I was looking for a field recorder such as Zoom H4n. However instead of spending money on it, I've thought about record on a laptop. I'm looking for a laptop as well... (If I have a laptop, i can download video files to laptop whenver the memory is full and also record the sound while I'm watching the sound bar on vegas)

So if I get a good quality built in soundcard or even external USB sound cards, would it be good combination? what external sound card would you guys recommend? probably with xlr input card...

I have Azden sgm-2x shotgun mic. and Azdan 200UPR wireless mics (but i'm trying to sell this one! and no longer use of it)

thanx~!

I use my laptop for portable recording sometimes. None of this would be considered "high-end", but I use one of two approaches. One method is to bring my Mackie VLZ 1202 mixer. I can run 4 mics into it at a time, then take an RCA cable from the tape outputs, put an RCA to 1/8th inch miniplug on the other end of the cable, and put that into my laptop's mic input. The other method is to use my Zoom H4n as a USB interface, if I only need a pair of mics. I only do this if I'm recording my band rehearsals or gigs. Neither of these methods is ideal, but they do pretty well.

Personally I never use a laptop for original recording - too many things can go wrong.

I use a portable recorder (Nagra VI in my case) for all origination recording and only use the laptop for editing.

I won't say I never use a laptop for recording, I do sometimes if it's in the studio and an easily repeatable event, but I also try to avoid it for the same reason John mentions.

I seldom need more than a single stereo pair for small classical music groups (piano, string quartet, classical guitar, etc)

When I do need more I run my regular stereo pair into my SD 702 and then run the 702 and any additional mics into a firewire interface and then into Cubase 5 on my MacBook.

This way, worst case, I have my basic stereo recording in two places and only the "auxilliary" mics depend on the laptop (or desktop PC (not Mac)) with Cubase when I record here.

Yeah, a 4 or 8 track dedicated recorder would be really nice, but I can't justify it for the few times I'd need it, and I think this approach gives me enough "redundancy" for what I do (important distinction!)

(Oh by the way, I also usually run my Sony D-50 as additional backup to protect against REALLY worst case situations)

unless all you do is controlled setups, its not a great choice. if you work on a cart, maybe. I had a MOTU 896HD I'd use a couple of times for 5.1 recording. used a mac book + MOTU + external array to record to. pushed it around on a cart for 3 days. works for that, but its not very mobile. the setup is a hassle if you can't mount it all up and leave it together pretty much full time.

a netbook + USB interface is certainly possible, but when you look at the price compared to a tool designed for the job, you are out the same money for a less workable ( IMO ) setup.

I recall an incident when someone was recording an event on a computer and at the end, without warning, the computer crashed. It corrupted the entire audio file along the way. The whole day was lost.

As mentioned, computers crash. Recorders don't.

The inconvenience of a setup like that, plus the inability to make it readily portable, will limit its application.

A small four-channel recorder, wireless receivers, batteries and necessary accessories, can all fit into a bag that hangs off a harness that can be easily worn and operated by a soundman. That's not possible with a laptop. And a laptop will most likely be recording to a hard drive, which is notoriously risky. Dedicated audio recorders now put the data on solid state memory cards which have proven themselves as incredibly robust.

A recorder will give you much greater flexibility and assurance of reliability.

I couldn't agree more about the wisdom of using a dedicated recorder instead of a laptop. A laptop is just too risky. On top of everything else, laptops tend to have hibernate features that set their timers off when you last touched the keyboard or mouse. They couldn't care less about whether or not the CPU and hard drives are working away. Make sure you turn off these "features" if you do go with the laptop. I would use the dedicated recorder though.

I recall an incident when someone was recording an event on a computer and at the end, without warning, the computer crashed. It corrupted the entire audio file along the way. The whole day was lost.

As mentioned, computers crash. Recorders don't.


Been there, done that.

Over ten years ago I put together a computer for audio for my church.
Installed a Layla from Event Electronics & I believe I was using CoolEdit 2000 Pro.
I was recording multichannel from the Layla & the fatal flaw was running Windows98SE+FAT16.

When the audio file size hit 4GB, the whole thing crashed rather spectacularly. Reboot!
Syntrillium was very paranoid sharing any details about their multichannel audio file format.
I never was able to recover the audio file.

By the way, thank you for the Mackie VLZ 1202 reference Mr. Andy Balla.
I've been thinking about a small mixer I can run up to 4 mics into and that fits the bill.

And then one day someone fumble fingered something and the recording on my SD 702 was toast. NOTHING is perfect. Nothing! No matter how good the hardwaree and software is, the operator can always F--- it up!

And then one day someone fumble fingered something and the recording on my SD 702 was toast. NOTHING is perfect. Nothing! No matter how good the hardwaree and software is, the operator can always F--- it up!

Well there's no protecting against that. Perfectly good airplanes have been flown into the ground by careless pilots.

But at least with a recorder you eliminate a lot of the risks inherent in a Rube Goldberg arrangement. After that, it's all up to the people pressing the buttons.

And then one day someone fumble fingered something and the recording on my SD 702 was toast. NOTHING is perfect. Nothing! No matter how good the hardwaree and software is, the operator can always F--- it up!

On the Nagra VI it records to hard drive (or SSD if you put one in) and every time you start a new track it can be set to back-up the previous one to CF, so you always have a safety copy - and the safety copy carried separately when you return to base.

I also think the SD machines can be set up to do a simultaneous back-up recording on an external drive.

Metacorder or Boom Recorder. That is all.

Well, there is a way to protect agains fumble fingering - have two copies! You can still lose them both but it's a lot harder!

I use a Motu Traveler with my MacBookPro, running BoomRecorder for all my ISO's fed via, direct outs of my mixer. Along with this is my SD 702T as master TC clock. If you know what you're doing and not playing video games while you're tracking on your computer, you shouldn't have any problems. I have done 2 features now with this set up (in some very ruff terrain and weather conditions) and have not once come across a crash during recording. I have however come across some corrupted files on both recording systems...(it just happens). This is one of many reasons why I run two systems (back-up saves @$$es).

I have a Motu and also a Mackie Firewire interface and as mentioned before I run the 702 behind a 302 and then coax connected to the Mackie along with auxiliary (ie individual instrument) mics direct into the Mackie then a MacBook with Cubase

I've never had a problem with anything crashing but I usually run the everything on an APC UPS power supply as well as an additional Sony D-50. After a recording session a couple of months ao I forgot to shut down the Mac and three days later everything was still up and running, although not recording. Just for the heck of it I hit record and everything picked up right where I had left off. Cubase seems to prevent the system from going to sleep somehow.

I've been in the computer biz long enough to be very paranoid about backup and redundancy.

That being said, if you take pains to protect against problems, today's hardware and software is fantastic compared to what we had when I started out in 1959. Would you believe programming satellite orbital analysis routines by wiring plug boards for relay based machines?

I'm not a pro, but I do use a computer to record. It's a UMPC which is not much bigger than a zoom. I happened to have it already, so I bought a Behringer UCA202 USB audio adapter, and record using Audacity. If I was a pro I'd buy a zoom.

The UCA202 has a headphone jack for monitoring input/output, along with 2 very clean line inputs and outputs (plus optical out). It costs around £20-25 shipped. I record straight to a memory card, so a HD crash can't take out my files. If anything goes wrong during a take and the file is not written properly, Audacity has a good recovery feature that works well meaning no recorded data is lost..

when using a computer to record, I use a sound devices usbpre with good results. It does not work with 64 bit os, so it is showing its age. Still, a great piece.

It works as well as a standalone recorder, but you need to have an interface of some kind to it right, which costs more than a standalone recorder in many cases. So you'd probably be better off buying a standalone recorder so you don't have to worry about where to put your laptop on a crowded set.

I have a rig that's used primarily for feature film production; a few commercial spots here and there. I'm running a 12 channel Mackie mixer with a fairly complicated patching sequence that puts up to 4 channels through two Marantz PMD 671 flash recorders for up to 4 isolated channels of audio. The outs on the Marantzs go to a MOTU 828 that provides up to 12 inputs into a Macbook pro running Logic 9. The normal configuration is to run both of the Marantzs for 4 channels and the MOTU as backup on those 4 channels, though with the correct routing, this system can record up to 16 channels, but with no backups, or mix down 12 channels into 4 discreet channels, etc. It's very versatile depending on the requirements. The 16 channel setup is really only appropriate for doing large crowd scenes or something where you might want a large number of dead hung mics for getting a lot of ambiance or need to have a lot of concealed mics (two actors walking around a pool in bathing suits, having an animated conversation in a wide shot or other nightmare scenarios...). The advantage of this scheme is that it's all built into a custom fitted cart complete with an 8 channel headphone amp, etc., but you can pop the Marantzs off in order to do run-and-gun; plug 2 wireless lavs into one recorder, a shotgun and a third lav into the other and you're good for most out-in-a-field or moving vehicle kinds of setups.

Using the laptop as a backup is great, but I would never in a million years use it as my primary recording device. On a shoot last week that was renting my kit, I had to go out on set when the laptop started crashing every few minutes with the grey screen of doom. Turned out the battery was shot (?!) and that was the root of the problem, but because we had the solid state recorders we never missed a take. I also will occasionally switch out the Marantzs for Fostex FR2s with the timecode cards and slave the MOTU to them if I have to deal with TC slates. The Marantzs are a bit more rugged, though and since you're not generally relying on their preamps, they do a nice job up to 24/96 which is about as high as I ever need to go.