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Actually, one thing I would take issue with is any description of this recorder as 'handheld'. Yes, you can make hand-held recordings with it, but they would almost certainly have an excess of handling noise, and really nobody is going to get professional-quality recordings using it in that way. However, it has a tripod bush, so you can easily fit it to a tripod or indeed to, say, a pistol grip. I have used mine always on a Hama mini-tripod, with really excellent results. As well as using the little tripod as a conventional little three-legged stand, I also experimentally used it with its legs collapsed to their shortest extent and all held together in my hand as a crude grip for using the recorder as though hand-held, and actually the two recordings I've so far made that way show no obvious handling noise, even though one of those recordings was made while I was walking on rough and strenuous ground.
Once I got over my initial nervousness, not having had such a recorder before, I really felt that this was a little dependable and remarkably easy to use friend of mine, easily stowed in an outside pocket of my rucksack together with tripod and small container containing a Rycote Mini Windjammer (to reduce wind noise) and a smaller container with spare (rechargeable) batteries. I bought a suitable padded mini-camera pouch at a local photo shop to protect the recorder a bit.
I had researched carefully before buying the recorder, and had established that it was significantly more accurate in the frequency spectrum of its recordings than the Zoom H2n, which I'd also been considering - and this accuracy was borne out by my own on-screen and listening tests of recordings I made. My test recordings were all but one on the north Cornish coast path, in places where the sea has a really interesting sound as the swell breaks on the rugged cliff buttresses and rocks, and, in places, hits the end of clefts and sea caves. Such sound has a high 'white noise' component and also a lot of subtle detail that is a considerable challenge for faithful recording.
My expectations were not let down by the recordings I obtained. Because the internal microphones are omni-directional, the recordings were very spacious, but detail was still clear, including all manner of subtleties created by the complex movements of the sea as it came upon the various prominences, clefts, mini-sea-caves and little coves.
One recording that I made was of gentle rain falling, with extremely distant mutterings of thunder, with the recorder set up on the mini-tripod on a window ledge in my bedroom in the small hours. I'd set the recording level at a mere 3 on the level adjustment, for I wanted to be prepared for the storm to come over and indeed give some close lightning strikes without my getting clipping of the waveform. I found afterwards that the whole soundscape was grossly under-recorded, and the storm didn't get any closer to make it worthwhile - but for the hell of it I amplified it greatly in Wavepad, and to my amazement it sounded really lifelike, with great clarity of detail. However, what was particularly amazing was something quite serendipitous. After some half-hour I got out of bed to stop the recording, and while I was moving towards the recorder (discreetly swallows a dose of embarrassment!), I let out a small f*rt.
Now, the recorder was on the inside window-ledge, yes, but it was pointing out of the window, and my backside was pointing the other way, about 2 metres away from the recorder, when that little rude noise was made. Blow me, when I amplified the whole recording to a sensible level, that little f*rt was clearly audible - although very quiet. Okay, I then clipped it out of that recording, where it would be an irrelevant distraction, and amplified it a whole lot more, and the result was beautifully, clinically, crisp and clear - as though, perish the thought, I'd held the recorder right up to my back end!
I recount this to give some idea of the great sensitivity and rendition of detail that this humble-looking little recorder can give, even with its own internal microphones. Natural soundscapes are my particular interest, so this recorder with its internal microphones appears to be ideal for me. However, if I wanted to record interviews or individual birds singing in more or less 'solo' rendition, or indeed, musicians, it would be necessary to plug in much more directional external microphones, for otherwise there would be a distracting level of ambient sound in the recordings.
I carried out a test to find out how much treble attenuation was being caused by the Mini Windjammer (actually recording a shower, taking the Windjammer off after a few minutes), and by careful examination of the recording's frequency spectrum in Voxengo's Span, in WavePad I was able to work out a precise EQ profile to correct all recordings I'd made using the Windjammer, so restoring the full sound quality that the recorder can produce.
I found one annoying little bug in the recorder. It has a modest internal memory, and I added a SanDisk 16GB Micro SDHC Ultra Card, and have the recorder configured to use the 16GB memory, not the internal one. I have found that when I turn the recorder on for a new session after having transferred the previous recording(s) to my computer and deleting them in the recorder, it has reverted back to using just its own small 'native' memory, so I have to reconfigure it to use the external memory. I shouldn't have to do that for each recording session!
[Later note, January 2013 - I subsequently found that this was an issue only if I deleted the items from a file manager on the computer. If I leave the files intact in the recorder and then use the latter's own delete function, it remains logged into whichever memory I had set it to use.]
Finally, although nature recordings in the field were my specific purpose for this recorder, I have been quite bowled over by the quality of the recordings that I have been able to make of certain BBC Radio 3 music broadcasts via my VitaAudio R2i DAB radio and then, after some tidying up in WavePad, burning them to CD. The recording I made of the BBC broadcast of Berlioz' Requiem in St Paul's Cathedral (June 2012) is so spine-tinglingly spectacular that the CD 'double album' that I created from it has displaced my very highly regarded commercial CD set of that work, which I shall pass on to a local charity shop.
The worthwhile field recordings I've made so far with this recorder are online, and you can listen to or download them from my personal page at Freesound.org. For obvious copyright reasons I could not post there any of my recordings of music from the radio.
Later note (Jan 2013):
I have continued to make field recordings with this little friend, and it really is serving me extremely well, with, for example, absolutely thrilling recordings of dramatic sea antics against the rugged cliffs of Cornwall. I have arrived at the Rode Deadkitten as being the most effective furry windshield for any recorder of this sort of size. And now I have just ordered a second recorder of the same model, so that at particular locations I can have both recorders running at different spots, giving two nicely different perspectives upon a particularly good soundscape. That may sound like overkill, but I have recently had experiences of recording at particularly exciting spots where I was frustratingly aware that wherever I placed the recorder I was missing an absolute treat closely nearby. It would also mean that sometimes I could do simultaneously two recordings that otherwise I would have done consecutively, and then could move on in half the time, either to get on with a hike or to move on to the next recording(s).
Still later note (Oct 2013):
Further experience has shown that actually there is a distinct lower bass 'hump' in all recordings that I make. I bought an additional recorder of the same model, and the issue was just the same there, so it is not a matter of a faulty individual example. However, having recognised that, I worked out a graphic EQ curve in Audacity to fairly precisely rectify that, and I nowadays apply that to all new recordings, together with the correction for the windshield, as a batch process in Audacity before I bother to even look at them. That correction makes the recordings sound much more clear and life-like.
Also, I have learnt to avoid using such a low tripod wherever possible, for putting the recorder so low causes a coloration of the sound, as well as restricting the sound stage. Where possible now I use either a Tamrac Zipshot tripod (usually the Mini version) or indeed use a GorillaPod to perch the recorder on a tree branch or top of a fence post or similar.
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