Sampling environmental sounds with a consumer DV camcorder?

[Meffy]

Though I've wanted a portable sampling setup of some kind for years, I just can't afford it. But I have an old yet fairly decent (consumer-level) camcorder, a Sony DCR-TRV310 that records DV onto regular 8mm cassettes at double tape speed. I believe the audio is sampled at 48 KHz, 16 bits. There's a built-in stereo mic of the usual kind. The motor isn't terribly noisy, so I expect I could remove its sound using Sound Forge's Noise Reduction plug-in.

I usually work at 44.1 KHz, 16 bits. I'm guessing any distortion incurred by converting from 48 to 44.1 will be minor compared to the not-that-superb fidelity of the tiny built-in condenser mics and designed-for-compactness electronics.

What's the opinion of y'all who do sampling? Is it worthwhile trying to use a camcorder to record environmental (non-musical) sounds? Anyone tried doing this? With what success? Any gotchas I ought to look out for?

Thanks in advance.

[Kingston]

the one unfortunate thing that comes to mind first is that awfully many camcorders have a built in leveling compressor that you can't turn off. basically it means that too much movement with the dynamics of the sound will result in very audible and uncontrollable volume automation by the said compressor.

other than that, the mics themselves are usually decent miniature condenser quality. you can compensate for the deficiencies to great extent with simple parametric EQing.

the sample rate conversion is the least of your problems. if you're doing it digitally, there's no better tool than http://www.lcscanada.com/audiomove/ which is completely transparent (and free).

[Meffy]

Hm, you're right -- ALC or whatever. Hadn't thought of that. Maybe it can be controlled via one of the menus I haven't touched since getting it home from the clearance case at the local Sears store.

Glad to know the mics are likely to be of acceptable quality anyway. For conversions I've got Sound Forge 6 (can't afford to keep upgrading to the latest version of all my software and version 6 does what I need). If that won't do the conversion I'll pick up the tool you mentioned.

Thanks for the tips and advice. Hope it'll come in useful. If not... well, I'll either equip the laptop or wait until I can afford a good pocket-sized sample recorder and stereo mic.

*waits for the investors to make up their minds, la de deee, la de dah*

[Mr. Tunes]

also look into minidisc hi-mds if they're on the used market. mic input, pcm 44.1khz sampling. unfortunately they suffer from a bit of disc spinning noise too which is really only a problem when you mount a mic directly on them. i think a camcorder would be fine for certain sounds though - ie ones that you plan to mash up heavily in a sampler or something meant to sound lo-fi to begin with.

[Meffy]

I was considering a MD for some time and nearly bought when a fellow KVR member was selling one of the old (pre-NetMD) units at a good price. Then I had a medical emergency -- they do keep cropping up, grar -- and there went that money. I wouldn't be mounting the mic on the unit, would want a hand-held stereo mic. More expense, heh...

Thanks for reminding me of the MD option, I'll keep them in mind.