- Hey guys, my name is Matt Johnson,
and today I'm gonna be sharing with you my exact settings
that I use with my TASCAM DR-10L Audio Recorder
to record high quality audio of people speaking.
Before we get started,
I do recommend that you update your recorder
firmware to version 2.0, but don't sweat it,
don't feel like you absolutely have to do that.
You will still be able to follow along
with most of this tutorial.
On to the settings.
Turn on your recorder, hit the menu button,
and up first we have Mic Gain.
You don't need to worry about changing any
of your Mic Gain settings
because we're gonna be having the DR-10L automatically set
the level of its audio in Menu Section Four.
So you can ignore Mic Gain.
Second, we have Low Cut.
And I have this turned on.
A low cut filter is gonna remove some
of the lower frequencies in your audio file,
and this can be beneficial,
especially if your dealing with a lot of wind
or if you're dealing, say, with clothing rustle,
removing some of those lower end frequencies can result
in a cleaner sounding audio file.
I leave this turned on, and, in my experience,
this has not negatively affected my audio quality at all.
Third, we have Limiter.
And I always leave this on
because if somebody's speaking quietly
and they start speaking really loudly
that can cause peaking.
And the limiter helps prevent peaking from occurring.
Fourth, we have Auto Level, and I always leave this on
because this is going to dynamically change the gain levels
of your recorder,
depending on how loud the person is speaking.
It keeps them at roughly the same loudness throughout,
which is very beneficial.
Because we have auto level turned on,
you do not need to change your Mic Gain settings
in menu section one.
Fifth, we have FS Sample.
And you're gonna wanna set that to 48 kilohertz
because most cameras also record audio at 48 kilohertz.
By setting your recorder to the same sample rate,
you will make syncing audio with your DR-10L very easy
and help prevent audio drift.
Sixth, we have bit length.
And you're gonna wanna set that to 24bit.
24bit is higher quality audio than 16bit,
and I see no reason to use a lower quality audio file.
I want as high of quality as possible.
Seventh. For file type, you're gonna wanna set it to mono.
And if you're using the stock lav mic
that comes with the DR-10L, mono is gonna work fine for you.
It will still fill the audio
of both your left and right channels.
Eighth, we have Dual Record.
And I have mine set to negative 12 decibels.
If you do not see negative 12 decibels,
and you only see on or off, that is because you have not
updated your DR-10L firmware to Version 2.0.
If you update your firmware,
you can now select if you want negative six decibels
or negative 12 decibels
for your backup audio track that will record along
with your main audio track.
I highly recommend having this turned on
in the event that your main audio track starts peaking.
Having this backup audio track turned on
and set to negative 12 decibels
will ensure that you still have a high quality audio track
that you can pull from to save your peaked audio.
Do keep in mind that having dual recording on
essentially doubles your file size
because you're recording two of every audio file.
But, if you use the 32 gig SD cards that I recommend,
you're still getting something like 30 hours
of recording time, even with dual recording turned on.
So, I would not stress about the file size too much.
I will link to the SD cards that I recommend
down in the description of this video.
Ninth, we have MP3 Mode.
And I have mine set to off.
By default, the DR-10L records in a high quality,
lossless WAV format, and that's what you want.
You could turn on MP3 Mode
if you wanted much longer recording times,
but the audio's gonna be more compressed
and you're not gonna be able to manipulate it
as well as you would if you were editing with the WAV file.
10th, we have Track Inc,
which stands for Track Incrementation.
And I usually leave this turned on.
What this means is every 15 minutes or so,
your DR-10L is going to save the current audio file
that's recording, and start recording a new audio file.
But the benefit is that in the event
that your drop your recorder
and the battery falls out, or somebody goes in
and pulls out the memory card while it's recording,
if you were just recording one long file,
you would probably have that file be corrupted.
But, because you are doing
the 15 minute long track incrementation,
you would only probably lose the most recent 15 minute track
and all of the other 15 minute tracks beforehand,
the majority of your audio, would not be lost.
11th we have my favorite setting, Warn Beeps.
It's only my favorite because I love the title of it.
Warn Beeps.
What does that mean?
Well, Warn Beeps.
If you have this setting turned on
and you are recording with your DR-10L
and you have headphones plugged into the headphone jack
of your recorder,
if your recorder starts to run low on battery,
or it starts to run low on memory card space,
it will start beeping at you over your headphones
to notify you that it's running low.
Of course, whenever I'm using this recorder,
I always have it on someone across the room from me,
usually at a wedding ceremony,
standing up at the front
so I'm not gonna be running some long, snaking cord
up to my headphones, be like oh yeah, you sound good, great.
Not gonna be doing that.
So, I leave warn beeps turned off
because it's basically useless to me.
But if you are in a situation
where you're able to monitor your audio being recorded
with this thing, wouldn't hurt to turn it on.
12th, we have Power Save.
And I leave this turned on.
No, it's not some way to magically extend your battery life,
unfortunately, but what it does do, is that in the event
that your recorder's turned on
and it is not recording, after 10 minutes,
it will turn off the recorder to save battery.
Next we have 13 and 14.
And these two go together.
For thirteen it's called Name Type. And if you go into it,
you see that you can select Word or Date.
If you select Date,
then the file names that your DR-10L records will start
with the date that they were recorded,
a nice way for you to keep track of things.
If you select Word on the other hand,
then the file names that your DR-10L records will start
with a custom word that you decide.
How do you decide this custom word, though?
Well, let's go back out,
and let's go down to 14: File Name.
And that is where you can select the custom name
that will begin at the start of your file.
This could be useful if you're wanting to, say,
differentiate between groom or officiant or bride.
You could go in and change the file names
of the recorders that you're using,
so that way you're able to keep track at a glance
whenever your editing.
Oh, this is my groom audio,
this is my officiant audio, et cetera, et cetera.
For me, though, if you go back to 13,
I have my name type set to date,
and I do not worry about a custom file name.
But it is a useful feature if you need it.
15 is, of course, Format SD,
which you've probably seen if you've ever shot with a camera
or used an audio recorder ever.
That is how you wipe your memory card.
So, make sure that you do not do this
before you have copied your audio files off
of this recorder.
Once you have done that,
and you're sure they're all backed up,
then you can go and format your SD card,
but do not do that until you are actually sure
that your files are all backed up.
16, we have Mic Bias.
And if you are using the stock lav mic
that comes with your DR-10L,
you're going to want to make sure that this is turned on,
because Mic Bias turned on is what is gonna supply power
to your lav mic.
If you have a powered lav mic,
then you can turn Mic Bias off.
But because I always use the stock lav mics,
I always leave Mic Bias on
because I actually want to be able to record audio.
17, Batt Type.
Which is not a misspelled way
of selecting your favorite actor who played Batman.
I will say though that I do love Christoper Nolan,
so I'm gonna have to say Christian Bale
because I love those movies.
Batt Type is actually how you select the type of battery
that you are using with your recorder.
In my case, I select N-I-M-H because I'm using
AmazonBasics High-Capacity Rechargeable Batteries.
I will link to those down in the description,
if you want to buy the same ones.
I love them and they are reasonably priced
which is a great.
Regardless, make sure that you're selecting
the right battery type for the battery that you're using,
so that way your DR-10L is able to properly report
the battery levels to you
and that way you're not stuck with,
I thought it was full but it's actually dead, no.
18.
Date and Time, which is pretty straightforward.
That's where you set the date and time.
I do recommend setting this accurately
so that way you're not dealing with audio files
that your computer thinks were recorded in 1992
and you're like, wait no, I need this sooner.
Yeah, set your date and time right.
19, Sys Init, which I'm assuming stands
for something like System Initialization.
This is the setting that you select
if you want to reset your DR-10L back
to its factory settings.
Do not go in and say yes to this,
unless you want to have to go back in
and reprogram all the settings that we just went through.
Lastly, number 20. you have version info,
which is a great way for you to be able to tell
which Firmware version your recorder is running.
Mine is currently running Version 2.0.
And that's it.
That is how I have my TASCAM DR-10L set up,
and these are the settings that I've used
for the past year or so, and they've been working great.
Incidentally, I have a link down in the description
of this video to my audio gear kit page,
which details all of the audio gear that I use
whenever I'm filming a wedding.
Much more than just the DR-10L.
With that, thank you so much for watching.
I hope this video was helpful to you.
As always, if you have any questions or comments,
please feel free to leave one below
or get in touch with me through my website, whoismatt.com.
It is also a huge help to me
if you would consider liking this video,
giving it a thumbs up, and subscribing
if you want to see more videos like this in the future.
Thanks and have a great day.