http://www.multimediashooter.com/wp/?page_id=293

At the Anchorage Daily News, we've issued M-Audio 24/96s to the photo staff.

The recorder works great, but it has a very short battery life. We found a work-around with the Energizer "Energi to go" mini-USB cell phone battery charger (about $20, takes AA batteries). There are a few different cords out there so you need to make sure it fits the M-Audio. Not perfect but better than nothing.

Those M-Audio's sound incredible. The quality is phenomenal. However, you're right about the battery life.

During the January workshop I mentioned the M-Audio recorders and people seemed to know about the USB battery "hack" as well.

The one to watch out for is the new Zoom H2 recorders because they are so small and cheap. Apparently they are pretty good quality.

Mindy McAdams of the University of Florida covered some things she found about the H2 in a recent blog post: http://mindymcadams.com/tojou/2008/choice-for-audio-recorders/

I sent my M-Audio out with a reporter and the battery life issue drove her crazy. I think I've just adapted to it.

The reporters are mostly using various Olympus recorders. Easy to use but I'm not too impressed with the sound quality -- they sound tinny to my ear -- even with an external mic. Is there an easy way to improve the sound quality?

Yes, you can improve the Olympus sound quality slightly. It won't match the quality of high-end recorders, but using a high quality microphone is one method to dramatically improve the sound.

This analogy is a good way to think about it: The microphone of audio recorder is like the lens of a camera. It is the first level of capturing sound and will help determine much of the quality.

I personally use a small microphone made by a company called SoundProfessionals.com

http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/category.cgi?categor...

This company has been great, but I can't vouch for them completely. The only thing I've ordered from them was this microphone and it has worked rather well. For the Olympus recorder I used the Dual-Wiring option (because the Olympus is a Stereo recorder).

Is anybody using the Edirol? I bought one last year, used it once or twice and found that the volume seems awful low when I play it back. Or, maybe this is a result of my 16-year-old using it to record his very loud rock band for MySpace.

We just bought a Zoom H2 audio recorder and so far it has been extremely high quality.

http://www.samsontech.com/products/productpage.cfm?prodID=1916

The thing is really small and records up to four channels of surround sound audio. At first that seemed like overkill for journalistic applications, and for the most part it is. But I came across a wonderful project from the Las Vegas Sun that really convinced me that there is a place for dynamic audio that captures an environment:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/multimedia/panoramas/2007/nov/15/spinroom/
(click and drag the mouse arrow)

As you move around the room, you will hear a different channel of surround sound audio. There might be other similar applications where it's important to capture an environment on multiple channels rather than a single channel of audio.

Now this may be one gimmick of the recorder, but overall I've been pretty happy with it. It works best with an external microphone, and you will need an XLR-to-mini adapter to use a microphone.