MICROPHONES & POWER
Power: The H-series can provide Plug-In Power to condenser electret mics, feeding 2.5V to the mic (this is 1V more than most MD decks etc) in the EXT MIC setting. Power is very important regarding mics like this, as the more voltage you can get to them, the more their dynamic range will be. Therefore if you see yourself recording loud stuff, you may want to consider and extra power option for the mics as opposed to just the plug-in feed. I’ll come back to this when discussing higher range mics.
Supplied external mic: The mic that comes with the deck is pretty much the same as a standard desktop PC mic, supplying a dual-channel mono signal to the deck. Useful for low-fi home recordings (again, like dictations or lectures) with the added bonus that you don’t pick up the HD noise. However, if you want to make more professional recordings, you’ll probably want to pick up a third party aftermarket mic. Anything would do the job if you just want to match the quality of the supplied mic, just make sure it has a stereo jack, or you will probably only record the signal to one channel.
What kind of mic you buy depends on what you want to use it for. Certainly go for a stereo electret condenser mic if you want something with a wider array of uses.
Here are some small mics I have experience of:
I highly recommend as a budget option the Skytronic 173.623 lapel mic, also sold under other names such as the YOGA EM-8 from Maplins. I know of several gigs that have been recorded on these that sound just as good as the higher-end stuff. These are certainly easy to find in the UK and Ireland, but may be trickier to track down elsewhere:
The Skytronic comes with a box for an AA battery, to power the mics, though it will work without the box if you like and the sound quality is very good for such a budget option. This comes in about £20, so very affordable. I have even seen them used with their power box to run line-in on an MD without a plug-in power jack, which worked surprisingly well.
Next up would be one of Sony’s ECM range:
I've used the Sony ECM-717:
...and I know a few people who've tried out the ECM-DS70P:
Though not exactly the same, they're close cousins. The 717 can be powered with its own watch battery should you need to use it, while the DS70 is set up to jack straight into your deck without any excess wires. Both use cardiod elements for uni-directional recording. I found the 717 pretty handy for recording gigs to MD, though its main problem was its dynamic range when using plug-in power of only 1.5V. Very loud music (especially bass heavy) would overload it with ugly results. The 2.5V from the iRiver may improve things. Again, the 717 could be run line-in to an MD using its own battery.
However, I’ve heard the sensitivity of the DS70 is very low to avoid distortion in loud situations, so even with a gain of 20 it struggled to pick up distant quiet sounds. If you plan just to record music, it’ll probably be fine. Note also with a direct plug like on the DS70 that you risk picking up the sound of the HD, so you may choose to use the extension lead it comes with anyway. Sound Professionals do a very similar T-mic at a lower price – The SP-SPSM1.
The 717's now been replaced by the 719 I think...
…which has slightly better stereo imaging I believe.
Information on several more budget options such as the Reactive Sounds mics (which I have no experience of) are available at
http://www.minidisco.com:
