Review: Edirol R-09 Pocket Digital Recorder
Pages: 1, 2, 3

What's This Button Do?

Three tiny buttons run in a row across the face of the unit. Touch the first for a menu of audio files you've recorded; the transport buttons double as cursor controls. Once a file is selected, you can play it back, name it, delete it, or even move it to a new folder of your choice. Though editing names with cursor keys can be tedious, this is a great feature for keeping track of recordings when you can't get to your computer.

The labels on the left and right sides are tough to read, but once you learn them, you can fly.

Hold down the same button to access the menu. Here's where you choose recording settings and configure other aspects of the device, such as screen brightness and power management. You can even set the file playback order to use the R-09 as a portable jukebox. It won't render your iPod obsolete, but it's a nice touch.

The Repeat/A-B button loops individual songs or sections, which is useful for transcribing a lecture or learning a difficult riff.

The Reverb button adds plate, room, or hall reverberation at playback. So if you want to hear your ambient recording with even more ambience, this button's for you. How's it sound? Like too much plate, room, or hall reverberation, in my opinion. Fortunately, you cannot engage this feature when recording.

Recording in Paradise

My review unit arrived just days before I left for Moloka'i, Hawaii, where I help run the Aloha Music Camp. A week of camping by the ocean, with guitars and ukulele playing 'neath swaying palm trees while tropical birds keep time. What better test, eh?

One morning I came across Big Island guitarist Chris Yeaton playing on the lanai of the Kaupoa Beach House. Just the kind of recording situation I love: no setup, no hassles, just a handheld recorder and a great musician playing from the heart. In the background, you can hear the ocean, a bit of wind, and a group of hungry campers:

• Lanai Slack Key Guitar (484KB MP3)

Venturing out onto Kaupoa Beach, I quickly discovered that the internal mics have no windscreens, nor can you add them. That's a real shame. I'd planned to use the recorder to capture environmental sounds, but even the gentlest of breezes ruined the recordings:

• Birds, Beach, ...and Wind (716KB MP3; recorded at dawn)

Engaging the Low Cut switch helped slightly. But until Edirol or some enterprising third party releases a windscreen for the R-09's built-in mics, I'd suggest using an external mic with a windscreen (such as Edirol's optional CS-15) for outdoor recording.

Edirol offers some other interesting accessories for the R-09 as well, including a cover with a nifty tripod stand (the OP-R09C; see photo), a mic-stand adapter (the OP-R09M) that attaches to the cover, and a roomy padded carrying case (the CB-R09S).

Unless you use an external mic, positioning the R-09 can be tricky. And how do you keep it clean? Edirol's OP-R09C, a nifty tripod that connects to a fitted cover, handles both of those issues quite elegantly. The case and tripod are sold together.

The next week, I sat in with a weekly old-time session in Ashland, Oregon. By switching to MP3 recording, I was able to record the entire four-hour jam on a single 500MB memory card. Slick!

• Old Time Jam Session (1MB MP3)

Maximum recording time varies with the size of the card and type of audio file. Edirol says an upcoming firmware update will support 4GB memory cards, doubling the potential recording time.

Rounding out my musical summer, I attended Lark Camp, a huge celebration of world music held in the redwoods near Mendocino, California. At this event, you'll hear literally every kind of music and dance you can imagine.

Following a glorious cacophony one afternoon, I stumbled across a group of Galician bagpipers learning a new tune (QuickTime movie). Talk about loud! I had to drop the levels almost to zip to avoid clipping. I'm not thrilled with the way the drums came out, though. It sounds like there was some clipping, even though I kept the levels well out of the red:

• Loud Gaita Band (864KB MP3)

(Please note that I'm not faulting Edirol here; every new recorder takes time to dial in. But I'd certainly want to test the R-09 a lot more before I recorded anything irreplaceable.)

Speaking of levels, the R-09 includes switchable Automatic Gain Control (AGC), a fairly severe compressor circuit. Edirol recommends using AGC for situations such as a large business conference, where you want both near and far voices to be equally intelligible. It does that type of squashing just fine, but I wanted to see if it could automate the gain on a loud musical signal. (Hey, I get paid to push the boundaries!)

I got the chance one night when the bagpipe group joined forces with a raucous brass ensemble. Unlike the limiters found on some field recorders, which serve to keep the signal from clipping, AGC can have a profound (and ugly) effect on your recordings:

• AGC on Brass and Pipes (704KB MP3)

Galician bagpipe madness at Lark Camp

When activated, AGC overrides your input settings, so there's no way to mitigate the effect. That means any nearby sound will take precedence, such as when the crowd's whoops of delight (or is it shock?) temporarily overpower the band. Worse, the AGC circuit was totally overwhelmed by the drums, which clipped horribly (see screenshot). Lesson learned: Save AGC for its intended use—interviews and conferences—and simply give yourself lots of headroom for loud bands. Remember, with 24-bit recording you don't have to slam the meters.

Even with Automatic Gain Control (AGC) active, loud sounds may clip. That's because AGC is a compressor, not a limiter.

Studio Recording

Back home at last, I finished up by recording some 24-bit, 48kHz WAV files, the highest resolution the R-09 supports. So you can hear the nuance, I've uploaded the files in WAV format instead of MP3, although I did convert them to 16-bit format to save space. Here's my Taylor 414 K recorded with the 09's internal mics:

• Acoustic Guitar, Internal Mics (6.3MB WAV)

For contrast, here's the guitar through a stereo pair of AKG 1000s condensers, the same mics I used on the MicroTrack review. In this case, I also ran the mics through the preamps on a Mackie Onyx mixer into the recorder's line input. Why? The R-09 supplies only low-voltage "plug-in power." That's suitable for mini mics such as the Edirol CS-15, but not enough to run bigger condensers.

• Acoustic Guitar, AKG Mics (6.5MB WAV)

Of course, for "grab and go" recording, the R-09's higher-resolution MP3 formats are just fine. Remember, a lot of us used cassettes for this kind of thing in the past. MP3s are perfect for podcasting or uploading to the Web, too. Just be aware that you'll need to covert the files to WAV or AIFF format to do any editing on your computer.

The back of the R-09 holds clearly labeled switches for four recording parameters.