Reviews

by Leilehua Yuen

Since we do a lot of recording, sound equipment is important to us. Today, instead of huge boxes of gear we have to drag around on dollies, a few little pieces tossed in my shoulder bag fill all our needs! Of course, for great professional sound, we rely on actual professionals with their professional-grade equipment (Looking at YOU Pepe Romero and Charles Brotman!), but for quick feedback, documentation, and reference tracks there are so many inexpensive, lightweight, and surprisingly competent gadgets out there that almost anyone can get a pretty darned good recording.

Audio Digitizer

This little digitizer captures all outgoing signal and saves it as MP3 files to your USB flash drive. All you need to do is plug it into your 3.5mm or RCA audio output port and you are good to go! If you want to hear what it is recording, it has a 3.5mm output for speakers or headphones. There are no on-board controls, what you hear is what you get. You can also check the MP3 files with the playback function. Not fancy, but it works!

Power Pac

This is a handy power pac that you can toss in your kit bag and have available when your video camera, phone, or whatever starts to run out of juice. If you are in a sunny location, you recharge using the solar panel on one side. It is not as fast of a charge as my old one, but it seems to be a bit more robust. It has three usb output ports, one of which is more of a trickle charger, only supporting 5V@3A. It has one c output port, which I don’t know anything about. Supposedly the power bank can charge up to 4 phones at the same time, though my gear only allows for two. I guess if I was patient, I could but my phone on the trickle charger overnight, which would be good for camping. The orange in the case makes it easy to find in the midst of all my black equipment. The flashlight is good, and can be set in a steady state, to flash, or to strobe. It is now a permanent part of my gear. The on/off button is a bit sticky.