Short reports from the trade shows: Not much new in the way of affordable gear for recording and video. Microphones in particular disappointing at this year's AES show. A few advances on the high end, such as the Schoeps "open cardioid" microphone and a $3000 Sennheiser that looks promising, however this stuff is really expensive. No real groundbreakers in the compact flash recorder department, leaving the Fostex FR2LE as the best price/quality performer, unchanged from last year. A new cute pocket recorder from Yamaha ( love their motorcycles) but no real upgradeability or professional connectors on that one. No great budget mics that are new. A few more smiley faces on the video end. The new Canon 5D Mark II looks like it will be an absolutely revolutionary product--and it is a camera, it just has great low light video, which is great for anything in Early Music. Take this to the show and do both the photos and the videos. Costs as much as a student lute but the case is cheap :) Expensive, but you get a world class camera and a world class video camera in one box. This is NOT a "point 'n shoot", BTW. Of special interest to lute players are the Vivia HF100 and HF 11. The HF100--the least expensive--is almost totally silent and records to flash cards. The zoom is nearly silent as well. There is a trade off--the quality is not as good as the Canon HV30, but you can put it four feet away and not record that awful hum. Has a mic input, as well, or I would not recommend it. Does not do long strings like the HV30, but otherwise a nice HD camcorder at a great price. The built in mics are useable--not great, but certainly useable. They have an "easy" button which actually works reasonably well. Lute videos have come along way in the last year, and they are going to get even better. In a year or two, the heavy hitters will figure out a cheap way to fix all the mistakes, and the "lute reality TV" party will be over, but for now it is great fun. NB The next thing for everyone to think about,i f they choose, and make suggestions, is online lessons. Sounds horrible, but is not. Right now, if someone posts a video, of course one should say nice things. One should always say nice things. But suppose someone wanted help with a technical problem. Private video invite. private comments. Open up the lute to more out of the way areas as well. Another cool thing would be for makers to have product demos--listen to the different models, and see them as well. Last, but not least, the gap is closing in streaming video in Facebook of all places. The quality is better than youtube, and sometimes gives Vimeo a run for their money. Expect the quality to go up in the HD wars, but also expect more choppy bits as the servers get clogged. Here is the same video in youtube, Facebook and vimeo Youtube [1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-f7-aOa3qA Youtube in stereo (what a concept--stereo) [2]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-f7-aOa3qA&fmt=18 Vimeo [3]http://www.vimeo.com/2003533 Facebook [4]http://tinyurl.com/5aao3p (you may have to be a member, dunno) I think all of this is very good for the lute--thousands of people are watching these videos. dt --
References 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-f7-aOa3qA 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-f7-aOa3qA&fmt=18 3. http://www.vimeo.com/2003533 4. http://tinyurl.com/5aao3p To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
