Sound Investment

God has been extremely kind to me. Things that used to be dreams are slowly but steadily being realised. Last night I had one such long cherished dream fulfilled. The Sennheiser K6/ME66 microphone arrived home. I experimented with it and found it to be more than adequate for my purpose. I am happy with a capital H :-)

Let me write the whole story. 

Ever since I made my first recording of nature sound with my mobile phone in CKBS (that was quite a few years ago) I got hooked to the idea. After a lot of planning and research, I found the Edirol R09HR would suit my purpose just fine. When you are planning to buy such items in Calcutta just deciding on the model is not enough. You have to find out how to procure it also. I hunted down a dealer - Bobby of Fancy Market - who had the recorder in stock. It wasn't a smuggled in product but came with proper documents. I bought it without any hesitation. It is a gem of a recorder for the cost. Roland has discontinued the product for whatever reasons but, touch wood, it continues to serve me well, as on date. 

It is very handy. Very intuitive. It can record acceptably well if you are not using microphones, which is funny. This last point disappointed me a lot. I realised this inadequacy of the recorder much later though. First I bought a Rode Videomic Pro (another round of major time consuming research went into finding the right source for the brand) complete with its deadcat windshield. The result wasn't great. You get very hissy sound. I thought it was probably the problem of the microphone. 

Search meanwhile started for another recorder because I know I am going to be in this for a long time. After reading a lot of reviews and opinions expressed by experts in various forums over the years, I realised that the Marantz PMD661 Mk II would be the ideal buy for me in terms of price and quality. I wanted a recorder that would be able to accept XLR cables as all good microphones come with XLR. But Marantz is just not available in India. And the price was also pretty high.

I had considered the Tascam HD P2 also. It looks very professional and accepts CF cards (which in my notion is safer than SD) but considering its size and cost, I zeroed in on the Marantz.

I don't know if it was my persistence and insistence but Monisha gave her nod for the recorder and sanctioned the budget. That's the power of dreaming, I suppose.

After several months of dreaming and unsuccessfully trying two different sources for bringing it over, Monisha finally found a savior in one of her ex-bosses who now lives in New York City. He was contacted and he said he was due to come in a few months for a family marriage reception and wouldn't mind bringing this over. After several months of wait he came last year but only as far as Bangalore where he left it with one of Monisha's colleagues. An office colleague of mine finally helped me bring it over to Calcutta. 

In the meanwhile, I have sold off my Røde Videomic Pro. I have also got a Røde NT4 for stereo recording. This is when I started having doubts about the Edirol's ability to handle microphones but I was still not sure. Roland's brand equity to me was still stronger than that of Røde. The recording is low and hissy, I found. But I wasn't too sure whether it was Røde's fault or Edirol's. I thought perhaps Røde is not as reputable a brand as it is made out to be.

This is when I thought I must get a Sennheiser K6/ME66 for the Marantz. This is the de facto standard equipment in bird call recording. Even Telinga has its saucers designed with this mic in mind. In fact for almost a year, I didn't even touch the new Marantz. It remained locked in the box. 

After several months of patient wait and another few rounds of dreams, the mic became a reality yesterday. When I finally got the funds for it a few weeks ago, I spoke to the Chennai-based Visual Media Systems (my Rode supplier) who said they had it in ready stock. The price they quoted is more or less the same as the B&H price of New York. I didn't think twice. 

The D-day of arrival was yesterday. Being childishly impatient I personally brought it from the courier company's office. After returning home yesterday (August 20, 2014) the first thing I did was bring out the Marantz and unbox it.

I love playing with gadgets. Learning about its features. But over the years I have learnt that modern electronic gadgets come with lots of features not all of which I might need. That's why I just take out the things that I need to know for my own purpose and start walking, picking up the other things as I go down the path of discovery.

Now, let me write the Marantz review in another post.