Microtrack 24/96 (a user review) post...

I did this review of the Microtrack a while back, and I though it migth prove useful to those who are considering buying one. I did the review for dolphinmusic.co.uk (I actually gave it 4 out of 10 even though it says 8!):

***********************************************

This has the potential to be such a great recording device, but is let down a lot by some pretty obvious flaws. Many people have written great reviews about this device, and that's why I bought it. But don't be misled, the unit is not all it's cranked up to be...

I bought the unit because I'm a field recording artist, and I wanted something a bit more professional with compter connectivity. More than what my Minidisc could offer. After reading reviews and scouting around I decided on the Microtrack 24/96. My first unit was faulty, recording any audio (regardless of the channel or settings) recorded at ridiculously high volumes to the point of extreme distortion. My new unit was much better, but after having the unit for several weeks, I realised that I had in fact made an error with this purchase.

Here is a list of my gripes and dislikes about the Microtrack 24/96.

> Loading time is so slow it's beyond a joke. Even after several firmware updates, which did help, the loading time was somewhere near 30 seconds! Hardly useful if your trying to record an off the cuff, spare of the moment thing. Even with the unit fully booted, the start of any recording could still take upto 30 seconds!

> The supplied T-Mic, while useful, was far too sensitive. Recordings using the t-mic in a handle held position often resulted in hand movements and vibrations being picked up during a recording, no matter how delicate your handling of the unit was. This is also true of any adjustment to recording levels while a recording is underway. I suspect the cheap construction of the unit didn't help either (see below).

> I bought a Seagate 5 gig hard drive for the unit. This offered 7 hours and 48 minutes of uncrompressed CD quality audio. Superb you would think? Well, hard drives make noises, they spin and whistle (no matter how small or quiet) and this was picked up by the t-mic if you were using it. This noise was only disguised by recording in noisy urban style environments. One obvious work around is to use an extension cable for the mic to get it away from the unit - but the whole point of the Microtack is to be discrete and practicle. What use is a recording with hard drive noise anyway?

> I was led to believe that the Seagate hard drive would improve audio quality and recording quality by being faster than compact flash media. If anything this was not true, the unit was slower with a hard drive than it was with flash media. The hard drive (or unit itself) would often hang and freeze when the hard drive was installed).

> Poor battery life. This is compounded when, if like me, you had to have the unit on standby (due to poor boot time) the battery runs out in under four hours! Six if you're lucky.

> Feels cheaply made with clunky noisy button adjustment.

> Prone to crashing a freezing without warning.

> Macintosh implementation wasn't great. The unit was often not recognized as a USB device when connect. Sometimes it crashed the Mac. On one occassion I lost my data on the unit and had to re-format the Seagate hard drive.

> Monitoring while recording is so inaccurate. It's hard to know if clipping is occuring due to the slow implementation of the level meters.

> No ability to preset your record level i.e.: hit pause record, adjust level accordingly... then hit record. Just not available on this unit.

****************************************

I want to recommend this unit, because on paper at least, it should be a great unit for field recording - but it isn't. Period. Do your self a favour and look elsewhere...... you'll thank me for it later ;)