Edirol R-1 Recorder

It's been said many times that necessity is the mother of invention and several factors have converged simultaneously to lead to the "invention" of the portable compact flash audio recorder. While Edirol was not the first to come to market with a handheld digital recorder, they are the first to release one with high quality internal stereo microphones and it's been impossible to keep up with demand for the R1 portable wav/mp3 recorder since it was unveiled at the 2004 AES show. But, before getting into the features of the R1, let me touch upon some of the "necessity" that's making this fun recorder such a big hit.

What Can I Do With This Thing?

Podcasting: Involves recording either spoken word or music in mp3 format and posting it on the web, for either playback on a computer or for transfer to an iPod or other portable mp3 player. The listener can then playback the program anywhere, at any time. It seems like everyone is getting into the act (we're finishing up the first weekly audioMIDI.com podcast as I type this review).

Voice emails: Just last week, I received my first "voice email" from a customer. Tired of typing out messages, just pick up a recorder, say what you want to say, plug in a USB cable, drag the file to an email and send it. It's a nice personal touch and will save you some type time.

Note taking: Want to remember what was said at a meeting? Want to maintain eye contact with your boss while they're speaking? Want to playback a lecture several times? Just set the R1 on your desk and record. Later you can quickly scan through the digital audio and playback any segment as often as you like. Oh, I almost forgot, even leave the classroom for a Starbucks run!

Ambient recording: Getting into home movies and amateur films and editing on your computer? You may have just discovered that the audio in your camera won't always do the trick and you wish you could go back to that busy street corner or restaurant and capture a better recording of the noises and conversations and drop them into your "movie". Just grab your R1 and record the audio on another day and import it into iMovie or your video editor of choice and presto, you've just "fixed" your audio problem!

Concert recording: While some major artists frown upon this practice, many unsigned bands would love the exposure of having their concerts passed around. Just remember to check with the band or venue to make sure it's ok...

Memory loss: Hey, we all have it from time to time. Just turn on a recorder during any important conversation or job interview and play it back later.

Songwriting: If you're like me, you get your ideas in the car or on the beach. Just pick up the R1 and sing or hum your song idea into the recorder. Drag the files right into your recording software and you've got a scratch track to build a song around.

Into The Nitty Gritty

I could keep going, but these are a few examples of applications for a portable digital recorder. Now I'll get into why the R1 is a great solution for these and many other uses. One big reason is the quality of the internal mics. When we first heard the R1 for ourselves, we recorded a portion of our weekly sales meetings and played it back. It really sounded like the people in the room were still talking. It was stunning! The internal mics are two omni-directional electret microphones, which as I said sound great. Then, there's the fact that it's a 24bit recorder, which basically means there is more dynamic range for the loudest and softest audio recorded to be captured clearly. This is essential when recording things like music or ambience, but not such an issue with spoken word recordings, in which case it's more important that you have the capacity for longer recording times. The R1 covers that, as well, because it can record direct to mp3 format at lower bit rates, which don't sound as good on music, but work fine for speeches and audio notes.

Another thing that makes the R1 great for long record times is the fact that it records the audio direct to a compact flash card, which are the same cards used in many digital cameras. The R1 can record on Compact Flash cards up to 4GB (a firmware update is required to use a card larger than 2GB, however). At the lowest record setting of 64kbps mp3 format, you can record about 35 hours per 1GB of storage. That means, the largest cards can record for close to 6 days! Now, audio quality and long record times still wouldn't make the R1 a slam dunk if it required elaborate and expensive recording software to get audio into a friendly format for emailing or saving on a computer.

While audio editing software can certainly be used to improve or edit out unwanted portions of the recording, the R1 is easy to connect to a computer via a USB cable. Once connected, a Mac or PC will see the R1 as a USB hard drive and allow you to drag and drop or copy and paste, just as you would any other file from a disk or hard drive. It's true that there are numerous ways of connecting a microphone to a laptop and recording right into the computer, but this requires software to capture the recording. With the R1, you have a small, battery powered device that allows you to record without cables and send those recordings to your computer without additional software. It's easy and it sounds great, which is a lethal combination.

Nifty Extras

If great sounding recording and ease of data transfer were all the R1 had going for it, it would still be a hot seller, but what pushes the R1 over the top are it's built-in effects. These effects can be applied to the audio while you record or during playback. It would be very cool if these effects could be applied to the audio once it is recorded and then re-recorded or re-sampled, creating a new file with the effect. Maybe this is something Edirol can add in a firmware update or future model, however, most of the time you will be able to zero in on an appropriate effect by monitoring what you record with headphones and setting your effect as you listen. Here's a breakdown of the internal effects.

Easy EQ: There are 11 preset EQ settings, which are tailored to various music styles. You can also adjust the level of the EQ effect.

For Speech: This effect increases the clarity of a voice recording. It comes with a De-esser for reducing sibilance, which are "s" sounds that can plague a voice recording at times. There are also settings to boost clarity, high end and low end to tailor this effect to a specific voice.

Voice Perform: These are just some fun sound effects to make your voice sound silly. Included are High Tone (high-pitched robot) Low Tone (Darth Vador) and Spacey (robot in a time warp of some kind). You can further adjust the low and high EQ, panning and volume.

Editable EQ: This is a 10 band equalizer, which sounds quite good for a such a small recorder. You can adjust the following set bands, 32Hz, 64Hz, 125Hz, 250Hz, 500Hz, 1kHz, 2kHz, 4kHz, 8kHz and 16kHz.

Noise Reducer: Combines a noise gate and a notch filter to reduce high end hiss and background noise at the same time. This is a very useful effect and it sounds great, even on prerecorded material. By the way, the R1 works wonderfully as an iPod-like player for listening to music and this effect can improve the sound of music if used sparingly.

Hum Noise Cut: This reduces low end rumble of a vehicle you might be recording in or the hum of an Air Conditioner.

Reverb: Want to add some room or hall ambience to make your podcast sound like it was recorded in a larger space? The built-in reverb sounds very good and it's too be expected since Roland owns Edirol and has been putting reverb in many of their products for years.

Int-Mic Rec: As I've said, the internal mic sounds great, but still can be a bit thin for things like live music. This effect uses modeling technology to trick the audio into sounding like you were using a larger studio mic. It's great to use this as you record, which frees up other effects for use during playback and there are 5 different mic model settings.

Ext-Mic Rec: This effect is for the external microphone input and makes small clip-on lav mics (or any small microphone) sound like they were larger studio mics, as well.

Mastering: Another effect for improving the sound mostly for music recordings. It uses an enhancer to brighten up the top end making the music sound clearer and a two-band compressor/limiter to boost up softly performed parts of the music and limit the louder performed portions.

Center Cancel: This is an effect used by many Karaoke-like devices, which attempt to remove vocals from songs by canceling out the information mixed in the center, where the lead vocal is usually panned in a mix. For most songs, this does a nice job. It just depends on whether the lead vocal was mixed in the center and without a chorus effect.

Tuner: This effect produces a tone at a fixed note, like C,D, E etc, in order to tune an instrument. You can even use this during a recording, as this effect won't be recorded with the audio.

Metronome: This effect is a big reason this recorder is so cool for songwriters and musicians. You can set a time signature and tempo and play to a click while recording and the click won't be recorded. This will make it much easier to import the recordings into software and already have a set tempo to work from.

Beyond the effects, the R1 allows you to monitor the level both using headphones and using the led display. It also has a built-in limiter, which can be used in addition to the effects section to avoid clipping (when a signal is too loud to be recorded cleanly). You can also play audio at half speed, set a repeat loop and turn on the "hold" switch to deactivate the buttons while recording to avoid accidentally stopping or turning on an effect. The R1 can work with external microphones that have a 1/8th inch connector, which is basically any microphone designed to be used with a portable mini-disk recorder. The R1 runs on two AA batteries and also comes with a power adaptor and a carrying bag. Be advised, that you must turn off the unit when switching from battery power to the power adaptor, or risk running down your batteries and losing part of your recording (yes, I'm speaking from experience on this one). In addition to recording to compact flash and transferring data via USB, you can also connect a digital 1/8th inch optical cable to record either a computer or another digital device.

It's a Wrap

The R1 is an amazing little recorder, which has come along at a very opportune time. It's one of those devices that nearly everyone could find a use for and for many people, it's a must have! I wish it could bounce audio through it's effects, creating new files with the recorded effects, but this in no way diminishes it's value. It's a testament to how good the built-in effects sound, more than anything. You can playback or record with the effects turned on, which is usually enough to get a nice sounding recording. A built-in speaker would have also been nice, but would have required more batteries, a larger size, wouldn't have sounded very good and really isn't needed, when you can use headphones or easily transfer the audio to a computer and play it there or burn it right to a cd to listen to. By the way, Edirol also offers the more expensive R4 model, which does have internal speakers, records up to 4 tracks and even has waveform editing, but still no re-sampling. The R4 syncs to video cameras, as well, so it's an even better match for would-be film makers. The R1, however, is perfect for most portable needs. I'm buying one and I already bought my parents one and my wife asked me for one to use at work. These things are addictive!

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