The sweet spot for home turntable enthusiasts on a budget seems to be the $200 mark. This might be the best of the bunch.
One can only imagine the sake-fueled club hopping that led to the development of the Seiko Frequency drum machine watch.
Holophone H4 Surround-Sound Mic
By James Grahame
I've been meaning to write an article about classic quadrophonic and holophonic recording systems for quite a while, but I haven't found the right angle yet. In the meantime, modern manufacturers are coming up with new multi-channel recording techniques that might prove revolutionary.
The recently announced $2495 Holophone H4 SuperMINI is a 5.1 channel surround-sound mic intended for use with prosumer camcorders. The incredibly compact microphone 'head' contains five microphone elements (L, R, C, LS, RS) with 20Hz to 20kHz frequency response. The device includes a built-in multichannel preamplifier and a plethora of useful audio outputs including 6 discrete analog connectors, a virtual surround headphone monitor and matrix encoded line-level stereo output for connection to stereo inputs on your camcorder.
I suspect this product would be more useful for capturing live performances than it would for video work. After all, corporate videos, indie films and porn flicks just don't need on-set 5.1 ambient recording.
