Bruce Bartlett (noted recording engineer, microphone engineer, and pro audio journalist) wrote:

The PDAudio system offers a new paradigm of recording. It is compact and low cost, offers pro-quality sound, and has no moving parts if used with a memory card. Highly recommended."

(See Bruce's complete review in the August 2004 issue of Pro Audio Review magazine. Contact us for a reprint.)

John Atkinson, editor of Stereophile magazine, wrote:

"I have now had the chance to listen at length to the [PDAudio] recordings. What a great sound!"

R.S., at the BBC, wrote:

...I think PDAudio is the business. It was a thrill for me this week to walk into a vast studio, put my PDA down next to the biggest multitrack recorder I could see, and say 'can I have a digital out to this, please.'

C.W. wrote:

Recording has gone quite well on the US Navy's Strike Force flight line in at the Oceana Naval base. The Mic2496 and PDAudio-CF worked flawlessly and allowed us to capture realistic F18 noise data that we are now using for simulation testing of speech recognition in the presence of jet noise. Thanks for a great product!

R.C. wrote:

...It is like having a mini lap with me and getting all the outstanding quality that goes with that.

My Grace Design V3 is now truly portable and has finally come into its own. I will be recording all the foley for my next film dramas on this excellent device.

G.E. wrote:

...I love the sound, it is what I hoped to get but was not quite certain that it was possible. Thanks again for working to get this technology out to people like me.

M.S. wrote:

I've been using portable minidisc recorders with a Rode NT4 microphone and a Denecke AD-20 that I bought from Core Sound to record my son's band concerts for a number of years now. I've been wanting to upgrade my recording setup for a long time, and finally bought an IPAQ 2215, and the PD Audio CF card. I used Gidluck's Live2496 software for recording with the Denecke preamp. It was all super easy to use, and transferring the recordings to my computer for mastering to a CD afterwards was a dream compared to the realtime recording I had to do from the minidisc recorder. Since I had to record at 16/44.1 due to the limitations of the AD-20, I did not expect much difference in quality. However, I did hear a noticeable difference, and was very pleased with the quality of the recordings. I can't wait until I can afford the Mic2496 so I can record at the full 24 bits that it supports, and use its phantom power to drive a better pair of mics that I already have.

S. S. wrote:

Didn't get a chance to use the laptop last weekend but I did do my daughter's church concert with PDAudio and the 4700 [HP iPAQ hx4750 PDA]. I did the full hour at 24/96 using two 1GB SD cards. The swap went flawless and other than waiting to make sure the PDA is recognizing the second card, it is a snap to change cards. I am using your CS Binaural Mics with my rig.

R.B., on the Yahoo PenComputingAudio mailing list, wrote:

...I've been using the following system to capture classical concerts and chamber music performances:

Core HEB mic set (DPA 4060), configured for Mic2496
Mic2496
6-inch Toslink-to-Miniplug Optical Cable
PDAudio-CF
HP iPAQ 2210
Live2496 software
1 GB SD cards

...The CDs I've produced using this system have been outstanding. I typically give a CD to each of the performers (including my wife, a Violist) and all have been quite impressed and pleased.

...Last year at this time it was not clear that anyone was routinely capturing live recordings using PDAs. This year, even an inexperienced taper such as myself can expect to capture remarkably high quality live recordings each and every time.

J.N. wrote:

I went out Saturday and used the rig again, worked great. ... It was outdoors at a street festival and someone actually approached me and asked if that was "that core sound preamp." He had seen them online, but never one in person. People seem to get really giggly when they see how compact everything is.

M.R., on the Yahoo laptop-tapers mailing list, wrote:

I had an H2215 pda for business and have been using that with the PDAudio for the past 6 months and I m loving it... Using Live2496 to record, and the gapless recording feature has worked flawlessly.

S.K. wrote:

replaced a sony dat with core sound mic 2496, pda audio cf interface, ipaq 5150 with gidluck live 2496, nexian dual slot expansion pack (for the tiny size) and a couple of 2 gb cf (sandisk standards) HEB 4060 mics. so far so good, stable 24/48 !

wow. simply stunning sound, unparalleled accuracy. these are the *ultimate* portables, very stealthy indeed, no prob. progressive company, they even provided outstanding support to get me (amateur recordist/audiophile/pc moron) up and running.

highest recommendation, exceeded expectations !

J.P. wrote:

...I have anxiously waited to be able to leave the laptop behind and run the [Sound Devices] SD722 but while I waited and waited for the [Sound Devices] SD722 to get into production, I thought in the meantime I would give the PDAudio card a shot.

First off, here is my PDA setup:

HP Ipaq 5555
HP Dual PC Card Expansion Pack
Gidluck Mastering Live 2496 Software
Toshiba 5GB PC Card HDs
Innergy Force 5 external power supply

Having used the above setup for the past two months, I have pretty much nothing but good things to say about it's reliability and, as added bonuses, its tiny size and low cost.

The best thing about this recorder is that not only will it do 24/96 using Live 2496 (if files are properly preallocated), but it is so freaking small. This unit is considerably smaller than even the smallest of laptops and (IMHO) it draws much less attention than the laptop. It will also be much smaller than the SD722 particularly taking into account that it runs now on a 12v rather than a 6v.

All in, including the external power supply and one 5GB hard drive, the cost for building the PDA recorder was under $1,200. That is half the cost of the SD722 for something that will do the exact same job (assuming of course you do not need the preamp, etc. that the SD722 offers). ...

Anyhow, I've said about all that can be said for this unit. I'm 100% glad I took the time to investigate this option before dropping the money on the Sound Devices unit. I would be more than happy to answer any questions anyone has about my experiences getting it all together (and would love to trade some good 24-bit recordings as well now that I'm finally starting to get my two years worth of recordings archived :^).

M.P. wrote:

I wanted to take a moment and express my satisfaction with my new recording setup. I purchased a set of your HEB4060's along with your new mic2496 preamp & PDAudio card. I'm currently running an HP IPAQ 5555 with dual card expansion pack for the PDAudio card and 5gb drive. Software being used at present is Pocco's Wichita and Gidluck's Live2496.

I've had several good recording sessions with great results. The HEB4060's sound absolutely incredible. Several listeners are amazed with the sound quality from such a small microphone setup. I started out a few years ago with a DAT deck and have also used a laptop on several occasions for recording. I find the PDA combined with your products my favorite. I highly recommend it.

[He later wrote:]

I tested your PDAudio Card & the Beta2 release of the Windows based Driver on the following laptop:

Dell Latitude D505 / 512mb memory / 40gb HD. This was a brand new unit right out of the box with a clean XP-Pro SP1 install. Soundforge 6.0 was next installed followed by the PDAudio driver install. The driver installed correctly with no unexpected issues. With this completed I was able to record in all modes except 88k (I didn't test this mode) using the Mic2496. All worked perfect!!

J.G.S. (P.E.), using PDAudio-CF, Mic2496 and HEB/4060, wrote:

The other day I was making recordings in the anechoic chamber and kept noticing a "tick-tick-tick" my recordings at ambient (about 15 dBA). Turned out, it was my MagicStor CF drive. At first I was bummed. Then, I realized I had just made a high fidelity recording of one of the quietest devices one could possible work on. So, it looks like its solid state CF memory for my application but the signal to noise ratio and fidelity are awesome.

B.W. (CAS, MPSE, AMPS), an audio professional in Georgia, wrote:

"I have been recording sound effects for some of the projects I have been posting and absolutely am thrilled with the sonic quality of the Audio card [PDAudio-CF] and Mic 2496. Both stereo and mono recordings are truthful reproductions of the sounds recorded and the portability of the 'system' is something I have been looking forward to for many years."

G.P., in Italy, wrote:

Beta1 on XP is now really ok. I tested it with optical connection from a range of different devices running from 44.1 to 96 kHz. No more channel swaps, fast as expected. Great.

H.P.R., in Germany, wrote:

A little story about pdaudiocf-card:

I have put the card in my shirt. My wife has wash it. I think it was not more to use. The red colour of the unit wash out.

But yesterday I have test it and it runs normaly after one hour in washing. Fine.

[He's since ordered two more PDAudio-CF cards.]

Brian Dipert, an editor for EDN Magazine, wrote:

"I'm doing something I've been contemplating for some time. I'm selling all my DAT-related gear. I can frankly think of no better testimonial to the capability of both the hardware and software I tested at ACL... "

(You can read his ACL music festival comments here. You can see Brian's earlier two-part article about PDAudio-CF and Mic2496 in the May 29th and June 12th issues of EDN Magazine. Click here to see Part One of that article, and here for Part Two. )

Dave Phillips, author of "The Book Of Linux Music & Sound" writes:

"...Btw, the recording quality is outstanding!" (Dave is using PDAudio-CF on his Linux laptop PC.)

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