Looking for affordable QUIET portable stereo recorder, Moved from General Audio (TOS #6) Options

[maiki]

Can you recommend me a really quiet cheap stereo portable recorder? How about Zoom H1 for example?

My aim: record sounds like forest ambience without any noise coming from the device itself. I have done recording using mobile phones, audio players... absolute rubbish.. they all produce background noise when recording. I really only need an absolutely silent device.

Thanks for your recommendations.

This post has been edited by maiki: Feb 13 2012, 12:51

[Ron Jones]

There is no such animal as a silent device, I'm afraid. Recorders need mic pres, either built-in or external, and mic pres contribute their own noise to the input chain. Mics also produce self-noise, so they add to it as well. The best you can do is to buy components which produce less noise than others, and here, a less noisy mic is generally a better investment than a less noisy recorder/mic per. Both mic pres and mics are almost always rated for their noise characteristics, so you can use those metrics as a guide while shopping for these devices.

The Zoom's mic pres will be less noisy than those in your phone, but you do need to work with quality, low-noise microphones to fully realize the benefit of that, else it would be something of a waste of money in my opinion. You'll also want some way to reduce noise as a post-process step, which means shelling out for specialized software (some of these are astonishingly effective).

This post has been edited by Ron Jones: Feb 13 2012, 15:42

[kraut]

I really only need an absolutely silent device.

freeze ii in liquid nitrogen.
As the previous contributor said: there is no absolute quiet electronic device. The electronics also contribute much less to the noise than the microphone. Even the smallest amount of air movement can produce a lot of noise. That is why you use protective foam covers for your mic outdoors. Also most recorders like tascam, zoom, etc. let you filter out certain frequency ranges.

This post has been edited by kraut: Feb 13 2012, 17:25

[Arnold B. Kruege...]

Can you recommend me a really quiet cheap stereo portable recorder? How about Zoom H1 for example?

My aim: record sounds like forest ambience without any noise coming from the device itself. I have done recording using mobile phones, audio players... absolute rubbish.. they all produce background noise when recording. I really only need an absolutely silent device.

Of course it is impossible to make noise free recordings in the absolute sense, but it is possible to make recordings that have less noise than many that you may have already heard.

Once you are using equipment as good as the Zoom H1, along with a good quality external microphone, you will find that the environment itself is a major source of noise.

[maiki]

Thanks everyone for opinions. I think I will try the Zoom H1 and see what it does for me. Judging from recording like this, it should be pretty much fine:

http://www.freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/117113/