There are things that are very cool functionally but aren’t impressive to look at, and there are things that are cool to look at but not impressive functionally.
In the first category I think first of the Raspberry Pi single-board computer. There is a ton of potential in these little things, but you really have to know what it is and then think about what you can do with it to really appreciate that. To the eye, it’s just a very small circuit board, it doesn’t look particularly interesting, much less cool.
In the second category I think first of the prop-replica field, and especially the sort of stuff that Adam Savage turns out in Youtube videos. These look very, very cool, but it’s all skin-deep. The bottom line is that they may look and sound and even to some degree act as though they do something really interesting, but it’s all “a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing”. It’s basically a toy, a fake… and somehow that really isn’t cool at all.
Once in a blue moon there comes something that has both kinds of cool, it’s functionally impressive and also looks very cool. Mostly those things are either rare, expensive, or horribly specialized. Then there’s this, which I ran across recently.
Some people are saying the Zoom H6 audio recorder is either in the process of revolutionizing the audio field or will revolutionize it. I really don’t think so, the field as a whole is too entrenched in its ways to change quickly, it typically takes decades… we’re talking here about people who, among other things, still get rhapsodical about vacuum tubes, hand-wound transformers and ribbon microphones.
What I think it may really do is revolutionize audio recording tasks for the rest of us, those for which it is part, but not the point of what we are doing. In the process, it (and successive devices of the sort) may free a lot of us from dependence on expensive audio professionals to accomplish our tasks.
Consider:
It’s portable. Not really pocket-able in most circumstances, but can be powered by batteries and is easily small enough to carry in one hand. Small enough to pull out of a small bag or briefcase in an interview and have both the most impressive recording device and the best audio.
It seems to come with two microphone arrangements that can be attached to the front and swapped out easily. Others are available.
The main body of the instrument has four combination XLR/TRS (or TS) jacks, for recording up to four channels. Each has a physical level dial, so the gain can be adjusted while recording without hitting buttons to navigate through a menu and possibly generating noise. Each has a pad button and settable phantom power levels. The microphone attachments for the front or an optional dual-XLR attachment take it to up to six simultaneous channels (the two extra XLR channels in the optional attachment do not supply phantom power). So you can handle a mix of dynamic and condenser microphones, instrument and line inputs, or mix from its internal audio files, do track-on-track dubs.
It has a USB interface and will act as an audio interface for a computer, as ADC and DAC for Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software for recording, or just as a DAC for audio playback, or it will record stand-alone to an SD card for possible later DAW processing.
It can record at the highest current digital standards, beyond CD quality.
In the field, you could have the thing on your belt or in a large pocket, use it with a lavaliere or hand microphone or both at once in the field for man-in-the-street interviews, or to catch the sound of a hurricane from inside, whatever, and be an entirely self-contained audio recording unit.
It’s even got a built-in metronome and chromatic/guitar/bass tuner.
There really isn’t much this thing can’t do, from taking personal voice notes to recording entire band sessions. It’s been called the “Swiss Army knife” of audio tools, and.. drum m roll.. right now it seems to go for about $350. I’ve been told that just about a year ago it was going for $500. At this price it’s hard to understand why anyone dealing with audio wouldn’t want to have one if only as an emergency backup for whatever more-optimized rig they were planning on using. In these days when extensive post-processing is in everyone’s hands, any audio record is much, much better than none in case of an equipment failure. For those with simpler requirements, this can almost certainly handle it all… and be a lot more versatile than most solutions.
So, on to the other kind of “cool”…
This thing looks the part. It looks like some cross between the Psycho-Kinetic Energy (PKE_ Meter from Ghostbusters and the Tricorder (maybe the Medical Tricoder) from Star Trek the Next Generation, but in this case it’s all real and very functional. It’s got a full-color screen, not hazy gray-on-amber. Honestly, it looks like something that, if it was caught in the camera frame during a Star Wars shoot, they might not even bother to edit out- or even recognize that it’s not a prop. I can see it making a huge impression in an interview (much, much more than the ubiquitous tiny Olympus recorders.. and yeah, I’ve got one of those too), I can see it enabling an entire range of quality in-the-field and on-the-fly audio recordings, and even substituting for desktop equipment in a pinch. That’s cool.
The fact that it’s “real”, IMHO, makes it far cooler than any prop replica.
Wish I could rationalize my way to one myself, but the hard truth is that I have more audio equipment than I need already, so it would take a real rationalization dance. Maybe someday.
– Robert the Wombat