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Shoot Review: Roland Edirol R-09

Sep 1, 2006 12:00 PM, Reviewer: Gary Eskow

Low-cost audio recorder provides high-quality, portable audio capture.

Don't you like really cool things that take advantage of contemporary technology and deliver great bang for the buck with a minimal learning curve? Last month, we took a look at the Zaxcom TRX900. A terrific — if somewhat pricey — product, the TRX900 is a thoroughly professional product that offers jam synch for those in-the-field projects that must have audio line up to video with frame-by-frame accuracy. But what about those times when all you need is to capture some audio as cheaply as possible, but with a high-quality signal — for foley, for example? Throw away your old portable cassette recorder: It's time to check out the Edirol R-09 solid-state audio recorder.

The R-09 is a pocket-sized recording and playback device that operates on either a pair of AA batteries or the included AC power supply. It comes with two internal microphones that yield audio you will find satisfactory for many purposes (you may also hook up external mics for better quality). The R-09 records at a variety of MP3 settings or all the way up to the 48kHz/24-bit pro audio standard.

That's not all. It comes with a built-in root directory that lets you organize your audio files on an internally loaded memory card. The unit ships with a skinny, 64MB secure digital (SD) card, but you can purchase cards separately with up to 2GB of memory. The included USB cable lets you port your audio over to either a PC or Mac for editing and duplication.

Enough specs; let's put this puppy to work. My 16-year-old son Brian recently joined a band that some of his classmates formed earlier in the year. The boys were excited to give the R-09 a whirl because the recordings they'd been making on cassette tapes were barely intelligible and filled with hiss.

I set the unit up to sample at 44.1kHz and 16 bits, because I knew I would be importing these files onto my PC to edit in Steinberg's WaveLab 6 editing application. Careful planning can save you a dithering step. If, for example, you know that you're going to be circulating material as MP3s on the Web, you might not want to have a program like WaveLab 6 dither down from a higher sampling rate.

Following the old 10MB-per-minute rule for stereo audio recorded at these specs, I erased the demo files that ship with the R-09 to maximize card space. Once those were deleted, the card had enough room to track a six-minute song. The boys would just have to leave those extended Cream-style solos for another day.

These demos are quite good: The files are clean, with a signal-to-noise ratio that's extremely acceptable. The slight noise present in these files — which came through the recordings Brian's band made — shouldn't be a problem for anyone looking to make field recordings on a budget. This is definitely a good basic foley solution for video projects.

Over the course of the next week, Brian's band made a series of recordings. All of them used the R-09's internal microphones, and the quality was surprisingly good. Of course, the two mics are separated only by the width of the unit itself, so the stereo image is not majestic in breadth. The manual says that the R-09 can accept dynamic and condenser microphones, and that the device provides plug-in power for them. But it did not use the term “phantom power,” so I was confused. A call to Roland provided the answer. The R-09 provides 3.3V of power — enough for small electric microphones like the ones you might find on a video camera or a lavelier mic, but not nearly the 48V or so necessary to power a microphone that requires true phantom power.

Not surprisingly, the band's initial recording yielded a track that was unusable due to the volume at which it was recorded. Once the guys realized they were dealing in the digital world, they experimented with placement and level control and brought back well-recorded tracks that sounded extremely good when played back on my reference system. I listened to the tracks on the R-09 before porting them over to my computer. (You'll need headphones or connections that will allow you to hook the unit up to your console to listen to recorded material because there isn't a speaker on the R-09.)

I also played around with the reverbs that ship with the recorder. The two halls, room, and plate reverbs are fun to experiment with — and they are even usable if you need some ambience and aren't going to process your audio inside another application. Of course, these algorithms won't make you forget about using a convolution reverb such as Audio Ease's Altiverb 5 or Waves IR-1, but it's nice to have them around. The same goes for the low-cut switch. Essentially a high-pass filter, this switch doesn't have an adjustable threshold, but in a pinch, it might be very helpful — particularly if you're capturing audio in the field and a rumbling wind kicks in.

Because we were dealing only with files recorded one at a time, we didn't experiment with the R-09's directory system, but I like the fact that it's included. If I were recording different speakers at a conference, for example, and wasn't familiar with them or the companies they represented, I might want to establish a series of separate folders that would contain all of the audio recorded for Topic A, Topic B, etc. and move on from there. It's certainly a nice bonus feature.

As you can tell, I'm extremely impressed with the Edirol R-09. It's inexpensive, sounds great, and has a package of extras that might prove indispensible if your workflow requires you to capture clean digital audio in the field without the need to reference it to a master clock.

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bottomline

Company: Edirol
Los Angeles; (323) 890-3700
www.edirol.com

Product: R-09

Assets: Inexpensive unit makes high-quality audio recordings, good basic foley solution.

Caveats: Stereo image lacking in breadth due to closely spaced mics, no speaker on the unit.

Demographic: Anyone who needs to inexpensively capture clean digital audio in the field.

PRICE: $450

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