Edirol R-09 Hard Disk Recorder

Let’s say you’re a business manager, and you want to record a roundtable discussion with your team; or you’re a songwriter who likes to work outside, and wants to record your ideas quickly and easily. Ten years ago, you would use a tape-based Dictaphone. Nowadays, you can use a device like the Edirol R-09 Digital Recorder, a portable gadget that records audio onto SD memory cards.

The R-09 is intuitive to set up. I connected the SD card and cables and pressed the power button on the left side of the R-09. Boom! My Windows XP system detected a brand new Removable USB storage device, and opened up a new window for the R-09. The LED display is gorgeous. The easy-to-read backlight, chock full of good information, displays such data as date/time stamp, type of recording format and sample rate, and total size in MB. The R-09 records in 16-bit WAV, 24-bit WAV, and MP3 encoding from 64kbps up to 320kbps.

The main controls are intuitive and easy to access, even with just one hand. Input volume is on the left side, output volume on the right. The front menu has a standard touchpad for playing and recording. Above that are the menu buttons. The top of the unit has a 1/8-inch mic-in, and an 1/8-inch line-in for dumping from cassette or other audio items. If you wanted to record using external stereo mics, the mic in and line in jacks become the stereo L/R mic-ins.

Recording is a snap—just press the record button twice (once to arm, once to record). On the LED screen, a VDU meter shows up, showing your levels—great for a quick check to make sure you’re getting sound (or that you’re not blowing out the input mics). The Edirol comes with a built-in Automatic Gain Control recording option (turned off or on at the back), and it does a surprisingly good job of evening out the levels during a recording session.

There is one downside to the Edirol. There are no built-in speakers on the unit to hear playback. You have to connect it to external speakers. It’s not a big deal, but I would have liked to have been able to instantly hear how a recording sounded. Bringing along a pair of earbuds with an 1/8-inch jack will solve this problem.

Now, let’s look at the sound quality. First, I wanted to see how the Edirol functioned as a Dictaphone. I did a vocal test, speaking at one feet, two feet, and four feet from the mic. Without the Automatic Gain Control (AGC), I had trouble hearing myself at the four feet section. However, once I enabled the AGC and re-recorded myself, I had no problem hearing myself clearly at all three distances.

The Edirol has built-in omnidirectional stereo mics. I tested the mics by walking around a table with the Edirol in the center (between three and six feet away). The sound recording is consistently strong, with no “blackout” areas in the mic field. This is great for business meetings and brainstorm sessions.

Next, I grabbed my guitar. The Edirol is rated from 20 Hz – 20,000 Hz—good numbers for top-end audio capture range. After playing David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, I was ready to test the recording. Good news. The WAV file captured my strumming very clearly, and I could hear all the highs and lows of my instrument. More importantly, when I ran the audio file through my frequency analyzer, I saw that frequencies were captured from about 30 Hz up to 16,000 Hz.

The reverb effect on the Edirol is solid, but doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s better to take the raw sound file and run it through the reverb in an audio post-production program like Sound Forge or Peak. On the other hand, the mic inputs on the Edirol are a hidden gem. Edirol accepts both dynamic and condenser mics, and provides 48V phantom power for condenser mics. I didn’t use the Edirol’s phantom power. I connected my Shure SM-57 to my Presonus mic preamp, and ran it into the Edirol. With an external mic and preamp, my guitar recorded beautifully. If you’re a singer/songwriter, this is an excellent way to record ideas portably and transfer them to your studio at home.

The Edirol R-09 is an excellent digital recorder. Because it uses SD cards and USB connections, it’s easy to transfer audio to and from a computer. The mic quality is good, and the ability to use a pro-grade mic and preamp allows you to make production level recordings and save them at 24-bit resolution. The weight and size make it fairly portable, and the quality and ease of use make this an excellent buy for mobile audio recordings.