USB audio input devices

Tue May 25 06:26:53 UTC 2010

Hi Josh,

Thanks so much for your input.

> Is there a specific reason you want to avoid recording onto a solid state
device and want to jump directly to your hard drive?

Yes, indeed, it has been the accepted wisdom that recording directly is
fraught with problems, but on several fronts around here, people have been
demonstrating that this may not be true anymore.  But it's still fair to
ask, Why would we would we even take on the hassles?  Not for normal
recordings, for sure.  Rather, for cases where there is a big payoff if you
have someone else operating the computer as the recording is done.  For
example, if making an audio book with someone who is not a fluent reader, we
find that being able to pinpoint mistakes and record over them saves months
of tedious fixing later, compared to the old methods.  More to the language
documentation scenario, I'm finding that when doing the "Careful Speech"
step of BOLD, doing it directly into the computer, editing as I go through
the session, leaves me with a finished product, rather than one I would
(ideally) find time to clean up when I return from the field.  I've done a
successful trial of this, but with a lower-quality device.

Finally, we are starting to imagine some WeSay-level software which guides
native speakers through the BOLD process, to allow them to do more of it
with less outsider involvement. Such software can provide "rails" upon which
people ride, greatly lowering the complexity and training required to do the
work with raw materials like recording devices. 

In the scenario in which I was using it, the speaker is across the desk from
me, wearing a headset mic. Netbooks are generally very quiet, compared to
some hot high-wattage laptop.  So outside of a recording studio, I'm not yet
concerned about fan noise.   It's conceivable that a netbook could not keep
up with the data coming in, but they seem to do well with such things as
showing HD movies, so I'll be disappointed if that's true.

> If you're on a budget I've heard the Zoom is ok, I personally like the
Sony Pcm-D50, but it's more $$. But I kind of feel like, if you're in PNG
doing fieldwork already, it would be a shame to go to all that trouble only
to come back with sub-standard results because the equipment wasn't up to
the job. Just my two cents.

Fair enough. Alas, SIL PNG doesn't have a way to tap into the funding
resources available to the rest of the LD community, so we do penny-pinch.
Even an H4N represent a lot of money, to us. A shame, really, since we live
here, year-round, surrounded by 800 endangered languages.

John Hatton 
 <http://pnglanguages.org/> SIL Papua New Guinea,  <http://palaso.org>
Palaso, &  <http://sil.org> SIL International Software Development
Chat Google Talk: hattonjohn Skype: hattonjohn Google Wave:
hattonjohn at googlewave.com

From: Josh Berer [mailto:olomachad at gmail.com] 
Sent: 25 May, 2010 3:53 PM
To: John Hatton
Cc: Resource-Network-Linguistic-Diversity at unimelb.edu.au
Subject: Re: USB audio input devices

Hey John,
Is there a specifc reason you want to avoid recording onto a solid state
device and want to jump directly to your hard drive? My concern is that,
especially with a netbook, you'll end up overloading the computer,
especially if you record for a decent length of time. That translates into
skipping or other interference, and if youre just using a mic and a
computer, and no device in between, you have no 'backup copy', or fall-back
to rely on. 

Also, sooner or later your computer's fan is going to start going to cool
down the hard drive which is working hard to write all the data its getting,
so you're going to have that background noise to deal with too. Just in
general, I'd say direct recording to a computer is a bad idea, unless your
computer is super-duper suped-up and capable of handling a lot of data
coming in, which a netbook most assuredly is not. 
If you're on a budget i've heard the Zoom is ok, I personally like the Sony
Pcm-D50, but it's more $$. But I kind of feel like, if youre in PNG doing
fieldwork already, it would be a shame to go to all that trouble only to
come back with sub-standard results because the equipment wasn't up to the
job. Just my two cents.
Josh
http://joshberer.wordpress.com <http://joshberer.wordpress.com/> 

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 1:27 AM, John Hatton <john_hatton at sil.org> wrote:

Hi folks,

Can someone recommend a device for doing direct recording into a computer,
at 24 bit/96 khz, using only USB 2?   The system will be used with a
microphone to do the "careful speech" stage of the BOLD approach.  There
seems to be some question about USB's ability to handle the load, but I'm
looking for something which will work with netbooks, which don't normally
come with firewire inputs.  There's a number of devices for sale with claim
this ability, but, well, being in PNG, if we get ones which don't really
deliver, it's an expensive mistake. 

If anyone has managed to make a Zoom H4N perform this role, I'd love to hear
that (that would mean one less bit of kit).

Thanks for any advice.

John Hatton 
 <http://pnglanguages.org/> SIL Papua New Guinea,  <http://palaso.org>
Palaso, &  <http://sil.org> SIL International Software Development

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