Gear

Philips DVT7500 field recorder . This was my first recorder which  served me well until one day it just wouldn’t turn on.

Tascam DR-40. I purchased the DR-40 after the Philips died. I was interested in the DR-40X since it was the newest model but for financial reasons I went with the original DR-40 and I’ve been pleased ever since. It now resides most of the time in my recording studio as the dedicated hard copy for recording podcasts.

Scenes LifeLike VR Binaural Headphone recorders.  Now these I was very excited for. They were specifically made to be used with an iPhone, a lightning connection. To be honest the sound wasn’t to bad but there were two things of concern. One, the monitoring was digital from the Scenes app and therefor there was latency. The second issue and it was a major issue was that after an iOS update (13 ithink) they stopped working and the app developer has abandoned them so they sit in a drawer.

Tascam DR-05X.  So at this point I was looking for two things in my next recorder. I wanted something smaller than the DR-40, more on the size of my original recorder the Philips DVT7500. I also wanted a recorder that wasn’t limited to xlr inputs like the DR-40 and had a 3.5mm mic input.

Roland-CS-10EM Binaural Microphones/Earphones.  Now these I had been eyeing up for awhile but I needed a recorder first that had a 3.5mm mic input. The Rolands offered both a 3.5mm mic output also a separate 3.5mm jack input for real time monitoring with zero latency. I really like these recorders a lot but i find there is one issue, wind or even just a slight breeze will pop on the recording. indoor recordings are great though.

AOM-5024HD-R Capsule. At this point I wanted to attempt to make my own mics. I bought these at about $3.50 US each. I had been reading about different diy mics and found in some groups that these were pretty much on pair with some leading name brand mics, obviously at a fraction of the price and it also meant gratification of a diy project.

DIY SASS. I had listened to some recordings that were done using a SASS which stands for Stereo Ambient Sampling System. A SASS recording is like a dummy head binaural recording which produces a 3d sound, basically as if you were recording with your ears.  I had been following a really creative recordest Jared Blake of Acoustic Nature who had some plans on his website to build a diy SASS box. I used his plans as a template with some slight changes and I used 4 of the above AOM-5024HD-R capsules. Pictured is the finished SASS as well as it in use in my yard with my custom dead cat.