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Originally Posted by aamefford  B&H Photo has a nice sale on these. Anyone know anything about them?
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I have the Pocketrak 2G, which is a voice recorder with the ability to record at CD quality (44.1kHz 16-bit linear PCM). The CX is the musicians' version with slightly better stereo microphones. The sound quality is decent, but the user interface is atrocious because the buttons are too small and too overloaded with functions, and the screen almost impossible to read.
If you are considering one of these, I would strongly advise you to get the Olympus LS-10 or LS-11 instead, as they have a far superior UI and build quality, excellent recording quality, 24/96 support and extensible memory via SD cards. The only real competition in this form factor is the Sony M10 and the Marantz recorders. I boycott Sony products because of the DRM fiasco and their insistence on using their crappy proprietary formats like ATRAC or Memory Stick, but the M10 actually uses microSD.
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| They record in either MP3 up to 320, or Linear PCM. What, exactly is linear PCM, and what type of software do I need to work with a linear PCM file? This seems like a cool recorder, but with questionable file formats? |
You really don't want a lossy format like MP3, with ensuing generation loss.
LPCM is the encoding used in all pro formats like WAV or AIFF. Each audio channel is sampled at a given frequency (typically 44.1, 48, 96 or 192 kHz).
The "linear" means that each sample is digitized with a value that is proportional (linear) to the signal, rather than logarithmic as with the mu-law and A-law encodings used in digital telephony that squash 12 bits of dynamic range into 8 bits of data, with lossy coding. PCM is usually 16 bits or 24 bits. CD audio is 2-channel 44.1kHz 16-bit linear PCM.
PCM (pulse code modulation) means each sample is recorded independently in the data stream, unlike DSD (Direct Stream Digital, a.k.a. Delta-Sigma) where each data point records whether the sample was higher or lower than the previous one, or compressed formats like MP3. Korg sells a DSD field recorder, but they are the only ones.
Pretty much any sound editing program can handle LPCM in a WAV container, which is what the Pocketrak and others will record. All the WAV does is add a header that describe the sampling rate, bit depth and number of channels.
The step beyond is broadcast-grade recorders like Sound Devices which embed time codes in the audio stream, but they are bulky and very expensive. If you have proper technique (e.g. avoiding handling noise or pops), even the relatively inexpensive pocket field recorders can deliver studio master quality.
To edit, you can try Audacity, but since you seem to be a Mac user, I would recommend
Rogue Amoeba's Fission. Garaga Band can work in a pinch, and you have the big guns like Cubase (a basic version is included with the Yamaha) or Logic, but they will probably overwhelm you.
