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[World Wide Simmo]

Hi Walter,

I wouldn't say you're being ignorant, there is a lot to discover about laptop audio in the field and not many places where you can find out about it. The best advice I can give regarding using a laptop in the field is this:

Don't do it.

I have tried them many times over the years, always hoping/believing that the technology would get better and they'd finally reach an acceptable level of reliability. The whole concept is so cool, but my conclusion remains that they simply cannot be trusted. They are fine for multitrack/studio/home recording work, where a crash isn't a major disaster, but if you're in the field you usually only get one chance to get it right...

My current laptop is a very recent IBM ThinkPad T43 (about 6 months old) running Windows XP. It is the best and most reliable computer I've ever owned, but there is still no way I'd use it for recording sound on location. (Oh, and if I did I'd have to disable the built-in shock detection and associated head parking routine, because a head park in the middle of a critical field recording would be a disaster!)

In my opinion, building anything on top of a Windows or Macintosh platform designed for general-purpose personal computing is fundamentally flawed if fast set-up and high reliability are required in a portable context, and that's the fundamental problem (aside from the operational difficulties). After they solve the hardware problems, you are still running on top of a platform that was not specifically designed for audio, let alone field recording.

And not to mention the rigours of travelling required for field work... Dust, dirt, temperature extremes and so on. Laptops are designed for laps, not backpacks! On a recent recording journey into Tibet and Nepal, my Nagra V went through hell, happily recording at temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius and in dust storms in Tibet, the humidity of the jungles in Nepal, and so on. It worked each and every time I turned it on, no problems at all. One day in the jungles of Nepal I was hanging over the side of an elephant recording the sounds of its feet crashing through the jungle, and I got totally showered in seeds from tall grass. Little tiny seeds, rather like linseed but smaller, zillions of them. They got into everything - my shoes, my underwear, the Rycote windjammer, you name it. I was still picking them out of the toe ends of my socks a month later! My Nagra V got totally buried in them but just kept going, of course, and I remember thinking to myself at the time, "If this was a laptop, I'd have to pull it apart and clean the seeds out from beneath the keys, the CD drive, everywhere" - not to mention that you can't hang over the side of an elephant with a laptop anyway. With the Nagra V, all I had to do was blow some wind over the front panel and the seeds were all gone, no problem.

Film and documentary sound people have faced the problem of portable and reliable audio for years, and so the easiest solution is to look and see what they're using. Very few, if any, are using laptops on location, particularly not for field work. Shooting on sets (even on location) is a very different thing, much more like a studio session, and a laptop may be viable.

In my opinion, you will be entering a world of frustration, pain and disappointment if you're relying on a laptop as your primary audio recording device. Most people who make field recordings would agree with me on that one, so my advice is to go by the experience of others rather than finding out for yourself and finishing your field work with a whole lot of memories of great sounds you didn't manage to record due to equipment problems! And, more than likely, returning home with a broken laptop.

My advice is to forget the laptop, get yourself a proper field recording device such as a Nagra V or Nagra ARES-BB+, and get on with it:

http://www.nagraaudio.com/pro/pages/products_ares_bb.php

An ARES-BB+ is small, rugged, affordable, super-reliable (far more reliable than any audio interface for a laptop), and it's ready to record as soon as you turn it on...

You will notice a dearth of high quality, portable and rugged audio interfaces for laptops. Why? I reckon it's because it is simply not a reliable method, and the manufacturers of quality equipment know this and tend to avoid the grief they'd get from people having problems trying to use these things in the field. Most of what you will find are plastic boxes aimed at musicians recording at home or similar, where they can stop and start and can tolerate a crash (or similar problem) because they can simply record it again. This isn't the case for location sound where you only get once chance to capture it.

Try this little experiment: Get yourself a laptop with an audio interface, and go out to the nearest park and make a number of recordings at different locations within the park, each time packing the entire rig up before moving on, and unpacking the entire rig at the new location. In other words, a time-compressed simulation of real field recording. Apart from being amazingly cumbersome to pack up and set up (all those bits and pieces strung together with toy connectors) and keep an eye on, you'll wish you had three hands much of the time, unless you're able to put the laptop on the ground or a park bench or similar.

And finally, please bear in mind that a laptop is a highly valued commodity and a prime target for thieves. You will need to have it out in the open whenever you're recording (you can't leave a laptop closed in a bag while recording), and that's a real attention grabber. In contrast, my Nagra V stayed in my backpack and that stayed firmly fitted over my stomach/chest during recording, the only things that came out were my microphones and headphones, so no-one knew what I was using. I could walk around while making my recordings, and not have to worry about carrying all those bits and pieces and keeping them somehow connected together.

Okay Walter, I hope you find this information helpful. I am sorry for blabbing on and on against laptops, but you asked...

- Greg Simmons

P.S. I have written a couple of things about this for magazines, let me know if you're interested and I'll send them to you...

[Eric Rudd]

Quote:

Next, lose the cheap omni. Actually, that should have been first.

My vote is...lose the minidisc first. We send most of our reporters and contributors out with the Marantz 670. The 660 is smaller although a few folks have said the the noise floor of the mic pres is higher than in the 670. The small DAT recorder is a good choice too.

Eric