Speaker 1: Hi everyone, Joe Brady here, and today we're here to talk about something a little bit different than what I usually talk about, and that's audio gear. We're going to take a look at different audio recorders for use in video and music production. Now, you might wonder, well, what does this have to do with photography? Well, a lot of us have gotten into video, and one of the things that I learned early on is that good sound can really make a video. You can have great video and terrible sound, it would kill it, but if you have okay video and phenomenal sound, it really is a great benefit. And today we're looking at the Tascam DR-40 portable recorder. This is a really powerful, yet compact little device. I've just started using it, and it has become my go-to for a lot of stuff. It's relatively small, it's got stereo microphones, and it's got a lot of connections depending on what your needs are. It's got two internal microphones here, which can be either in this, which is called an XY recording position, or you can take the two microphones and you can bring them out into what's called an AB recording. Now, the difference between these two is it really depends on what is your use for the audio. When you have the AB situation and the microphones are going out this way, it does create a lot more space, a lot more stereo, if you will, in your recording. Downside is, one, if you need to mix down the mono, it's not good because the timing difference between the sound sitting in the two microphones is enough to cause a problem. But if you're going for a big sound, you're recording something outside and sound's coming from all over, maybe not a bad idea. However, if you're going to be recording in most other situations, if you're recording voice or you're recording something that you may need to mix down to a mono track, then XY is a safer bet for your microphones. A couple of things that this unit has that I've really come to appreciate very quickly. One in particular I love. You can record four channels on this. You can record both the internal microphones, and then on the bottom here, there are a couple of XLR quarter inch jacks. It's XLR quarter inch hybrid. You can put either an XLR plug into here or a quarter inch plug into here. When you're recording, you can record four channels, you can record mono, but the thing that I really like is a dual stereo recording. What that does is it actually records twice. It records once at the normal level that you've got it set to, and it records a second version of your audio at some number between six and 12 decibels below what it is set for. That is really handy because there's nothing worse than having some kind of loud noise or somebody makes some kind of loud comment that spikes the audio and it ruins the audio. By having this second version of it that is six to 12 decibels under, you can have those kind of things happen, and you're going to be able to retrieve that off of the second track of the lower decibel audio recording. Now, if you're going to use something like this for your camera, a couple of options that are really nice. One thing, well, get yourself one of these little cold shoe adapters, and if you like, you can actually put this right on top of your camera. So I just screw it into the back here. Let me grab my camera. So I've got my Sony a7R II here, which I do a lot of video recording with, and I can put this right on top of here and use this as my audio recording. It is going to be so much better than anything your camera can do. In fact, while I'm sitting here, one thing I'm going to do, I'm wearing a lav mic right now that is going into my camera. I'm going to go ahead and record just using this so we can see, we'll see, we see a quality difference. I've got it set for kind of just an auto levels. I hit the record button and it's now recording. So I'll just kind of point it towards me, put it a foot in front of me. So I'll be able to see what the difference is in the audio between my mono lav mic and this stereo mic here. We'll mix them together and you can hear, I'll bounce back and forth. So here's audio off of the Tascam recorder. Here's audio off of the lav mic. Now both are going to be much better than anything your camera can do. Your camera is good for reference audio so that you can match them up later in software, but great audio is a really important piece to any video recording. Obviously it's important for music. For you musicians out there, by the way, something else really cool that this can do. You can record say solos that you, you're a musician, you want to learn how to do a solo in a particular song. You can record it and then have it play back at up to half speed with no change in pitch. So for those of you guys that really want to learn some lick and you want to hear it played slowly, this will do that for you. A lot more features, a lot more accessories as well. A couple of things you might want to consider. There's a little kit available from Tascam that has some real essentials that you're going to want to have. It's got an AC adapter, so that's important and the necessary plugs. It's got a nice padded case and whenever you're recording outside, this is critical. This furry windscreen, colloquially known out in the industry, the big ones are called dead cats. The little ones are called dead kittens. I know it's not particularly nice, but this is designed to fit specifically right over top of this and when you have it outside, it stops that buffeting in the wind and still gives you a very clean audio signal. Another piece that comes with the kit is this little either handheld bracket that you can put on or really what this is designed for is to go into a mic stand. So I can screw this into the back of the unit. You could carry it around this way or I've got a mic stand right here. I can just put it in the mic stand and there's my recording unit and typically you'll put this out of the video's way so that you can actually not see it, but it's still recording. Remember, audio is extremely important for video. Bad audio will ruin a video. Great audio is what you need. This will do it. Tascam DR-40. TASCAM DR-40.