As with all binaurals like this, moving your head is a problem and produces some cable movement noise. Roland have provided a slip knot type ring on the headphone cable which holds things a bit more securely but not a solution to the problem. The microphones come with silicon earbud fittings. I’ve swapped these for foam based fittings and I’m unsure whether this is an improvement or not. These recordings are using the standard silicon earbuds.

All recordings using Olympus LS-5 using a variety of settings. Getting the setting was a problem although combined with the limiter on the LS-2, the microphones handled sudden noises quite well. Handling wind noise was a real failure.

Recording 1

Street recording, busy traffic and people. LS-2 set with low gain and mid recording volume.

Roland CS-10 test recording 1

Recording 2

Wind noise a problem with low cut turned off. Olympus set in high gain with mid recording volume.

Roland CS-10 test recording 2

Recording 3

A quieter recording inside the London Underground station at King’s Cross, London. Low cut is on, gain setting high and mid recording volume.

Roland CS-10 test recording 3

Step 1. Remove the forward grip

This grip is held in by friction but you may need a credit card type plastic lever to help out the tabs if they are a bit sticky. Previous information I found was that both front and rear grips are held in by friction. This is not the case with the Blimp handle I have. You need to be a little careful here as the tabs are moulded as part of the grip. If these get broken you’ll end up with gaffer tape all over the handle.

Step 2. Get ready to move 2 Allen bolts from the front grip

The rear grip is held in by 2 screws at the front and one screw on the rear. The pair of two screws s highlighted in the photo. Not sure exactly what size these are but the look to be 3mm.

Step 3. Handle split

With the handle split into 2 you can see how the rear grip contains the XLR connector. Once the grip is removed, the XLR connector can be slipped out.

The fitting behind the front grip is the fitting for a pole or boom.

All the A4s have a distinctive chime whistle. Recorded on 27th November 2010 using a handheld Olympus LS-5. A windy and cold day.

More information about this engine from The Sir Nigel Gresley Locomotive Preservation Trust.

The only comparable unit I have is a Zoom H2 so I’ll use that as a baseline.

Compared to the H2, the LS-5 feels better to use, is less bulky and overall has the impression of being better quality all round.

In the box

In the LS-5 box, the unit, a set of batteries, foam windshields (which nicely click on the mic caps), a strap, a USB cable, a copy of the Olympus file manager ‘Sonority’ and printed manuals. The packaging is good and seems like Olympus are copying Apple to some extent. I did notice that the manuals are heavier than the unit.

In the H2 box (as far as I remember), the unit, a set of batteries, a stand, a mic holder adapter, a mains adapter, some printed manuals and a USB cable.

Start up time

When trying to capture a sound and the unit is off, startup time is of the utmost importance. The LS-5 takes about 3 seconds to start from cold, whereas the H2 takes around 15 seconds with an 8Gb SDHC card. The start up time on the H2 seems to depend on the SD card capacity – the higher the capacity, the longer the start up. One feature the LS-5 does not have that the H2 does, is a pre-record buffer.

Pressing the record button

Both units start promptly but there is a very slight delay on the H2. The LS-5 starts immediately as far as I can tell. The H2 has membrane buttons which are almost silent when used. The LS-5 has mechanical buttons which you can hear has a click at the start of each recording. The ending click on the LS-5.

Pressing the stop button

Stopping a recording is often overlooked. The quicker you can stop, the quicker you can restart. The LS-5 has almost no delay between stopping and being ready for restarting. The H2 does pause for a second or two after stopping and finishing writing to the disk.

Holding the unit

Again, often overlooked is how to hold the recorder. With the H2 mic arrangement I was never sure how to point the mics for best capture and it was certainly more convenient to hold it horizontally that vertically (which was probably the best orientation). Handling noise is about the same for both units.

Sound quality

Without the benefit of a scientific approach the LS-5 sounds ‘better’ and more ’rounded’. The mics seem less sensitive than the H2 (my H2 was used mostly on the mid gain setting at 100 recording units). Best overall setting on the LS-5 seems to be low mic sensitivity with recording gain at about 9.

Other features

The H2 has a 4 channel setting which the LS-5 does not. I’ve tried to use this in the past but with not much real success – post production being the main issue.
Both units have playback effects, not much use I would say.
The LS-5 has 2Gb of internal recording capacity and ‘zoom’ mic settings, although the zoom settings are not compatible with higher bitrate and resolutions.
Both units can record at a variety of resolutions and bitrates, and also MP3 (the LS-5 has the addition of WMA compression too).

Price

2 years ago, the H2 was bought at £150, the Ls-5 at £179, both from high street stores.

The LS-11 / 10 is 30% more expensive than the LS-5. As far as I can tell, you get the same unit but with less internal memory (that the LS-11), no DAW software, no case and no remote control. Apart from the remote control, the rest of these items is of negligible use.

LS-5 Sound recording samples

First sample is a train horn. Recorded using inbuilt mics, on low sensitivity with gain set at about 8/10.

Second sample is of 60163 Tornado steam locomotive. Recording settings as above. Train passed within about 30 feet of the recorder.

Both samples are untreated.

H2 Sound recording sample

For comparison, this recording is of another steam loco, A4 ‘Bittern’, using the Zoom H2 from a similar position to the recordings above. The H2 was set to Medium mic sensitivity with gain set to 100.

The announcement can be made for a number of reasons, and is used to alert transport staff to an incident without causing panic in what are usually, crowded and congested areas – the last place you need a stampede.

Wikipedia has an interesting article on the subject here.

Now one has changed.

The output of one particular station that broadcasts from near Povarovo, Russia (callsign UVB-76, AKA “The Buzzer” by its listeners ), has increased dramatically. It’s only deviated from it’s signal three times previously – in 1997, 2002 and 2006.

Wired reports “In early August, a garbled recording of a voice speaking Russian was heard by listeners. A few days later, on 23 August at 13:35UTC, a clearer voice read out the following message twice: “UVB-76, UVB-76 — 93 882 naimina 74 14 35 74 — 9 3 8 8 2 nikolai, anna, ivan, michail, ivan, nikolai, anna, 7, 4, 1, 4, 3, 5, 7, 4″, before returning to its normal broadcasting.”

Obviously this is a brilliant reason for speculation by conspiracy theorists. If you want to get some of that, more from Wired here.

Go to the iPad Audio Forum

These are some first impressions of a few I’ve tried so far.

TonePad

This is an iPhone app and scales up to fit the iPad screen well enough.

It features a single block of notepads that are activated in the usual left to right fashion.

You can change the colours but not the sounds. Limited but has possible uses if you can do something with the sound output.

This was a free app, therefore no complaints.

Beatwave

A more advanced app than TonePad but with more advanced features that provides 4 layers in a single repeatable layer.

The app comes with 3 sound ‘banks’. Each bank sounds like its made up from more than once instrument (the usual selection of synths, samples, pads).

As well as saving your work, you can save blocks which can be called from a palette at any point, so while there is no song mode for assembling a series of blocks, it could be used in a performance context.

Other controls affect the sound; Tone – which should be ‘tune’ and does just that, tempo, layer sound levels and panning and a master reverb. For these settings dull numbering is ignored and replaced with a nice multicoloured slider – a nice touch I think.

A very good feature on this app is the Grid Morpher. Each layer can be configured to allow random generation of new and replacement notepads with 3 parameters to twiddle; strenght, speed and multiplyer.

This was a free app and pretty good.

Aurora HD

This is a real beast of an app and could be reviewed in depth over a long post later. I’ve spent hours on this already and just scratched the surface. This is also probably one of the most expensive apps currently available and it took me some time before buying. I’m glad I did, but I’d disagree with the developers that anyone can pick it up and use it well – initial results are very disappointing – perseverance is well rewarded, results not instant.

BeatWave for iPad

TonePad for iPhone on iPad