Recorder Hacks
Hebe Zuelke
I always take a recorder and a mic with me when I go on vacation in case I stumble upon a story. When I went to Minnesota in July, instead of bringing my good machine, a Zoom F6, I packed my backup recorder, the much smaller Zoom F3.
The F3 is an astonishing little device that measures 3 inches by 3 inches. It sells for $350 and has the ability to record two tracks of 32-bit floating point audio, which makes it pretty hard to distort recordings. When I record with a sampling rate of 44.1 kilohertz, as I typically do, the 128-gigabyte micro secure digital card in my F3 can hold 200 hours of audio recorded in mono.
Sure enough, I found a story up near the Canadian border. I used my F3 to interview instructors and students at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minn. I recorded seagulls on Lake Superior and kids banging away in the blacksmith shop. The audio quality was pristine.
WBAI acquired a Nagra III recorder in 1964 for Chris Koch, its public affairs director, who was preparing to cover the Freedom Summer project, during which student volunteers from the northern U.S. registered Black citizens in Mississippi to vote. Koch wanted to take a Nagra to Mississippi because they were so reliable. But they were very hard to come by.
As hard as it is today to imagine hand-cranking a recording device, consider my experience as a reporter for WBAI and WNYC in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Back then, the fastest way to get audio back to the newsroom was through a landline.
This unauthorized use of telecommunications infrastructure was detected by some men in suits who, oddly, let us continue with our broadcast. They did ask me to pose for a Polaroid snapshot displaying our guerrilla electronics, and I was more than happy to oblige. Hey, I was 26.
Another Sony portable, the TC-800B reel-to-reel tape recorder, had much better fidelity but was heavier to carry around. It weighed close to 12 pounds with the eight D-cell batteries needed for power.
Its 5-inch reels of quarter-inch audio tape lasted 15 minutes at the optimum recording speed of 7.5 inches per second. Allison said he was reluctant to switch to lighter analog cassette decks because they recorded at half that speed and produced inferior audio.
The Nagra was lightweight in comparison to the first portable digital audio recording system made by Sony. Available in the early 1980s, it consisted of the PCM-F1 audio processor and a separate unit that recorded audio on Betamax videocassettes. The processor, recorder and the external battery packs needed to power them could weigh as much as 25 pounds.
One radio producer with a studied perspective on the evolution of portable recording technology is Jeff Towne of Echoes, the daily two-hour music show distributed by PRX. He also serves as the tools editor at the public radio website Transom.
Few people working in public radio today have field tested as many recorders as Towne. His gear reviews for Transom have become must-reads for new radio and podcast producers trying to decide which equipment to buy. His write-ups include audio samples of test recordings that he makes with multiple microphones.
The handheld Tascam X8 is a great example of how the smaller digital recorders have become feature-packed and cutting-edge. In addition to a pair of built-in microphones, it has four XLR mic jacks and records 32-bit floating point audio.
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There was a dynamic mic in my junk box, but without any stand or connection cable. I needed a high-quality microphone to narrate my project videos, so I had to think of a way to build a stand for the mic. This is what I came up with.
Carefully take out all of the internal parts from the hard drive disk because those heads on the platters are sharp enough to cut any kind of finger. Then, I drilled a hole in the cover with a metal bit.
This is a nice holder because I can tighten it as hard as I want, and the mic stands perfectly stable without shaking. While the recording sensitivity is set to the highest level in the recorder, it records any possible sound with low frequency, but we don't need it often.
The input jack is very easy to use on the hard drive or any other metallic surface, because it screws right in. Next, I had to solder the wires from the mic output to the switch, and then to the output jack. This makes it possible to use the mic as an input device for any kind of sound recording device.
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Unless your device is jailbroken there are no hacks for iOS reported by any credible securities lab in the world and the SDK for 3rd party developers is very strict to prevent hacking despite the fact they would do this seeing Apple enforces them to identify themselves to Apple in order to develop applications and sell them exclusively through the App Store.
I got it from the app store. I know they have a recording feature now but I dont know if that meant it recordered my phone the whole time I had the app? I just want to totally get rid of the problem its making me go crazy. Do you think factory reseting will help? Or should I get a new apple ID and such? Or both?
I just dont know what else it could be from. I dont have the ios 11, the only way i knew about it was from snapchat saying i was screen recording, i dont know if i pressed it or my phone did but it inverted the screen colors one time too. I just want to get this whole mess fixed. Thanks for the help so far
A good tool to start cracking the case open was a watch case opener from a cheap set of watch repair tools from Woot or somebody. After working carefully all the way around, I could peel it open. I only broke one thin place near the USB connector hole.
With audio coming in and a little fiddling with the input level and the gain control in the recorder, it was recording! RockBox let me set the sample rate and bit rate to my customary values (44.1KHz, 96Kb/sec, mono).
As a sanity check on the input level (and whether my 100K guess was in the ball park), I ran some audio through my good white recording preamp, set to normal level according to its LED meter. Its output went to the Sansa input. A little fiddling with the gain in the Sansa, and I could get ideal record level. The 100K was at least an acceptable value.
My hat is off to fellow square dance recordist Ray Olszewski from Palo Alto who tipped me off to these great recorders (some hacking necessary). His Altoids-box-housed recorders piqued my interest, and when I asked he told me all about them and the mods he and Bill Hoover had made to them. Thanks Ray and Bill!
When I modified the second Clip+, I was sloppy when I pressed the little PCB down on the hot melt, and it ended up crooked. I had little choice but to removed it and reglue it. Guess it was a good thing I used hot melt instead of epoxy.
The physical layout is a little different, with a combo hold/power switch, and a shield over almost the whole main board. The battery is still glued (double sided tape) to both the guts of the unit and the case, continuing to make it a challenge to open the case the first time. After you remove the battery and pull the (slightly differently laid out) screws that hold the main board, the display stays on the main board, so getting to the mic solder contacts is much easier.
From video creation to hosting to helping to build better experiences for your buyers, Vidyard can do a lot. Like A LOT. But there are some pretty cool Vidyard hacks that even the most experienced users may not know about.
Krisp is a Chrome extension that lessens background noise and works with the Vidyard Chrome extension. That means you can record videos with crisper, cleaner audio (even if your workspace is anything but).
Messy Kitchen? Kiddos running around in the background? Or any other reason you might not want your background visible for a screen share vid? You can quickly and easily blur your background for a quick background cleanup.
Note: An alternative option is to do a Tab Only recording where you begin on the recordable site, then immediately navigate to your desired site. As with the other option, use Trim as needed.
Few know about this Vidyard hack yet, but you can now record and send a video using Vidyard in a LinkedIn message. This feature is a game-changer when using LinkedIn for prospecting. Instead of taking multiple steps to email someone a video, you can now send them an introductory video straight in your very first point of contact in a LinkedIn message.
There are multiple new and lesser-known features across the Vidyard platform to help you record outside of the browser extensions to edit and optimize your video content. Plus, new products and features let you connect with more prospects and create better experiences throughout the sales cycle than ever before. Keep reading for some of our favorites.
Edit: I forgot to mention that you need sounds from an additional sound source for dramatic build ups which are being soaked in during the resampling procedure. I use a MPX8 with ride cymbals, snares and vocals for that purpose.
I use techniques similar to this a lot for drums when jamming with my friend. It allows me to make and perform the drum parts for entire songs using a single pattern on the OT and MD. I use my MD for this, but you can use anything with 4 outputs that can spit out 4 different versions of the same beat at the same time, or 4 turntables etc. You can also use this on non-drum sounds for melodic variation or chord changes :
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