Yes, it’s a good idea to read the manual, no matter how smart you think you are.

This week I’m playing with audio. I borrowed some equipment from school: I got an audio-technica ATR6550 shotgun microphone, a Roland Edirol R-09 MP3 voice recorder, and an audio-technica Pro 88W/T Wireless VHS microphone set-up which didn’t work for me and gave up using. I also fooled around with some applications for my iPhone. I settled on TapMedia’s Recorder and the free version of LiveBird Technologies’ Voice Recorder.

The Edirol recorder worked fine. I had to learn how to use the menu system to format my SD card and had trouble with the powered mic setting as the user’s manual steered me wrong here and there, but I was able to use it successfully. Exporting the files was painless.

The Roland R-09 Edirol is, at times, inappropriately judgmental.

The first recordings I did were with the shotgun mic and the Edirol recorder:

Then I tried the same set-up again with the blanket test in mind (w/o blanket):

Then I recorded my voice with a blanket over my head:

The last test was taking my iPhone outside in the wind:

And then I used Audacity to trim three of the files and combine them into one: