We are joined by Tim Nielsen, Kristina Morss & Mark Kilborn to talk about gear obsession and strategies to reign in those new purchase impulses. Why do we all feel like we need 20 reverbs!? We also talk about Tim’s impressive Handheld Recorder comparison of 11 different units.
Links:
Download Tim Nielsen’s Handheld Recorder Shootout, including Audio Files, Sessions, Photos and Notes Here (Sadly Tim has taken down the files from the shootout. Sorry if you missed it)
Check out Kristina’s show, The Closing Credits Podcast
This episode was edited and mixed by Michael O’Connor, a film and television sound designer, as well as the owner of Audio Shade libraries which you can check out at www.Audioshade.com. A massive thanks to Michael for helping us out with this episode! What an easy person to work with!
The Following is a lightly edited and repaired, A.I. generated transcript of Tonebenders episode 179 – Gear Obsession & Handheld Recorder Shootout. Please excuse any typos or translation mistakes made by the algorithm.
Tim Muirhead – Tonebenders Host
René Coronado – Tonebenders Host
Kristina Morss – Audio Post Production Pro
Mark Kilborn – Game Sound Designer/Supervisor
Tim Nielsen – Supervising Sound Editor/Sound Designer/Re-Recording Mixer
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Narrator 0:17
You’re listening to Tonebenders, the sound designers podcast. Let’s do this.
Timothy Muirhead 0:29
Hey everybody, welcome to Tonebenders. My name is Tim Muirhead and I will be your host today and I’m joined by Rene Coronado. Hey Ren e, what’s going on in your audio world these days?
René Coronado 0:38
It’s it’s busy in my world, but we’re hanging in.
Timothy Muirhead 0:41
Excellent. We’re also joined by Mark Kilbo rn. listeners will know Mark is a very active member of the online sound community in both post and Game Audio forums, groups, slacks Twitter’s everything. He’s real busy on that. He’s also been the audio director on the Call of Duty franchise as well as working on other landmark series like Forza Motorsport, Tony Hawk, Modern Warfare and many others. Welcome to the show. Mark. How you doing?
Mark Kilborn 1:04
I’m good. Thank you. Glad to be here.
Timothy Muirhead 1:06
Excellent. Okay, so today we’re gonna discuss a massive handheld recorder shootout done by one of our guests, Tim Nielsen, you may remember Tim on previous Tonebenders episodes 152 where we talked about crowdsource libraries, and 115, where we talked about his work on the Oscar nominated documentary The Cave, Tim is based in the Bay Area, and is a supervising sound editor at Skywalker Ranch. Welcome back to the show, Tim.
Tim Nielsen 1:29
Thanks for having me.
Kristina Morss 1:30
Awesome. So finally joining us today is Kristina Morrs. She joins us from Sacramento. She works in both production sound and post production sound. She’s the host of a really awesome podcast that I think if you’re a regular listener of Tonebendors, you should definitely go check out, it’s called The Closing Credits P odcast. Welcome to the show, Kristina. It’s great to have you.
It’s great to be here. I’m so excited. It’s one of my favorite podcasts. I’m very excited to be here.
René Coronado 1:53
Yay.
Timothy Muirhead 1:54
Oh, that’s nice to hear. Thank you very much. So let’s start the talk with the handheld recorder shootout. Tim, listeners, if you go to the episode page on Tonebenders, podcast.com, you can find a link there that you can download the session of all the stuff Tim recorded. Tim, you want to break down what they’ll find if they go to that link and pull the stuff down?
To read rest of Transcript continue to page 2
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Wow – great episode. Will check out Kristina’s podcast (and listen to the audio recorder shootout).
As someone with a particular interest in stereo field recording, I do notice that the market for small, non-studio figure-8 mics is quite sparse and high-priced, with such mics tending to hold their value on the secondhand market, too.
I suspect that the moment has passed for some of the decent cheaper mic brands (SE Electronics, Rode) to put a pencil-style figure-8 on the market, as ambisonic and XY/ORTF flavours are easily covered by existing products. It would feel quite special though if a small single-diaphragm figure-8 were to appear from some of the far-east production lines.
All the best!
I can only assume that the manufactures have decided there is not enough demand for figure 8 mics and M/S recording. The recent success of the Stick Mini M/S shows there is some desire in the market. Hopefully a few of the bigger companies take note. Thanks for listening to Tonebenders Alex!
Really enjoyed this, even talking about it at supper (with not-particularly-interested spouse).
Glad you talked low priced stuff like my loved H1 (no N) and even phone recording. And buying plugins just because there’s a sale! Good points about need to lose some mics (will give one to a friend) and get only those you know how to, and use. Good tip to get entry-priced thing and learn how it does the work you need, before diving in deep end; and the idea to separate money for gear or that high-end long-life tool.
Will check out the handheld comparisons, or, better yet, as is suggested: get out there and use the stuff you have until you know it by heart, ear and fingers.
I make solo experimental films on celluloid in my home darkroom so you can imagine the “sound budget”. This episode has many relatable and useful ideas. I felt I belonged in the chat. Thanks.
Oh, and rebuild computer with only what comes top of mind. And the fact that one’s DAW provides essential tools already.. Forgot these. Merci.
Hello Sandy – Thanks for the kind words! Glad you enjoyed the episode. I love experimental film. I took a coarse on hand developing 16mm a long time ago, mostly optical stock shot on bolex. I made some fun films in those days. Glad to read you are keeping the tradition alive!
Hey there, great episode. I was actually thinking about this topic not too long ago and started looking around at different recorders. I’m looking forward to checking out Tim Nielsen’s field recorder shootout.
I’ve been trying the link but it will only download two files even though it says there are 39.78 GB available to download. I even installed the FileMail app and it says it going to but then only does the two files. Did I miss something? Please advise. Thanks.
Hello Tim – Thanks for letting us know the link had been broken. There is a new link post now under links.
Hi – I do not see the session link. Can you repost it here?
Hello Wayne – There is a link to the full sessions and files under “Links”. It is the top one.
Hi – thanks for the episode! I was wondering if it’s still possible to access Tim’s documentation on the various field recorders? The link says the transfer has been deleted. Thanks!
If Tim has taken it down then I guess it is not available anymore. He was hosting it on his end. Sorry.
Hello, the link doesn’t work, could you please upload it one more time?
Thank you!
Hello Yulia – Tim Neilson, the guest on this episode who did the shootout, was hosting the link and he has taken it down. So it is out of our hands unfortunately. Sorry you missed it.