About the Samples

Piano. Special thanks to Eyran Katsenelenbogen for his gorgeous rendition of Michel Legrand's "The Summer Knows." Yes, parts of the DR-1 sample are distorted (operator error), but we think the non-distorted bits are nice. Due to further operator error, our MicroTrack II result wasn't worth posting. We'll try again soon...

The piano samples were performed in a local conservatory rehearsal room on a Falcone 6' baby grand, lid open. The recorders were on a music stand in the corner of the room, roughly 3 feet from the rear of the piano.

Choral. The choral sample is of a non-professional choral society in the metropolitan Boston, MA area, rehearsing with a freelance orchestra in a large cathedral.

Speech. All of the speech samples are by Stephanie Wingfield. In an attempt to apply good microphone technique, Stephanie recorded each voice sample one at a time, holding each recorder in her hand. She did not line up the recorders in a row and press "record" like she did for the other samples.

Winds. Special thanks to Laura Hamel (flute) and Sylvain Bouix (clarinet) for their wonderful duet from Voxman Book No. 1.

Cello. All of the cello samples were performed by Stephanie Wingfield. Stephanie's excerpt in the 9 single cello samples is inspired by the Prelude to Bach's Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello.

Stephanie's Zoom H4 2-track sample is an excerpt from the Andantino grazioso movement of the Duet No. 4 for 2 cellos, Op. 156 by Friedrich August Kummer (1797-1879).

Stephanie's Zoom H4 4-track sample is an excerpt from Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus (KV 618) arranged for 4 cellos by Willie Guillaume.

Technical Info

All of the samples were made with only the built-in mics of the recorders.

For web optimization purposes, each sample was compressed to a 192kbps/44.1kHz mp3 file with dBpowerAmp Music Converter.

The original stereo samples were 16-bit/44.1kHz wav files.

The recording setup for the cello and wind samples was very simple.