Herro Flom Japan

These earbuds are by far the best-sounding pair I've ever owned, and that seems to be the opinion of other owners too. It's as if they're pumping the music directly into the sound processing center of your brain, and they do a great job of blocking out external noise. They hold their own against earbuds that cost far more money. Amazon offers them for much less that what I paid for them at the Apple Store in Shibuya.

The mics I'm using are these from Giant Squid Audio Labs. My set has a locking off/on switch, disconnectable mics and a Neutrik Right Angled Gold Plug. If I were to order them again, I'd request shorter cables.

If you want to do a good binaural recording, you have to be listening to exactly what's being recorded. Here's what I'm using:

You can fit over 18hrs. of audio in 1GB, so a model with less memory would be fine. The only things I don't like about the iRiver is that it doesn't have an audio level meter and the highest quality it can record to MP3 is 96 kbps at 44 kHz. Perhaps it's just a number, but I'd like to record at 128 or 192 kbps since I occasionally record street musicians.

The video camera I use is a Sony HDR-HC1, one of the last MiniDV models they put out before switching to internal hard drives. I was very lucky to have found a used model in excellent condition for $600 less than a year after it hit the market with a retail price of $2000. Until hard drives come down in price a bit more, it's a lot cheaper to archive years and years of footage on magnetic tapes. When a multi-tetrabyte drive because affordable, I'll probably back up all the tapes to it. I would recommend the same model to others, although all the menus and submenus can be confusing, so be prepared for a learning curve if you want to get the most out of it. Another feature of this camera I consider mandatory is that accepts an external microphone. Unless you only plan to ever make home movies, I strongly advise staying away from video cameras that don't have one. A good video with horrible sound is a horrible video.

I also use a Raynox DVR-5000 super wide angle conversion lens. It's the epitome of a crappy and very close to worthless lens. They don't get much worse that this piece of junk, and even Raynox says so, but not in those exact words. At roughly $70 it's all I can afford, and when you compress video down to 320 x 240 the chromatic aberration around bright sources of light and the blurriness of the edges of the frame isn't too noticeable. If you have the funds, invest in a better wide-angle lens. I find one to be absolutely necessary whether shooting indoors or out. The extra viewing angle also makes the image seem more steady when you're filming and walking at the same time, drastically cutting down on the number of people in your audience who will get motion sick from watching your videos.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS