Travels with Rolly and Ruby: Gear notes

[mdlbear]

I am not going to be recording with a laptop anymore if I can avoid it. Having to fuss with mic and power cables, recording software that doesn't remember what input device you prefer, filenames, folders and all the rest, I'm going to go simple. Not entirely clear whether I can get away with just a text UI, 4-line LCD, and an ARM-based SBC, but it should be possible.

It's also not entirely clear how long I can run the UA25 and a laptop hard drive on a battery; I'll see what I can do with a 7.2V drill battery. For air travel... Probably ok if I don't carry it on. The whole thing should fit in a 1U rack-mountable box, or pretty nearly depending on how thick the UA25 is..

Comments

[pwl1.livejournal.com]

I never did post the review of the Edirol that you requested - but when we took it to OVFF it worked beautifully. Each song was recorded as a separate mp3 (of course, that meant stopping at the end and starting for the next one, but that was easy. Also, the upload to technogeek1's laptop was seamless - taking 2 minutes or less. And the quality? Well, if you go over to filk archive, and download one of the songs there - Bedtime Stories? (not sure of the title, but it's one of <lj user="phillip2637"'s songs from OVFF - it was recorded from within the audience, a few rows back from the front, and to the left of centre) - you'll get an idea of the quality of the recorder. As for portability - well - it's as portable as an mp3 player (which it is as well) - with lovely on screen readouts. The only "drawback" is that you need headphones to listen to anything you've recorded on it (before uploading to a computer). I think it was well worth the money.

[mdlbear]

I should mention that the main reason for this would be to record my own concerts, so I need something I can sit in the audience or on a mic stand near the stage, and forget about for an hour. (Splitting up afterwards using Audacity is trivial, but having to ride the gain from song to song would be a show-stopper. The UA25 has a limiter, which is a good thing. A compressor might be even more useful.