After several days of near-tropical conditions that dovetailed nicely with the Al Gore-Captain Planet campaign, Chicago's weather took a turn for the chilly -- so, rather than hoofing it over to Daley Center and hopping on the CTA Blue Line, I decided to catch the express bus to the Ogilvie Transportation Center and ride the big Metra train home.

I miscalculated, however, and had about an hour to kill before the next train, so I decided to do a recording test of an Edirol R-09 digital recorder I acquired the other day for podcast field work. This tiny recorder is about the size of a mobile phone and records MP3 and WAV files onto an SD card.

To put the R-09 through some real-world paces, I just babbled on for about a quarter-hour about how surprised I was a few days back when I looked at my most-played tracks in iTunes. Some of the top selections are from Nora O'Connor, Sir Adrian Boult, Basil Poledouris, the Union Pacific Railoroad and Chris LeDoux.

Although the R-09 accepts external microphones, I was more concerned with how its built-in stereo mics would work when using the recorder in stealth mode. I turned off AGC, set the input level at midpoint, and held the unit to my ear as if I were talking on a cellphone.

The results could have been a whole lot worse, although, just like my experience with the Edirol R-1, I think the levels were too low. This might have been more because of my settings than any fault of the unit itself, since I suppose I could have boosted the levels by turning on the automatic gain control or manually increasing the input. I didn't want to turn on AGC, since most recorders I've used -- analog or digital -- introduce hiss or noise in this mode, and I had managed to clip the sound when setting the input levels too high manually. (Speaking of hiss, I have to admit that it wasn't until reading reviews of recorders for podcasters that I even noticed hiss unless it was really extreme. Hiss usually is just an artifact I learned to accept, sort of like the occasional pop or click in a fine vinyl LP.) Anyway, I dealt with the slightly low levels by running the file through Levelator to bring it up a little.

I suppose I also could have waited to purchase this little gadget until hearing what Phil Clark of The Brit and Yankee thinks of the R-09 in his upcoming review of the unit in Podcast User Magazine, but then I would have missed the excitement of an impulse purchase.

Selected R-09 reviews

Mark Nelson

Peter Kirn

Amazon customers

Sweetwater customers

Jeff Towne

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