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I wanted to replace the bulky corded laptop contraption and get into stereo field recording but the $300+ pricetag in today's economic climate could not be justified, I could barely justify spending more than $100 on anything before the meltdown, even when I made decent money. I looked in yearning for the only possible recorder that might fill the bill and not cost me lots of money and require me to buy more microphones and stuff. The Zoom H2 recorder. I use an old Player 3000 guitar processor and a newer Zoom bass processor so I am familiar with the brand and the quality. The Sampson company that made my USB microphone owns Zoom or vice versa as well. Now I just have to find one new or slightly used for $100 or less... good luck. Even with my Ebay skills, I was unable to do anything but look and wish. Then I found the Olympus DS-30 spec sheet after seeing one in a musical supply catalog for $149. It could record stereo, with it's built in microphone, up to 4 hours in WMA format at 44.1k. I started stressing over the fact that the frequency response was only 50 hz to 19,000 khz but then I read on... it can be used as a USB port and the stereo miniplug input would allow me to upgrade to a higher fidelity microphone and use it record direct to WAV on my laptop at my beloved 16bit 44.1k in stereo. All this for less than one stereo USB microphone.

Then I found the DS-40 model records almost 9 hours because it doubles the 256mb memory to 512mb. I was hesitant to spend the extra money for the higher memory model but I found one for $80 new in the box, inlcuding shipping on ebay and snatched it up. I figured with a soldering gun and a trip to radio shack or another ebay bid on some panasonic elements I could build a better microphone and use this as a USB interface to do stereo recording on the laptop. This way the annoying loss of higher and lower frequencies could be overcome. I listened to some sample recordings made in the highest quality format on the DS models and they sounded great, good enough to get started.... hell, I was recording stuff on my cellphone like an asshole at one point and I have a small olympus voice recorder that records lofi and was trying to figure out how to modify it to record higher quality. Either way, it was a start and got me hunting for the microphone, I almost got an Audio Technica stereo mic that retails for $250 for $99 but I lost that bid by $2. Oh well it turns out I don't need the microphone anyway... I am going deaf.

I knew my hearing was less than perfect when I was trying to work with a sine wave at 16k and had the volume all the way up, checking cables and cursing at my PC one day. Someone else in the house with only slightly younger ears than myself finally came in and said "what the hell is that awful high pitched noise?". I was looking at them in confusion and played the sound again to confirm what I thought might happen some day... I was losing my hearing. I have always worn earplugs at concerts, so much that I was even made fun off. I wore them at band practice while standing in front of an 18" woofer and 2 12" midrange speakers cranking 400 watts of bass. I wore them to the gun range and never discharged a round without them on besides one time, and my ear rang for a week... oops. I always try and keep my headphone levels low and don't blast the car stereo like I used to. I did do that quite often in my youth now that I think about it. Maybe that is where the damage occured. If not from excessive volume and exposure times, I could also attribute it to genetics and age related hearing loss.

My grandfather was deaf and wore two hearing aids from as far back as I can recall. I always thought it was from him working in boiler rooms and shipping yards all his life. Maybe it was a self defense adaptation to block out my grandmother. Well whatever caused his deafness might be plotting in my DNA to take away one of the most important things in my life, my ability to hear sound.

Now I am overreacting a bit because obviously I did not notice and loss of any fidelity or fullness of music or sounds. I can hear the rustling of the leaves and traffic noise a mile away. I can tell an MP3 at any rate lower than 128k from WAV in an instant. I can tell the difference between 8bit and 16bit sounds and sampling rates of 22k are very noticable compared to my old friend 44.1k. So to tie this altogether and create a happy ending, my purchase will be perfect for me and will capture more sound than I can here without any noticable artifacts from I can tell. I can convert the WMA to WAV use the sounds in my software and upload them here. I was wondering if I should convert them first or just upload the WMA files here and let the user convert them however they like. I do not see any WMA files on here and I can't stand MP3 but considering my dilemma and the bleak future ahead for the northern hemisphere in general, I think I am lightening up on the futile perfectionist cravings in all aspects of my life, not just sound.

Does anyone have an opinion on this? I know most will justifiably cringe at the thought of compressed formats but with a freq response better than my not-that-old ears and a looming financial catastrophe, I figured what the hell. I think I will add a poll to this and see what folks think. If anyone wants the specs on the recorder google it and hit the olympus website. It's 44.1k WMA from 50 to 19k. For people who want to get into field recording and need a cheap stereo recorder (that I can justify buying as a needed item for returning to college in the spring!) it looks like a no brainer.

AAAaaargh man i really feel for you with that tinnitus,i have it too and it scares the pants off me sometimes.As you say we just gotta be really careful,i've found i have to balance the long hours of sustained sound with periods of quiet,build up aural strength(just me).
With ever increasing volume and saturated,wall-to-wall mixdowns tinnitus is the elephant in the club,plus surely i'm not the only one who knows a teenager who's done herself serious damage with in-ear speakers and portable playback gear?
I'm suprised how little one hears about tinnitus (no joke intended),most people seem to ignore it......especially the music industry,thanks for raising this issue NC.

Your welcome and thanks for the response. I wish in my case it was just tinnitus, which is not necessarily hearing loss in itself but a ringing in the ear caused by a few variables. I have taken multiple test tones from various sources and it seems I cannot hear anything above 13k! and I am a few years away from 40. It must have been the blasting of the car stereo or a genetic gift from my grandfather (hope I don't get all the heart attacks as well, that would be just lovely).

So unless they get on this stem cell hearing folicle regeneration technology in a hurry, I will be sonically screwed. The nasty critics at archive.org that said I had a tin ear were right! Holy crap, I am a total loser and downsampling all my WAV's to 64kps MP3 as we speak. I ripped all the tweeters out of all my speakers, poured glue over all my headphones, broke off the top octave of keys off my synth, snipped the high E string on my guitar and went on a mosquito and fly killing spree.

My WMA recording field recorder (Olympus DS-40) will be here soon and it will record sounds 6khz higher than I can hear! Best $80 I will ever spend on gear. I'll be saving a lot of money going forward by sticking with 8 bit gear and no longer buying q-tips. Ironically, my gun hand ear is a bit better than my other one and aside from the car stereo insanity of the late 80's and early 90's, that would be the culprit. I did go to an Eric Clapton concert in 1985 without earplugs, last time I ever did. Always wore them at band practice, gun range, concerts... they say the ipod generation will be in far worse shape so I don't feel that bad, just slightly doomed. I am hoping Dr Kavorkian opens an otology practice.

NoiseCollector,

I have problems similar to yours. I'm deaf in my left ear. Well, I can hear some sounds in my left if they're very loud, although I suspect what's really happening is I'm perceiving the sound in my left but processing it via bone conduction in my right ear. My right ear is OK - to the extent that I only have a moderate loss and like you, no really significant high-frequency hearing capability. Suffice it to say I would never be able to hear the difference between a recording made at 24 bits, 44.1Khz and one made at the same bit rate with a 96Khz sampling frequency.

I was born this way. 'Sensorineural hearing loss' is what otolaryngologists call it, and it's not remediable. The loss in my left ear is so bad that not even a cochlear implant will help. Perhaps with stem-cell treatments this might change.

I've been wearing a hearing aid in my right ear for the last nine years now and it's been a godsend. I can now hear so many sounds I was missing out on - and conversing with people is so much easier too. Although I still have a bitch of a time localizing sound, thanks to my basically non-functional left ear. Needless to say, I could never work as a sound engineer!

My hearing aid is a high quality digital one with multiple programs - one of which is optimized for listening to music. I use that setting all the time, even for speech, and it works very well. With music, I can hear some details and nuances in music that were not accessible to me unaided. Since then, I've come to realize that any recorder or mic optimized for acquisition of musical sound sources will also work very well for speech, since most speech frequencies fall in the range of most musical frequencies.

I used to have a gun collection and would often show up at the range double-plugged - that is, with ear plugs supplemented by ear muffs because I was concerned about exposing myself to high-decibel impulse noise. I eventually gave up the hobby figuring that my double-plugging routine wouldn't save me from hearing loss incurred via bone conduction.

I have a Zoom H2 and just acquired a Marantz PMD620. I'lll soon be getting an external mic suitable for field recording use.