasonable price I bought one and found the menus fiddly to get to grips with and the display miniscule. The attraction therefore for seeing level meters that mean something and are lit and visible . . . and spools of tape going round . . . became a no-brainer!
Perhaps the H4 might endear itself but . . . inheriting a Revox PR99 and the Tascam seems to be a resource too good to be ignored. Microphones are another problem . . .
I have flirted with a well specified voice recorder which on first use was great but subsequently have found that the micro SD cards suddenly decide they can't deal with the speed necessary for WAV recording and on another occasion a card was corrupted and lost a complete concert. From these points of view the pocket wizardry of modern electronics is starting to leave a lot to be desired.
At the moment, open reel tape appears to be getting harder to find but a source in Poland is selling boxes of 10 thirteen inch pancakes of tape for winding onto spools. The quality remains to be seen but the DBX unit with a Tascam might make tape differences irrelevant. The best tape was TDK Audua but those days are long past . . .
Best wishes
David P