AV News 194 - November 2013
Sony PCM-M10 Digital Recorder
Howard Bagshaw ARPS
I used an Edirol R09 sound recorder until
it finally fell apart, so I needed something
new. After a lot of web research, I opted
to buy the Sony M-10 recorder. Why did
I go for this one, after all there are now
dozens of similar recorders on the
market?
Essentially for me it was a good
balance between quality, functionality
and cost (around £200). I don't plan to go
into
all
the
detailed
technical
specification, you can find this at a
number of sites by searching on the web,
so let me tell you just some of the
features that I like.
Size: It's small and fairly light, so it easily goes into a shirt pocket and it seems
fairly robust, better than my Edirol, though I haven't seriously dropped it yet.
Quality: It records in stereo using two built in omni-microphones. These
seem to be of good quality with a signal to noise ratio of around -55db when
the recorder is set to high sensitivity and volume set half way. It has a rotary
volume control (I much prefer this to up/down buttons) and there is a switch
to set sensitivity between Hi and Low. There is also an 'Auto' recording
setting, but I haven't used this.
There are also 'microphone' and 'line' mini jack sockets and I plug my
Sennheiser microphone into this. A 3volt supply is available on the mic socket
if your microphone needs this, but no 48volt phantom power. Again, signal
to noise seems good, with the microphone switched off I get around -72db of
noise. Add 16db of noise from the mic and we're back up to around -56db.
These are 'Bagshaw' test results, I make a recording, look at the waveform
in Audition and guesstimate how big the waveform is. Apologies to the
experts who are probably cringing.
Battery life: I'm really pleased with this, the unit uses two AA batteries (easily
available wherever you are) and these last for at least 20 hours.
Recording: The unit records in either WAV or MP3 format. In WAV it will
record up to 96kHz, though I use the 'standard' 44.1kHz, usually at 24bits.
The recordings can be made onto an inbuilt 4Gb memory and/or to a
removable micro-SD card (up to 16Gb). To retrieve the recordings: either
plug the unit into your computer with a mini-USB to USB lead, when the
memory will be recognised as sets of files, or take out the card and use the
usual card reader. Files can be recorded on the unit into folders and each
recording is automatically identified by date and 'take' number.
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