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[Matt Tudor]

My clients need me to set up a recording system in the board room. Heart of the system is an older but still serviceable Genter XAP800, receives input from several tabletops mics, a couple wireless, and an AV jack, provides outputs to ceiling speakers, ALS, and a balanced out for a press feed. The client wants to be able to record the happenings in the board room for later reference for typing up minutes, legal documentation of events, and distribution of events to members who may have missed an event.
My original thought was to hook up a CD burner to the unused press feed, which makes distribution easy since the disks could be copied and delivered or mailed. Unfortunately, some meetings in there last 30 minutes, some last all day. This process needs to be as transparent for the client as possible, monitoring the recording, stopping the proceedings to change disks every 80 minutes isn't going to go over well.
I recently tried using a laptop, and it worked well as far recording a longer event without needing attention from the client, but getting the contents of the recording saved and crunched down to something that could then be easily distributed was a project that ended up back on my desk. Because of the sensitive nature of some of the events that take place in there, the clients would rather not have me dealing with the recording, which means a complicated DAW like Audition is out. This needs to be as "non-technincal" as possible. Using a laptop for recording also requires that there be a dedicated laptop for this room (price issues??) or I have to set up the different client's computers that use this room in advance, which means they don't have it for presentations.
In a perfect world I would instal a machine that would have a big green button on the from that says "record" for them to press at the beginning of the event and a red "stop" button at the end it, that spits out however many CDs the client wants, finalized and ready to go. Is there such a machine out there? If not, how bout something hard disk related that didn't require a laptop, that could save a WAV or MP3 to flash drive for conversion to CDs later as needed with some simple CD burner program? Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks
Matt

[Glen Kelley]

Denon DN-F650R might fit the bill.

It records to USB/CF storage rather than an internal HDD. This may be advantageous in that users will not have sensitive material left on a hard-drive in a public space, but does require some "chain of custody" to ensure security.

Records .wav or .mp3 formats. These should be easy enough to handle.

If you have a control system in the room already, it should be pretty easy to institute a "GO" button! If not, it may be possible using the REMOTE 1 control port with the optional RC600PMD microphone remote. It would be worth looking into this product to see if you could emulate its functionality using larger buttons, though.

Glad you posted this question! It made me actually do some research that I had been meaning to do on this line of recorders. 

[Brad Weber]

Something like this, http://tascam.com/product/ss-r200/downloads/?  An 8GB SD card or flash drive would allow for over 25 hours of mono, 44.1kHz WAV file recording and over 140 hours of mono, 256kbps MP3 recording.  Or maybe http://usa.d-mpro.com/us/denon/Products/Pages/ProductDetails.aspx?CatId=AudioRecordingandPlayback&SubCatId=SolidStateAudioRecorders&ProductId=PMD580 or http://usa.d-mpro.com/us/denon/Products/Pages/ProductDetails.aspx?CatId=AudioRecordingandPlayback&SubCatId=SolidStateAudioRecorders&ProductId=DNF650R.

[Matt Tudor]

Glen and Brad, thanks for the suggestions. Will look into them further.

[Clark Johnson]

Denon DN-F650R might fit the bill.

It records to USB/CF storage rather than an internal HDD. This may be advantageous in that users will not have sensitive material left on a hard-drive in a public space, but does require some "chain of custody" to ensure security.

Records .wav or .mp3 formats. These should be easy enough to handle.

If you have a control system in the room already, it should be pretty easy to institute a "GO" button! If not, it may be possible using the REMOTE 1 control port with the optional RC600PMD microphone remote. It would be worth looking into this product to see if you could emulate its functionality using larger buttons, though.

Glad you posted this question! It made me actually do some research that I had been meaning to do on this line of recorders. 

I use the Denon recorders and love them!  If you want to even automate it further, there is the Marantz PMD580, which you can program to start and stop recording at a certain times over the network.  It works well too.

[Paul Lipp]

My clients need me to set up a recording system in the board room. Heart of the system is an older but still serviceable Genter XAP800, receives input from several tabletops mics, a couple wireless, and an AV jack, provides outputs to ceiling speakers, ALS, and a balanced out for a press feed. The client wants to be able to record the happenings in the board room for later reference for typing up minutes, legal documentation of events, and distribution of events to members who may have missed an event.
My original thought was to hook up a CD burner to the unused press feed, which makes distribution easy since the disks could be copied and delivered or mailed. Unfortunately, some meetings in there last 30 minutes, some last all day. This process needs to be as transparent for the client as possible, monitoring the recording, stopping the proceedings to change disks every 80 minutes isn't going to go over well.
I recently tried using a laptop, and it worked well as far recording a longer event without needing attention from the client, but getting the contents of the recording saved and crunched down to something that could then be easily distributed was a project that ended up back on my desk. Because of the sensitive nature of some of the events that take place in there, the clients would rather not have me dealing with the recording, which means a complicated DAW like Audition is out. This needs to be as "non-technincal" as possible. Using a laptop for recording also requires that there be a dedicated laptop for this room (price issues??) or I have to set up the different client's computers that use this room in advance, which means they don't have it for presentations.
In a perfect world I would instal a machine that would have a big green button on the from that says "record" for them to press at the beginning of the event and a red "stop" button at the end it, that spits out however many CDs the client wants, finalized and ready to go. Is there such a machine out there? If not, how bout something hard disk related that didn't require a laptop, that could save a WAV or MP3 to flash drive for conversion to CDs later as needed with some simple CD burner program? Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks
Matt

If your looking to start fresh and have a simple system that meets the above goals, at my last job I spec'd courtsmart.

Which uses motu hardware, whatever microphones you'd like.. we used some shure desktop's. and then the courtsmart software controls it all and records it. It designed specifically for courts, boardrooms, classrooms, etc.

Worked great, we had over 12 court rooms using it. Once its on the server, you can do whatever you like with the files: archive, burn to CD, transcribe...

It was an easily scable solution, so start small, big whatever, addon later; in our court rooms, it connected in with the rest of the AV systems.
Want more memory, upgrade your IT situation not your AV gear.

http://www.courtsmart.com/

..Hope it helps.

[John Livings]

The Alesis HD-24 XR may work for you depending on having a way to get large files into your DAW.

We quite often record 6-1 hour shows to 1 hard drive (240 GB)

Available used, however many still in use.

We use a Mac and Logic 9.

Regards,  John

[Brad Weber]

I think that Matt was looking for something 'non-technical', something where they could walk up, stick in a CD or thumb drive, hit record, then hit stop when they were done and walk away with the recording.  I don't know if it applies here but I've had projects where nothing could go onto a local hard drive or network, any recording had to use removable media and leave no copy or file.

[John Livings]

I think that Matt was looking for something 'non-technical', something where they could walk up, stick in a CD or thumb drive, hit record, then hit stop when they were done and walk away with the recording.  I don't know if it applies here but I've had projects where nothing could go onto a local hard drive or network, any recording had to use removable media and leave no copy or file.

Good points Brad, A CD is usually 80 minutes long, Thumb drives, another thing.

I have also recorded and video taped quite a few depositions (Civil) using the HD-24 as the drives are the "plug" in type (using a caddy) and after DVD creation (Sometimes 100+) all the work product is given to the team that hired me.

This still leaves everything on the computer HD/Scratch Drive even after deleting all project files.

It seems you would have to use at least a mixer and have a tech there to operate things.

For audio only recordings a feed from the mixer (summed) is fed to a portable Tascam HD-P2 mixer that is simple to use.

After I bought this unit I was told that a"Sound Device" mixer was better??

Records a WAV file to a CF card.

Regards,  John


I wonder if there is a way to use a "Blu-Ray" burner to record just sound?

We have not used Blu-Ray, however I think the blanks are 25 GB and 50 GB.

[Chan Xiang Ju]

Why not just write an application in VB.net that allows recording of the sound from the line in of a laptop of desktop by pressing a big red record button and make it record to a default folder everytime. You can then maybe also setup the recording to record to a new file once every 60 min etc......

[ProSoundWeb Community]